Offering informed advice on new products is a good way to demonstrate your value to existing and prospective clients. The new registered disability savings plan may be just the ticket. With a limited number of bank employees qualified to sell them and a scarcity of expertise on the accounts, a knowledge of RDSPs could be the edge that differentiates you from other advisors.

Although most advisors in Canada are unable to sell RDSPs directly, you can still recommend certain clients look into the viability of the product for their disabled family members.

RDSPs are available nationally from three Canadian financial institutions, none of which offers them through the third-party advisor channel. Royal Bank of Canada offers RDSPs through RBC advisors. At Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Bank of Montreal, the accounts are available exclusively over the telephone.

“The RDSP is the most complex registered product available,” says David Sharone, product manager at BMO Mutual Funds.

The limited number of knowledgeable sales representatives has left RDSP-eligible Canadians with a lack of information on a complicated product.

“They’re having difficulties managing through the minutia of all the rules,” says Dennis Mullins, a financial advisor in the Burlington, Ont. office of St. Catharines, Ont.-based Y.I.S. Financial Inc.

Furthermore, the individual circumstances among families that are potentially eligible for RDSPs are widely diverse, creating especially high demand for personalized advice.

This has created an opportunity for advisors who could help clients understand the product and determine how it fits into their overall financial plans.

Mullins has been educating clients and other community members on the new savings plan. As the father of a son with a disability, Mullins is familiar with the RDSP and the limited availability of information.

His efforts have brought a slew of inquiries from prospective clients. Should the RDSP eventually be available through third-party advisors, Mullins will be well prepared to add RDSPs to his product shelf. The Planned Lifetime Advocacy Network — the non-profit organization that originally proposed and lobbied for the RDSP — estimates that it will be available from up to 16 financial institutions across Canada in the next year.

The market for RDSPs may seem slim compared with that of RRSPs, but PLAN says as many as 500,000 families could be eligible. And for those families, the plan would probably be a significant part of their overall financial plans. “RDSPs are something very near and dear to many Canadians,” Sharone says.

Since the product became available last year, demand has been robust. BMO, which began selling RDSPs last December, receives roughly 300 applications per day, and has now opened more than 4,000 RDSP accounts.

Information on RDSPs is available online through the Canada Revenue Agency (www.cra-arc.gc.ca), and PLAN (www.rdsp.com). — MEGAN HARMAN