Mark halpern says he’s the best-known insurance advisor in Canada, and he just may be right. His commercials run daily on three of the most listened-to radio stations in the Toronto area, and since the ad campaign began less than two years ago, it has proven enormously successful.

The commercials — and Hal-pern’s company, Illness Protection — focus on critical illness insurance, but the business they attract includes a full range of financial services.

Halpern is perhaps the most convincing example of CI insurance’s power to make an insurance advisor’s practice successful. Thanks in no small part to his CI ad campaign, within a year of launching the radio campaign, Halpern was the top seller of Manulife Financial Corp.’s living benefits products and he was in the top 10 of the firm’s life insurance producers.

Then, in September, he was named Manulife’s No. 1 living benefits and life insurance advisor. (Although Manulife is a preferred supplier, he sells products from a variety of insurers, including Canada Life Ltd., RBC Insurance, Transamerica Life Canada and Empire Life Insurance Co. ) And in October, he attended the Top of the Table annual meeting in Florida, which is an exclusive gathering of the top 1% of insurance advisors in the world.

The key to Halpern’s success is marketing, and the focus of his marketing is CI insurance. But his rise to the upper echelons of insurance sales is fairly recent.

An insurance advisor since 1993, Halpern recalls that for most of that time he was “very successful at being unsuccessful. I wandered in the desert of all the investment and insurance guys, just getting by,” he says from his corner office in a sleek commercial building in Markham, Ont., northeast of Toronto. “Focusing on one area led me to become very successful. That’s the secret of my business. You have to differentiate yourself from every insurance advisor, every investment advisor, every certified financial planner. How do you rise above the crowd? The only way is to become an expert in the area in which you specialize.”

Halpern decided to specialize in living benefits. He was at the World Critical Illness Conference in Victoria in January 2004 when he experienced what he calls “an epiphany.” He became aware of the trends that he decided would shape the future of insurance. First, when baby boomers retire en masse, governments and the health-care system will be unable to look after the elderly, he believes. Second, thanks to medical technology, people are living longer, thus running the risk of outliving their money.

The combination of these two trends is creating a greater need for living benefits.

And the most dramatic living benefits product, in Halpern’s eyes, is CI. “Imagine having a heart attack, or one of two dozen other illnesses. And, within 30 days after a diagnosis, you get a lump-sum cheque — tax-free,” he says. “If you don’t survive the 30 days, or if you die in some other way, your family gets back all the premiums you paid. Or, if you pay a little more, you can get back all your money if you’ve made no claim for 15 years.”

Filled with zeal for the CI product while he was still at the conference, Halpern decided to make CI the focus of his practice: “I realized if I could sell one CI policy a month for 10 months, I’d make $200,000. How difficult could that be? Then I said, ‘Why not sell 10 or 20 a month?’”

When he returned from the conference, he started telling the CI story to clients through his e-newsletter — a tool he still uses to stay in touch with clients and keep his name in their minds for very little cost or effort.

He started cold-calling corporate lawyers, who are generally overworked, stressed and affluent — prime candidates for CI insurance. He told them his CI story and landed appointments in “some of the biggest offices on Bay Street.”

Next, Halpern developed the www.illnessPROTECTION.com Web site, which promotes his services, with a focus on CI, along with testimonials from high-end clients such as top financial executives and chief surgeons.

“After the Web site, we wanted to start telling the story more dramatically,” Halpern adds. In March 2005, he started the radio spots. Narrated by local radio personality Erin Davis and sports broadcaster Gord Stellick, the ads convincingly describe the scenario of becoming ill, then receiving a lump-sum, tax-free cheque. The ads direct listeners to the Web site or to call Halpern for an appointment.

@page_break@Since the ad campaign started, Halpern says, his telephone hasn’t stopped ringing. So much business has been generated that he now sees only high net-worth clients. Others are referred to any of about 35 advisors with whom he has a referral relationship. Even on referred business, he gets 50% of commissions. And because he handles only top clients, he sees only three to six clients a week.

