As part of our coverage of the federal election, Investment Executive is profiling candidates who are working or who have worked in the financial services industry. Here we look at Liberal candidate Lui Temelkovski.

Lui Temelkovski, a 20-year veteran of the Canadian insurance industry, started his career with London Life in September 1984. After 10 years in sales he moved into management, where for the past decade he has been managing, recruiting and training new advisors. Currently, he is director of advisor development with Freedom 55 Financial, a division of London Life Insurance Co., and member of the Markham, Ont. Board of Trade.

The 49-year-old native of Italy has been involved with the Liberal party in the Markham area for more than two decades. “I’ve done everything from licking stamps to being president of the association,” he said in an interview. With his family now grown up, he says running for a seat in Parliament was a natural progression.

His clients in the business are primarily the advisors he trains, but he does keep a core book of 100 clients himself. If he wins his seat in the riding, he says he’ll take a leave of absence from his position at Freedom 55. “I’ve enjoyed the financial services industry immensely,” he says. “It has been a very rewarding career. I’ve met a lot of people and trained a lot of people, many who are still with London Life and many others who’ve gone on to other companies. I’m very proud of that. It gives me a bit of a thrill to see other people succeed.”

Temelkovski says he wanted to give back to the community by running “because it has been good to me and my family over the past 20 years and I wanted to be a role model for the next generation.”

Temelkovski was 13 years old and didn’t speak a word of English when he came to Canada. “My parents brought us to Canada to provide us with an education and opportunity,” he says. “That opportunity still exists in Canada but you have to focus, know what you want to have, and go after it.”

The skills learned during his insurance career have been tremendously helpful, he says, in his campaigning for office. “The No. 1 [skill] is the way you meet people and greet people,” he says. “Having a target, making calls, going through the numbers. It’s a numbers business. My telephone canvassers say there aren’t many people at home. That was the case when I started working for London Life 20 years ago. In order to make your target you need to call more people.”

“It’s well within your control. As long as you have a target and you work towards it, you will obtain it.”

Temelkovski is also an active community volunteer, and a member of the Ontario Advisory Council on Multiculturalism and Citizenship. Temelkovski, his wife Loretta, and their four children, have lived in Markham since 1983.

His opponents in the Oak Ridges-Markham riding are businessman Bob Callow for the Conservative Party and marketing and communications professional Pamela Courtot for the New Democrats.