At a Toronto luncheon of industry leaders held September 30, 2025, the Insurance Portal announced the winners of the inaugural Insurance Vanguard Awards, designed to recognize three agents who elevate the profession through their example.
“For the Insurance Journal Publishing Group, this initiative is a concrete way to celebrate a profession that is essential – yet too often underrecognized in society,” the Insurance Portal’s president and publisher, Serge Therrien wrote in May announcing the awards.
The three agents being honoured in 2025 include Yogi Narayan, winner of the 2025 Rising Star Vanguard Award, Satheeskumar Nagalingam, winner of the 2025 Distinction Vanguard Award and Micheline Varas, winner of the 2025 Lifetime Vanguard Award.
With just three years of experience, Yogi Narayan says her financial experiences early in life, without the right guidance, have led to her drive to ensure that her clients would not be faced with similar challenges alone.
“I saw how proper planning could change the trajectory of a household’s financial future. I realized that life and health insurance, coupled with disciplined investments, are not just products, they are lifelines that protect dreams, preserve dignity and create generational stability,” she says.
Listening deeply to clients
The managing director with WealthyToday.ca, adds that mentorship has been invaluable. Similarly, investing in quality continuing education and obtaining her mortgage agent’s license, she says, gives her the tools to provide high-value advice. “Third, I’ve learned that listening deeply to clients transforms relationships,” she says. “I can design solutions that resonate on a personal level.”
The distinction award winner, Satheeskumar Nagalingam says he is focused deeply on serving newcomers to Canada, “despite industry limitations and a reluctance to issue higher coverage amounts to these segments,” he writes. “I successfully closed 36 individual life insurance policies, most of them modest in premium size, but significant in impact and emotional relief for the clients who previously believed they had no options.”
He adds: “The most powerful insurance is the kind that reaches those who think they’re uninsurable. That takes patience, belief in people and the willingness to serve with heart,” he says. “One key innovation was my shift in mindset, not just to sell, but to plant seeds for intergenerational planning.”
To that end, he says he encourages children to be present at meetings. “Even highschoolers,” he adds, “so the idea of planning, discipline and a healthy lifestyle becomes a family conversation.”
Building trust and loyalty
Referrals are a big source of business for the Desjardins Financial Security chartered life underwriter. “I stay in touch during critical life events – visa updates, applications, pregnancies, new business or bereavements – not to sell, but to offer support,” he concludes. “We’ve built more than a financial plan; we’ve built trust and family-level loyalty.”
Finally, this year’s lifetime award winner, top of the table Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) member and senior partner at Customplan Financial Advisors Inc., Micheline Varas says she’s grown her business by focusing on collaboration with other experts.
Author also of the book, Building, Protecting and Transitioning Wealth: A Canadian Entrepreneur’s Playbook, Varas also says it is necessary to keep learning incessantly to best assist others.
In her early days in the business Varas says she memorized disability insurance contracts, association plans and employee benefits programs, understanding that disabilities could happen and that less than 20 per cent of Canadian advisors dealt in products to meet that need. Later she was able to train and assist advisors in living benefits matters. Later still, working with lawyers, Varas then learned the intricacies of buy-sell and shareholders’ agreements with integrated insurance definitions.
“Because of the relationships built with underwriters and reinsurers, often we can achieve coverage for individuals who may have been otherwise declined,” the highly credentialled and decorated agent writes. “It’s about service.”