Halpern has also added a public relations firm to his marketing program, which helps him get media exposure. He has appeared on television as a tax and personal finance expert, and was featured in a Canadian Press story that was picked up by 21 newspapers across the country. His annual marketing budget runs to seven figures. But, he says, it’s more than worth it.

“With CI, an advisor can double or triple earnings with no heavy lifting,” he says.

Even though CI is the focus of Halpern’s marketing, it does not make up the bulk of his business. CI accounts for only about 25% of his sales, with life insurance making up the other 75%. But it’s CI that gets clients in the door.

And advisors who neglect to offer their clients CI coverage risk losing them, he says. Time after time, Halpern gets the CI business other advisors have left on the table. “Every potential client I meet has had an investment advisor or an insurance advisor,” he says.

Halpern tells of a lawyer who called him recently to talk about CI just a week after buying $5 million worth of life insurance from another advisor. Halpern got the lawyer to fill out the CI application forms — the CI coverage was from the same insurer that supplied the life policy, so no medical was required — and three weeks later Halpern received a commission cheque for $20,000. “And I didn’t do anything,” he says.

And failure to offer CI to clients might result in a lawsuit, Halpern says. The best way to avoid that — and to make a few hundred thousand dollars, he adds — is to send a letter to all your clients telling them about CI insurance and why they should have it. If they’re not interested, ask them to sign a waiver on the letter and return it. “You’re going to cover yourself from liability and you’re going to make money. You have a reason to talk to people about CI.”

Once CI gets him in the door, Halpern assesses all a client’s financial needs. He compares the process to that of a physician diagnosing an illness: up to 90% of a doctor’s time may be spent on diagnostic work; once the illness is determined, treatment is the relatively easy part.

“In my business, I’m a financial Mayo Clinic,” he says, referring to the U.S.-based health-care institution that places the needs of the patients above all. “I ‘crash test’ the lives of very busy and successful people. I have to kill them, maim them, put them into a retirement home. I have to be the Canada Revenue Agency and show them everything they have, whether they have things in place. If not, I help them make sure their families are financially protected.”

Halpern’s “crash test” takes a top-down approach, looking at issues such as wills, powers of attorney, beneficiary designations, insurance needs, mortgage financing, retirement planning and planned charitable giving. “Basically, I disturb people,” he says. “My job is to take them through a process they have never been through with anyone before. At the end of the meeting, they can tell I can help them because I haven’t sold them anything.”

Halpern acts as “the hub of a wheel,” referring each client’s specialized business to a professional. His referral network includes tax and estate lawyers, mortgage specialists and investment advisors.

He runs a lean operation: himself; his brother, Phil, who is director of marketing; his assistant, Donna Eldridge; and a receptionist. “Some people can’t believe how much I make compared with themselves, and they have a staff of 14,” he says.

Halpern, who holds a CFP, is passionate about his product, but he’s not a stereotypical super-salesman. He has a gentle, likeable manner that puts people at ease. He speaks with a soft-spoken confidence that’s not intimidating.

Halpern, 44, has a personal connection to insurance — or, more accurately, to a lack of insurance. Born in Ottawa, the youngest of four boys, he lost his father to a heart attack when Halpern was just 11. His father, a government-employed civil engineer, had no life insurance, no will and relatively few savings. Halpern’s mother was forced to find a job to support the family. “I know what it’s like to grow up in a difficult situation,” he says. “Now I can help people protect their families.”

The family moved to Toronto in 1966, where Halpern eventually attended York University. An Orthodox Jew, he has taken time off work to attend university in Israel on two occasions.

He and his wife, Rhonda, have five children, two boys and three girls, ranging in age from 18 months to 10 years. An avid volunteer, he is a Jewish chaplain at a local hospital and a marriage coach. He sits on the board of three community organizations.

Halpern’s next step is to expand: “We’ve built a brand, and we’re launching it across the country.”

Illness Protection’s radio spots will soon air in major cities from Vancouver to Halifax, with advisors in the relevant cities handling the business. IE