The Wealthy Barber Podcast - #42 — Jason Watt: The Financial Advice Landscape in Canada

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

Our guest this episode is Jason Watt — a Canadian financial education leader and long-time contributor to the professional training and development of financial planners, advisors, and insurance professionals across the country. Jason has spent years helping shape how financial advice is taught in Canada, including previously serving as the lead instructor at Business Career College, where he developed curriculum and continuing education for industry professionals. In this conversation, Dave and Jason explore the financial advice landscape in Canada — from the differences between financial planners and advisors to which credentials actually matter and what it truly means to act as a fiduciary. They dig into how the CFP program has evolved, the pros and cons of advice-only planning, why the middle market is so underserved, and how revenue models shape client outcomes. Jason also shares his thoughts on broken insurance licensing, commission conflicts, specialization in planning and why communication and psychology are becoming just as important as technical expertise. If you’ve ever wondered how financial advice really works in Canada (or where it needs to go next!) this episode is packed with thoughtful insights, practical perspectives and reasons for optimism about the future of the profession.   Show Notes (00:00) Intro & Disclaimer (00:55) Intro to Jason Watt (03:14) Pro Bono Financial Planning (04:27) Jason’s Background with Business Career College (05:53) What is a Financial Planner vs. a Financial Advisor? (08:47) What Credentials Actually Matter for Financial Advisors? (10:52) What Does it Mean to Be a Fiduciary? (12:46) How the CFP Program Has Evolved (16:36) Different Revenue Models for Financial Advice (18:49) Why the Middle Market is Underserved in Canada (21:00) Advice-Only Planning: Strengths and Weaknesses (23:29) Specialization and Niches in Financial Planning (24:22) Financial Advisors are Focusing More on Communication and Psychology (26:06) Why Insurance Licensing is Broken in Canada (31:28) The Commission Conflict in Insurance Sales (32:53) An Idea to Redesign Licensing: Certify by Complexity (Not Products) (34:56) Cross-Border Financial Planning Gets Complicated Fast (37:39) The Updated “The Wealthy Barber” (39:33) Canada Has Some Great Financial Educators (42:17) Should You Commute a Pension or Leave It? (44:01) Reasons for Optimism in the Financial Advice Industry in Canada (48:31) Gambling Worries  (49:57) Housing Affordability and Expectations (51:43) Conclusion

Hey, it's Dave Chilten, the wealthy barber and former Dragon on Dragon Stent. Welcome to the Wealthy Barber podcast. Well, we'll be hosting some of the top minds in the world of personal finance. Yes, that's to balance me out. The podcast is about making the subject not just easy to understand, but dare I say, even fun, honest. Whether you're trying to fund your retirement, figure out how to build a down payment, save for your kids' education, manage debts, whatever, will be here to help you. You do it. Before we jump in, a quick but important note, nothing we discuss here should be taken as

investment advice. We don't know you and your personal financial situation. So we're not here to tell you we're specifically to put your investment dollars. We're here to educate, get you thinking, and we hope entertain. But please do your own research and or consult with your financial advisor before taking any action. Hey, it's Dave Chilton, the wealthy barber, with the wealthy barber podcast. Again, I say this every week, but thank you so much for tuning. in, the momentum is growing. We're getting so much feedback around the podcast. It's crazy. And from all quarters, it seems like it has a strong mass appeal. So it's been a lot of fun. And frankly, we owe it all to our guests. We've had the best guests in the country on week

after week. And today we are living up to that to the nth degree with Jason Watt. I am quite excited about this, to be perfectly honest. I was the one who said, we got to get this guy in the show. I said it months ago, we finally made it happen. He's one of the. the foremost experts on personal finance in the country. He's well spoken. He's outspoken. He's got a great way to comment a number of subjects. If you look at all the great guests we've had on this show over the last year, I'll bet you 75% of them have said to us, you got to get Jason on the show. Like everybody has said, you need to have his expertise on. So we're thrilled. He's also our third, very intelligent Jason. There's a pattern here with Jason Pereira, Jason He, Jason Wat. I don't

what it is about the world of personal finance, but welcome to the show. It's a real treat to be here, Dave. I'm honored by the invite. I've been listening to every episode along the way. So many great guests so far, and I feel, honestly, some pressure to too well by your guests here. Well, you'll live up to it. Honestly, you're one of my favorites in the whole industry. As you know, I followed you on Twitter slash X over the years. And I love your commentary. I find you have a very good balance where you're outspoken, but you're not unfair. And so, you're you're, you're You're not afraid to call people out, but I never find you going to the hyperbole or being overly critical. It's always accurate.

I do try to pull the facts in. If I'm going to disagree with somebody, I think it's important that you have some facts there and give that person a chance to express their position as well. Twitter, even LinkedIn, you see where people say things. And they don't really have the room to maybe fully express themselves. And sometimes that's all people need. No, you do a very good job of that. Now, I want to just pump you up a little more before we start. Your background's really interesting.

You're in the Canadian military for years. You've served overseas and done a wonderful job there. Thank you for your service, obviously, from all of us. And on the other end, you also are very involved in your community, helping out people who have less money. In fact, you've looked at trying to establish a pro bono financial planning thrust out in the community. Tell us a little bit about that before we start with the financial planning.

