Standing up for advisors

In particular, Owen wants to ensure advisors have a say on a wide range of issues, including fiduciary standards and compensation; he also wants to tackle the insurance sector’s growing regulatory bur-den. “When we look at all the regulators closing in on our business,” he says, “we just want to make sure that Advocis has a voice in how regulatory reforms are going to change our business.”

At 43, Owen is the youngest chairman ever to take the helm of Advocis. But he has probably spent more years being actively involved in the association than many of his colleagues. In fact, Owen has been an enthusiastic member of Advocis since he landed his first job in the financial services industry as an advisor with Canada Life Assurance Co. in 1990, shortly after completing his bachelor of commerce at the University of Saskatchewan.

Owen, upon attending his first Advocis conferences and events, had been impressed by the strong sense of community among Advocis’s members. “They share the goods and the bads of the business,” Owen explains. “They talk about what has worked for them; they love to tell all their secrets.”

Which is a key factor that motivated Owen to get more involved in Advocis — and to stay involved. He joined the board of his local Advocis chapter in Saskatoon (one of 41 chapters across Canada) in 1992 and became president five years later.

Then, Owen, following a year-long stint as president of his chapter (now called the North-Central Saskatchewan chapter), got involved at the national level. He has sat on the chapter advisory council (now the chapter leadership council), which offers training and resources to board members of the local chapters; and, later, the board for the Institute for Advanced Financial Education (formerly known as the CLU Institute) — Advocis’s educational arm.

Owen then joined Advocis’s national board of directors, of which he’s been a member for five years. He became treasurer in 2010 and vice chairman in 2011 before recently being elected as chairman.

One of Owen’s proudest accomplishments since getting involved with Advocis was chairing the organizing committee for its conference in Saskatoon in 2000. Many members thought the small city was the wrong place to host a national conference, but, Owen says, “It was the largest and most profitable event Advocis has ever had.”

As 2012 kicks off, Owen has some ambitious goals on the advocacy front. He wants to elevate Advocis’s profile at the regulatory and government levels in order to give the association a stronger voice. He’s particularly interested in forming closer relationships with federal politicians.

“We’re looking to expand our public relations and media relations,” he says, “to get more exposure in both the [House of] Commons and the Senate so that when specific issues come up, we’re there.”

Similarly, at the regulatory level, Owen wants to ensure advisors are consulted on any new developments. Those on the front lines of the business, Owen points out, are in the best position to offer input on any proposed regulations: “Regulators are always working in the best interest of consumers, but they’re not always doing it effectively. It’s not that I disagree with any of their regulations; it’s just that there’s a lot of redundancy and a lot of costs that go with it.”

These costs, Owen says, are increasingly hurting advisors: “Our independent advisors are getting squeezed out, in a lot of cases, because of the regulatory burden and because of the cost of that regulatory burden.”

Owen wants to ensure this burden doesn’t increase. So, as policy-makers consider regulatory changes — such as the prospect of imposing a fiduciary standard on financial advisors — Owen believes it’s critical for advisors to have a strong voice: “I don’t necessarily think everybody knows what the implications of a ‘fiduciary standard’ really mean. It has a huge implication for the cost of doing business for an advisor.”

Advisors also need to be front and centre in the debate on commissions, Owen says — especially if Canadian policy-makers consider following Britain’s and Australia’s regulators, which recently banned embedded commissions in investment products. The regulators in those countries didn’t spend much time exploring alternative solutions, Owen says, and the unintended consequence has been a drastic decline in the number of advisors. Owen hopes to help Canada’s regulators realize the damage such a policy would cause, not only to the financial services industry but also the public, through reduced access to financial advice.

Another of Owen’s priorities this year is to explore the possibility of mandating professional association membership for advisors. Owen believes consumers, regulators and the industry alike would benefit from a requirement that all advisors belong to some sort of professional association that binds them to a code of ethics. This would add an element of professionalism to the industry, Owen says, and would make it easier for clients to identify and avoid the bad apples.

In Owen’s career as an advisor, he has learned first-hand the extent to which clients trust and depend on their advisors: “We have very personal relationships with our clients. With the economy the way it is, a lot of clients need to have a financial planner, not only to guide them through this kind of thing but also to hold their hand.”

Through Owen’s business at Cherry Financial — for which he’s worked since 1998 — he maintains a diverse roster of 700 to 800 clients of all ages, whom he advises on insurance, retirement and estate planning. Owen has his chartered life underwriter and chartered financial consultant designations; he holds his mutual fund licence through Quadrus Investment Services Ltd.

Outside of work, Owen plays hockey, volunteers as an assistant coach with the University of Saskatchewan’s women’s hockey team and spends time with his wife, Natalie, and their three children. IE