The head of Daystar Financial Group Inc. says his firm’s Calgary office was no longer big enough to handle Daystar’s business in the entire Alberta market. So, it’s expanding to Edmonton.

Rene Pereux, president of the Winnipeg-based managing general agency, says the firm was already servicing independent insurance advisors in the Alberta capital from Daystar’s Calgary office. The MGA determined there was enough business for a second office in the province, which officially opened in the first week of September.

“There’s a tremendous amount of potential in northern Alberta.” he says. “We wanted to have a bigger presence and to have an office there to service what we think is a growing marketplace. There are a lot of agents there and we think our value proposition might be attractive to them.”

Pereux and partner Keith Brown’s pitch resonates with advisors because the two are both successful advisors themselves, Pereux says: “We have our own retail practices, so we really understand advisors. We built a company by independent advisors to add value to independent advisors.” The new outlet will also service advisors in Red Deer, Alta. — the province’s third-biggest city.

Daystar’s services include back-office functions to process advisors’ business; conceptual seminars on tax planning, insurance, practice management and compliance; as well as consulting services with their practices, including succession planning, Pereux says. The latter is particularly crucial considering the average age of its agents is early to mid-50s, he notes.

The Edmonton office brings Daystar’s total offices to six and comes on the heels of its fifth location opening its doors in London, Ont., in June. Its other outlets are in Mississauga, Ont., Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver. More will be in the offing, though, if Pereux has his way.

“We’re looking at a few acquisitions right now,” he says. “We’re close to being done with two of them and they could come on board in the next six to 12 months. We’re in discussions with a Quebec company, too, but whether that will come to fruition, I don’t know. Our expectation is to grow significantly.”

Since launching in June 2002, Daystar now services more than 1,200 independent insurance advisors, up from 900 a year ago, has 35 employees and contracts with 16 different insurance carriers, including Canada Life Assurance Co., Standard Life Assurance Co. of Canada and Empire Life Insurance Co. Pereux estimates that Daystar, which he founded after a 27-year career with Sun Life Financial Inc., is among the top 10 MGAs in the country.

“At the time, I envisioned the future being that single-company representation was not the way to go and insurance companies were going to off-load their distribution capabilities to MGA-type organizations. Luckily, I was right,” he says with a laugh. “It was a risk, but I was prepared to take it.”

Currently, Daystar’s business doesn’t extend beyond the Ontario-Quebec border, but the company is registered in both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick through associate general agency contracts and has been doing some business there during the past year.

Pereux wouldn’t have christened the new Edmonton location if he had been unable to find the right people to run it. In this case, he jumped at the opportunity to partner with Dave Faulkner — best known as the developer of CCH Canadian Ltd. ’s FP Solutions, the leading financial planning software — because of the technological versatility he’ll bring to the Edmonton office’s day-to-day business.

“Dave’s background, and what he brings to the equation, is substantial. It’s a good fit for us,” he says, noting Faulkner is also an equity partner in the office, one of two Daystar locations not to be wholly owned by the company.

Faulkner, a former agent and manager in the insurance industry, has continued to work with CCH as a consultant since selling his software to the company in 2000. In 2005, he launched Financial Plan Advantage, a company that assists advisors in preparing financial plans on a fee-for-service basis. This past January, he rejoined a former business partner, Gordon Malic, at Charter Wealth Management Inc. in St. Albert, Alta., just north of Edmonton. Faulkner says it was a big change for him because he hadn’t dealt with the public for almost a decade.

“The company does tax and estate planning for financial advisors. When I joined, we were looking at possibly forming our own MGA. We had one MGA and one associate general agency contact, but we wanted to go one step bigger,” he says.

@page_break@Rather than start from scratch, Faulkner says, teaming with Daystar was the best option.

“We get to leverage everything it has and it gets to leverage our software design and training,” he says. “As an equity owner and as a partner, we’re able to provide more for the growth of the company and make sure it supports advisors like us the way we would want to be supported.” IE