Faithlife financial, a 35-year-old Waterloo, Ont.-based fraternal benefit society that provides insurance and investments to 30,000 Christian member-owners across Canada, is looking to expand its advisory force to 150 from 60 advisors within the next couple of years, says Dieter Kays, FaithLife’s president and CEO.

“We need to find advisors who not only have the expertise to be able to advise clients well about their financial matters, but who also share Christian values and understand how one lives those values in the financial decisions one makes,” Kays says.

FaithLife Financial, which administers $435 million is assets, was launched in 1972 as the Lutheran Life Insurance Society of Canada and served the Canadian Lutheran community exclusively until 2001. That year, the society began allowing all Canadian Christians to be members. In 2005, the society changed its operating name to FaithLife Financial.

FaithLife is adding approximately 2,000 new members each year, Kays says, and with the expansion into the broader Christian community, the society needed to add advisors.

FaithLife’s advisory force is licensed to sell the organization’s suite of life and critical illness insurance products and its Fortress-branded segregated funds. A company advisor must be a member of a Christian congregation.

Kays believes there’s a hunger for financial advice steeped in Christian teaching: “People want good, solid financial services advice. But, more and more, they are becoming aware that it’s very important that advi-sors have values similar to the people they’re serving.”

Although Kays is careful to point out that the great majority of advi-sors in Canada display solid values and offer good advice, a Christian advisor can offer advice specifically tailored to clients looking to manage their money in harmony with their religious beliefs. “It’s about looking at what God the Creator has blessed you with,” he says, “and thinking about how you can become a good steward over those resources and use them in a way that gives back and makes the world a better place.”

All profits from FaithLife’s operations are returned to the member-owners and their congregations through benefits and support of charitable causes.

In January, FaithLife launched FI Capital, an asset-management subsidiary, and bought Kitchener, Ont.-based T.H.A. Bodnar & Co. Investment Management Ltd. for an undisclosed amount, acquiring almost $100 million in assets under management in the process.

Terry Bodnar, the latter firm’s former owner, became FI Capital’s president and CEO. He also heads FI Capital’s team of four money managers. The subsidiary offers six pooled funds, including two socially responsible investment funds, to institutional clients.

“It became apparent to us that there were congregations and Christian institutions that had endowment funds or investment funds that were self-managing and were not always managed in the best way possible for safety and return,” Kays says. FI Capital will address that. — RUDY MEZZETTA