Yeah, this is actually one of my favorite initiatives. that I'm involved in, and it's come a long way. When I started down this path, which was about 2015-16, there was a few kind of regional initiatives happening here and there. Really, just in the last couple years, so the Financial Planning Association of Canada, where I'm an active volunteer and big supporter, they were working at getting something in place,

and there was some efforts there, some success there, but really over the summer, it's just the summer of 2025, the Canadian Foundation for Financial Planning rolled out what looks to me to be an effective matchmaking service between those in need of pro bono financial planning, kind of vulnerable populations, that kind of thing, and qualified financial planners. I'm really excited to see where that's landed. No, that's a fantastic initiative. And good for you. You've spearheaded a lot of that. And again, done it all with no charge, just trying to give back to the community. And I give

you a lot of credit. Now, for our listeners, it's key to establish what Jason did and how he got this big brand power and how everybody came to know him in the industry. He ran the business career college, which is an institution that teaches financial planning to future practitioners. So they go there to take their CFP, for example, and he was the lead instructor. In fact, you developed a lot of the course curriculum for the various courses as well. In the prior iteration of the course before FP Canada has brought everything in-house. So now, if you're doing your CFP, you're either doing it as part of a degree program or a post-secondary or the majority of people would be doing it directly through FP Canada.

But before that, right, at business career college, there was a full curriculum. And I authored 95% of that. That was a big undertaking and did it on evenings and weekend while I was running a business. Like a lot of work is done by entrepreneurs, right? And I know I'm really building you up. I promise this is the last time I'm going to embarrass you. But obviously over the years, I've crossed paths with a lot of your students. And, I mean, they have spoken so highly of you as an instructor,

but also your passion for trying to help people to help others. Let's make sure the people out in the industry are doing the best job they possibly get. So again, it sounds corny, but almost a thank you from everybody out there because you've really had a positive influence on not just the advisors, but therefore by extension of their clients. Okay, let's start right here. The question, I'm asked all the time. And frankly, we don't do a good job of community.

about what is a financial planner and what's a difference between a financial planner and a financial advisor? That's a big question, Dave. So to my mind, now there was, there's some attempts to find this in regulation with title protection in Ontario, which I know you're well aware of. To my mind, a financial planner would be somebody who looks at your entire picture. They really try to get a handle on who is sitting across from them, on what's important to that person. And before they do any sort of product work, they really understand what it is that's going to make a difference in that person's life as far as their financial outcomes. And to my mind, that's that mindset that separates a financial planner from, I think, a financial advisor where the financial advisor might be more product focused. I agree. Okay. Can anybody call him or herself a financial planner?

This is a pretty big question, too. right now in Ontario, this is going to be true for a very brief period of time still until the middle of 2026. If you were previously, I think prior to 2022, I'm going to get the dates a little bit off here, but there was a bit of a grandfathering period where if you previously held out as a financial planner, then you can still be doing so without having any sort of certification or designation or anything like that. But that ends in the middle of this year. Now, in other provinces, so I'm in Alberta, and there's absolutely no stopping anybody from calling themselves a financial planner in other provinces. Saskatchewan and New Brunswick are following Ontario with title protection legislation, so they'll have limitations as well.

But as of today in Alberta, anybody can call themselves a financial planner fairly soon in Ontario, you will have to have a financial planning education designation, certification in order to hold out as a financial planner. What's the upside in the minds of the other provincial regulators to not jumping on that? I mean, I would be all over that. I think the challenge here is that the Ontario regulations are a little bit troublesome. It's always difficult to define this. And when you asked me, I said it's a mindset, right? So it's really tricky to legislate a mindset.

And instead, what Ontario has gone with is just the title. So they've said, we're going to protect the title. And in other provinces, I think there's some hesitation there where they would prefer to, and Quebec does this. Quebec legislates around the business. So what's the actual activity? What are you charging for? That kind of thing. A little bit of that in Quebec.

I think that maybe it's a bit of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, Dave. I agree with that. No, and I loved your definition, by the way, of a financial planner. I think that was spot on as to what it should be. So the public's out there, they're looking for financial planning advice, they're looking for investment advice. What designations really carry some oomph in your mind that you really, if you were looking, what would you want to see? The big two. So on the financial planning side, really the CFP to me is the table stakes.

Now, one of the challenges with CFP is that a new planner can't get it. There has to be some level of experience. So if you have a degree, you have to have also three years of industry experience. So if you're dealing with somebody who's a little bit newer, and you had actually a past guest on Aravind who had only recently completed his CFP, he knocked out that three years, wrote the exam, all that good stuff. But prior to hitting his three years, Aravind still would have been an amazing financial planner for somebody to deal with. So CFP on that side. And then the more advanced version of that would be the RFP, the registered financial planner. and you've had a few RFPs on.

I'm thinking of Aaron Hector and Jason Pereira in particular here. And that one brings with it now. Really, Aaron leans into this quite a bit, but the fiduciary obligation that comes with, it's not necessarily as clear for other financial planning professionals in Canada. And then the other big designation that I think carries a ton of weight is the chartered financial analyst, the CFA. Yeah, I speak for a lot of the CFA society.

It's not always joke with them. You had three years of very tough courses to learn you can't be at an index fund. And they always got to roll their eyes. I think they're sick of that joke. Anyway, but it is a good designation. It covers a tremendous amount of material in an in-depth way, too. That's a tough course. If you get through those three years, you've learned a lot.

It is really, and I actually, funny, I was at a conference for an unrelated industry last week and ran into a lady who has a PhD in biomedical engineering. And then she did her as CFA just for fun. And I thought, if I'm ever questioning whether, yeah, whether I'm the brightest guy in the room, there is no doubt that I am not in a room like that. It's, yeah, incredible. Now, you use the word fiduciary and we don't have a good understanding, the general public. What does that mean? