It was July 2005 when Bob Fleischacker found out he had colon cancer. “It was right out of left field,” says the 56-year-old certified financial planner with Stonehaven Financial Group Inc., an affiliate of DundeeWealth Inc., in Markham, Ont. Within two weeks, he was on the operating table.

Jane Baker, 52, registered financial planner and CFP with PWL Capital Inc. in Toronto, didn’t get even two weeks. Baker was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2006. Because ovarian cancer has only vague symptoms and there is no test to detect the disease in its early stages, it is often discovered only in late stages.

“Suddenly, I was ill,” Baker says. She had to stop work immediately.

The onset of a critical illness can jeopardize not only your life but also the practice you have worked hard to build, affecting your income. And it puts your clients’ financial well-being at risk, as well. But illnesses and accidents send out no engraved invitations. And as Fleischacker and Baker can attest, it is not something that happens just to other people; the statistics — and the aging of the advisory population — means there are increasing odds that this can happen to you.

So, what are you doing to prepare? Who will contact your clients? Who will take over your responsibilities? How will the change affect the day-to-day operations of your office?

Every advisor should be able to answer those questions, says Rob O’Keefe, senior vice president with Investors Group Inc. in Winnipeg. Every advisor should have a succession plan that includes dealing with extended but temporary absences. After all, when a key member of a financial advisory team is taken out of the picture — with little or no warning and for a prolonged period — it can throw the business into turmoil.

But some advisors just never seem to get around to it, says O’Keefe, who has been in the business for 28 years. He recalls that, years ago, when he was a branch manager, he repeatedly encouraged a long-time advisor to develop a succession plan, but to no avail. The advisor developed Lyme disease and was incapacitated for two years. The advisor worked in a remote area so O’Keefe had difficulty finding an appropriate replacement.

“If we had faced up to it earlier,” says O’Keefe, “it wouldn’t have been such a panic.”

Confronting a serious illness or disability is trying enough, physically and emotionally. But there are steps you can take to minimize the disruption to your business should you suddenly be required to take an extended leave.



> Start Planning Now.

“You don’t have time to start planning once you have a diagnosis,” says Baker. “You’ll need to focus all your energy on your health, coping with the situation at hand.”

Investors Group recommends all its advisors create a succession plan and revisit it each year with their branch managers; an important part of this succession planning is preparing for an unexpected leave of absence. It doesn’t have to be formal, O’Keefe says — just a clear idea of what each advisor envisions would happen to his or her practice should an emergency arise.

Fortunately for Baker, she was able to focus on her health and treatment without jeopardizing her business, thanks to some changes she had made three years earlier.

Up until 2003, Baker had worked independently. But, responding to the concerns of her clients, who wondered how their affairs would be handled if something were to happen to her, she decided to join a larger organization that could provide backup.

Baker paired up with Kathy Clough, a colleague with a similar financial planning background and philosophy, and opened the Toronto office of Montreal-based PWL, with the idea that each could serve as a backup to the other. Having a colleague that could readily step into Baker’s role gave her great comfort when she became ill.

“If I hadn’t had a plan in place, I would have been a basket case,” she says. “I don’t know that I would have had such good results from the treatment plan.”

Another auspicious move: in 2005, Baker topped up her disability coverage, which provided her with income while she took the time to focus on healing.

Likewise, for Fleischacker, who is also a registered health underwriter and a chartered life underwriter, most of his planning had been done several years earlier. That’s when he and his partner, Scott Harris, decided to shift their business from the more traditional sales approach to a fee-based advice model.

@page_break@“It turned out to be very fortuitous,” Fleischacker says of the transition. Charging fees for planning meant that the team, which also includes operations manager Sherri McArdle, two other advisors and three support staff, was “more accountable to clients,” he says. They kept highly detailed client files that specified, among many other things, when each client was due to be contacted. Plus, the staff was taking a team approach to serving clients.

“It’s very rare that Scott’s eyes haven’t fallen on my clients’ files and my eyes haven’t seen his files,” Fleischacker says.

The partners also created a succession strategy, which included topping up their business overhead and critical illness and disability insurance plans. “That’s a function of us taking our own advice,” Fleischacker says.

Fleischacker took a year off work. While he was away, there was a drop in business. Very little proactive work was done for his clients during that time and he didn’t pick up any new clients. But, if averaged over a five-year span, the dip would barely register, he says: “In hindsight, it turns out we had things organized extremely well.”



> A Trial Run.

One way to see how the office would run without you is to take a vacation during which no contact with the office is allowed.

Take the team through an exercise in which everyone must pretend the advi-sor has been hit by a truck and is in a coma, suggests Grant Robinson, a chartered accountant and director of the SuccessCare Program, a coaching firm that specializes in succession planning in Guelph, Ont. Provide no direction at first, Robinson recommends, and see what stumps the staff. It could be something as simple but important as who’s going to sign payroll cheques this week.

The process, which takes between a half-day and a day, should result in a written contingency plan that covers both shorter and longer absences and specifies what each staff member does in order to cover the absent advisor’s responsibilities.

“It’s like an insurance policy,” Robinson says. “There’s always time.”

Baker says it’s crucial that you let all team members know there is a succession plan in place. If a crisis does occur, staff members will be better equipped emotionally to face the challenges.

Both Fleischacker and Baker had strong teams — partners and support staff — to take care of their clients while they were away. Not every advisor is so fortunate. If you don’t work in a multi-advisor office, you should still be able to arrange some sort of solution that doesn’t depend on you being constantly available to your clients.

If you have no one to whom you can delegate your business — for a four-week vacation, for instance — it’s time to get the word out and find someone you can trust, says Dan Richards, president of Toronto-based Strategic Imperatives Ltd. If you’re not yet ready to partner full-time with another advisor, he suggests you approach advisors who are in the process of phasing out their businesses and are heading toward retirement. These are capable advisors who will serve your clients appropriately, without any desire to take them on permanently.



> Seek Out Support.

The shock of discovering that you have no choice but to deal with a serious illness can be overwhelming. Speaking to someone who has dealt with the issues surrounding sick leave — such as when it’s right to return to work, how to deal with insurance companies and how to ensure that the business survives — can be a great help.

Baker found it helpful to seek advice and insight from advisors who had had similar experiences. One advisor she called was Janet Freedman, a fee-only planner with Finance Matters in Toronto. In 2000, Freedman, now 59, missed a step and broke her neck — in the middle of tax season, no less.

“I had no time to prepare,” Freedman says.

Freedman regularly counsels clients and acquaintances facing this situation and has co-authored a book, Hit by an Iceberg: Coping with disability mid-career.

Some professionals identify very strongly with their work and have a difficult time imagining themselves away from it, says Maureen Parkinson, a vocational rehabilitation counsellor with theB.C. Cancer Agency in Vancouver. “For some,” she says, “it can be a sense of loss to step away.”

In fact, some doctors recommend their patients remain involved in their work as much as possible; it keeps them focused on the future and the proverbial “light at the end of the tunnel.”

Parkinson recommends that newly diagnosed advisors have candid conversations with their medical teams about their situation so that they can plan as realistically as possible. This can also open up the door to other treatments that might help.

“It’s important to be proactive and take ownership of your wellness,” Parkinson says. “Reaching out for help is not a weakness; it’s actually being resourceful.”



> Keep Clients And The Team Informed.

Being forthright with your clients is essential when facing the prospect of an extended leave, says Richards. Because there are so many unknowns when it comes to sick leave — most significant, how much time you will be away — informing your clients can alleviate their concerns that their needs may be neglected.

Baker sent group e-mails to her clients periodically to keep her clients up to speed, updating them at each stage of her treatment. Her partner, Clough, followed up with phone calls after the first e-mail to reassure clients further. “I’ve always been very strong on communication, and there was no reason to keep clients in the dark about [her illness],” Baker says. “They needed to know that they were going to be taken care of.”

Fleischacker took a similar approach. He had his business partner compose and send e-mails on a regular basis. “One of the things that served us well is that we were so open with our clients,” he says. “People were very appreciative that we were able to do it.”

In fact, the outpouring of concern was so great that the Stonehaven team had to put the brakes on the ensuing fruit baskets and flowers clients wanted to send. The team asked clients who felt compelled to give something to make a modest donation to Ronald McDonald House instead.

In addition, Fleischacker and his team informed the firm’s primary suppliers of the situation. “It was a wise thing to do,” he says; it would explain any lower than usual sales or slower response times.

Even if you have a plan, you may have to make some changes to the way your team is compensated while you’re away. Baker and her partner agreed to adjust their compensation model to reflect the higher demands her absence placed on others in the office, particularly in the first three months. To account for the additional workload, Baker’s and Clough’s assistants were each given a raise.



> Returning To Work.

If there’s one piece of advice Freedman would give to those who need to take sick leave, it is: “Don’t go back too soon.”

There’s always pressure to return to work — from insurance companies, employers and team members. Even your “inner voice” may express guilt about saddling others with your tasks. But you serve no one by going back too early, Freedman says. A good indicator that it’s time to return to work, she says, is when you’re bored.

“If I had a gun to my head, I probably could have gone back even while on radiation,” Fleischacker says. “But I would not have been effective and I couldn’t have focused on recovery.”

Instead, he took the time to start slowly and ramp up his workload gradually to pre-diagnosis levels.

Research indicates that returning to work too soon can indeed be detrimental to recovery, says Parkinson. But a longer leave is not always best, she adds: “In my experience, it’s a delicate balance. Sometimes, the longer you’re out, the harder it is to come back.” She has seen people become overly anxious about returning to work, overcome by a fear that they are going to fail.

So-called “Type A” personalities can have a particularly difficult time with their return to work after an extended illness, Parkinson says: “They have that personality that’s very achievement-oriented and if they’re not achieving the success that they’re used to, that can be very hard.”

These advisors might feel pressure to hit the ground running and do everything they could do before the diagnosis, and at the same pace. She recommends advisors lower the bar a bit initially: “Don’t expect yourself to be at the same level as you were before you became ill.”

When Baker was ready to return, she eased into work while building up her energy level. She started working three mornings a week and gradually expanded to five partial days.

Although Freedman’s accident occurred eight years ago, she’s still not working as intensively as she used to. In fact, she says, her work habits are probably what got her into trouble in the first place. Her accident forced her to reflect on her life and the role work plays in it.

“You really have to look at ‘How do I want my life to look? What is important to me?’” she says. “‘And do I really want to be working 60 to 80 hours a week?’” IE