At the start of July, the Financial Advisor’s Association of Canada, also known as Advocis, announced that Arun Channan will chair the association’s national board of directors in the coming two-year term.
Not an advisor himself, Channan is still well-known in Advocis circles, having served as president of the Simcoe-Muskoka chapter, as advocacy liaison for the Ontario Central region and most recently as director at large for the national board of directors.
Channan is also a management consultant with Myndwerx. The engineer by training has, for 30 years now, been working with advisors, managing general agencies (MGAs), carriers, wealth businesses and the businesses that surround them, to develop strategy, operations and leadership support, succession planning discussions and client service efforts. “My main focus is helping them get closer to their ideal clients,” Channan told the Insurance Portal in a discussion about his recently assumed role as chair of the national board.
“Financial advisors and financial planners are working in an increasingly complex regulatory and business environment. Advocis has an important role to play on their behalf,” he noted in the announcement about the new board’s recent elections.
Association’s priorities
Among the association’s priorities going forward, Advocis’ release says it will continue working to strengthen advocacy, member experience, as well as continue the work needed to champion the profession. Channan himself says he wants to build on the progress made by previous boards, keeping the organization focused on strong advocacy. Developing practical education and building strong chapters are also on his list of priorities.
“All three are what our members want,” he says. “I’d also like to see the profession become more professional.” To that end, he says advisors should be making an effort to obtain their credentials and as much education as they can. Some provinces have title protection which requires professionals in the space to obtain proper credentials prior to calling themselves a financial planner or advisor. Channan would like to see this spread across all other provinces.
He also notes the need for useful and practical education, noting the artificial intelligence (AI) “freight train” coming for advisors as one example of where good education is needed. “I’d like to see education they can walk away with and start implementing right away,” he adds.
Regarding AI, he notes that the association doesn’t have a position on it yet. “But we do know that it’s going to become part of our business and it’s going to become part of our members’ businesses,” he says, calling it an opportunity for both education and better systems for advisors.
“It’s a great opportunity because we can help them recover more time. (With) more time, they have a better, more rounded life. We want to provide them with the practical education on using technology responsibly and effectively,” he says.
Also on the list of priorities is to engage more firms and advisors to grow Advocis’ membership, while also developing partnerships “to deliver steady, visible progress for members,” he says. Although he holds those details close to his chest, it is noted that some of those partnerships will likely be related to member programming.
Key files for the association include MGA rules, title protection, trailing commissions, advisor incorporation and regulatory harmonization across the country. Challenges the association and its members face include complex regulation and technology that he says is coming at advisors “uber fast,” while the industry also struggles to bring new candidates to the profession.
On regulation
Being at the table with regulators and governments as they make changes affecting the industry is one of the reasons Advocis exists, Channan says. He adds that this role will continue, describing it as “credible advocacy.”
“We’re still at the table with the regulators. We still want to be at the table with them. They value our input. I’d like to see that continue,” he says.
The challenge includes working with regulators across all provinces and territories to advocate for regulation that is proportionate, practical and consistent, without being an undue burden on advisors. “We also want to help regulators understand how policy operates on practical matters, with evidence from our working advisors. We’re lucky that we have a ton of volunteers.”
Strong chapters
He adds that he is proud of Advocis’ membership which is very active with local and provincial leaders.
To serve that membership, a continued focus on creating strong chapters is also ongoing. In recent years, he says enhanced governance, financial discipline and new bylaws, which were ratified in June by the association’s members, are part of that effort. Channan says the organization today is getting better information than it was in the past, thanks to a reorganization effort which has been underway.
“The chapters work relatively independently under our guidance. But we want to give them better governance. We want to give them better controls on their finances,” he explains. “Each chapter runs with its own board of directors but under guidance from national. We want to strengthen that governance piece.” Currently he says there are 26 Advocis chapters, including 26 different boards of directors. “People do things differently, even though there are guidelines in place. We want to make sure that we’re consistent across the country.”
He adds that, importantly, members report being happy with the changes they’re seeing.
“We continue to earn members’ confidence,” he says. “I want to focus on work that’s making a practical difference for advisors.”
