When Diane Dupuis first entered the insurance business as a financial advisor with Sun Life Financial (Canada) Inc. 35 years ago, she was the only female among approximately 35 advisors in the firm’s Vancouver office.

That year, and with less support than her male counterparts – including being denied the base salary that the other junior advisors received; she got only pure commissions – Dupuis was named Rookie of the Year for her impressive sales.

She went on to launch her own financial planning firm, Richmond, B.C.-based Dupuis Langen Financial Management (1985) Ltd., and she has since joined the ranks of the top-producing advisors who comprise the Million Dollar Round Table’s Top of the Table.

Although Dupuis acknowledges that it’s rare for a woman to achieve the kind of success in the insurance sector that she’s had, she hasn’t spent much time dwelling on the fact that men in the business continue to outnumber women like her by a significant margin.

“I just never thought about the fact that I was one of the only women,” says Dupuis, 57. “If you’re good at what you do, it doesn’t really matter if you’re male or female.”

Although there were few senior women in the insurance sector early in Dupuis’ career, she found male role models to look up to: “I looked at the top people in the industry, and in those days they were men. So, I would model what I was doing after what they did.”

Still, Dupuis, who does not have children, recognizes some of the barriers that can stand in the way of women’s success, such as the long working hours.

“If you look at some of the top men in our industry on the life insurance side, their spouses stay at home,” Dupuis says. “So, they are free to devote their lives to their career. Sometimes, it’s harder for women to do that because of family obligations.”

In addition, Dupuis says, working as an insurance agent requires a thick skin. “It’s not an easy business – you have to be a little tough,” she says. “You’re going to get rejection, and women are brought up to not be rejected.”

In Dupuis’ case, rejection was seldom an issue. Although it probably would have been easy to get discouraged when she was denied the normal training schedule as a junior advisor, for instance, she worked harder to prove that she was just as capable as her male colleagues.

“I just put my head down and worked,” she says. By the end of her first year, she adds, “I was earning more money [in commissions] than I would have on the training schedule.”

Having grown up in an entrepreneurial family, Dupuis had always wanted to start her own business. She did so in 1985, after seven years at Sun Life.

Dupuis Langen Group is divided into three areas: financial planning, estate planning and group benefits, with the last having become Dupuis’ primary focus in recent years. The firm serves more than 800 private clients, as well as 225 corporations on the benefits side.

“We’re growing like crazy,” Dupuis says. “We’ve more than doubled gross revenue in the past couple of years.”

The firm is made up almost entirely of women – only one of the 15 employees is male – and Dupuis says that reflects the fact that many of the strongest job candidates have been women. However, she also takes certain deliberate steps to attract women, such as accommodating those who require flexible hours.

“We are very responsive to women having children,” Dupuis says. “You have to be that way to attract top people.”

Another factor that Dupuis believes helps to attract women is the firm’s commitment to giving back to the community. The firm is in the process of launching a charitable foundation that will be dedicated, in part, to supporting the education of women in Canada.

“I think that’s going to attract even more women to our firm,” Dupuis says, “because we’re just such a supporter of women.”

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