Practice

What’s your CPH?

The financial services industry is one of the best places to work. We have the freedom to earn as much or as little as we want to. The freedom to work as many or as few hours as we wish. It also gives us the freedom to deal with the types of clients we want […]

By Robert Abboud |June 28, 2010

3 min read

Planning and Advice

Good debt versus bad debt

How do you approach your clients so they aren’t afraid of leveraging? Can you simply explain the concepts we are taught? Here are some of the ways I clarify the concept of good debt versus bad debt. As I work with my clients, whether they are business owners or employees, I always try to teach […]

By Sue Ricketts |June 21, 2010

4 min read

Planning and Advice

Lessons learned from privacy violations

A Summons to Witness can be considered a subpoena in certain circumstances for the purposes of paragraph 7(3)(c) of the Act. Three cases in the last two years emanating from the Office of the Privacy Commission of Canada remind us that when it comes to complying with privacy requirements, it’s not enough to simply post […]

By Stephanie A. McManus, LL. B. |June 17, 2010

5 min read

Planning and Advice

Ditch the pitch

During my first year in the business a wholesaler at an insurance firm told me the key to success would be to get 20 meetings a week. Although 90% would say no, 10% would become clients. That’s the way it was at the time. A few years later, I took in a presentation on ‘How […]

By Mathieu Paradis |June 14, 2010

3 min read

NOT your responsibility, totally YOUR problem

In April, I traveled across the country on a speaking tour as part of the ‘World Critical Illness Insurance Conferences Road Show’. One of the subjects my fellow speakers talked about was critical illness insurance and how important it was. How the lives of their clients (or even their own) had been changed forever because […]

4 min read

A “fee” for non-advice

Here’s an idea for some intrepid entrepreneur: beat the consumer-ignoring Canadian regulatory system at its own game. When Melanie Aitken and her people at the Competition Bureau are through with real estate agents and their monopolized access to MLS, they could do something similar regarding mutual funds. The way things are structured now, most discount […]

3 min read

The profitability of business ethics

While many proponents of business ethics claim they are good for business, critics remain skeptical and demand to statistical data to substantiate such claims. Today’s consumer-based free market economy necessitates a quantifiable economic value be placed on goods and services in order that the efficient utilization of resources results in the creation of wealth. The […]

4 min read

Succession planning: Securing your future

With the average age of a financial advisor in Canada being 54, many advisors are considering semi-retirement and starting to plan for succession. Time and time again, what they are lacking though are the different compensation strategies they can employ. Succession plans can vary with advisors depending on their product focus, length of time in […]

4 min read

De Goey: Cobalts and Geos

Marketing is so pervasive these days that it is often hard to distinguish between truth and the self-serving positioning. The financial services industry has long played a tacit game regarding costs, where product manufacturers and distributors downplay the importance of cost in order to maximize revenues. The inescapable truth is the more a product or […]

3 min read

Protecting your client’s pockets

You’ve all seen the commercial. A guy is out for a jog with a banker’s hand jammed into the back pocket of his seventies style short-shorts, picking his pocket during the run. I bet you can even remember the song in your head. “Hands in my pocket” is what Jim Guthrie sings then the announcer […]

4 min read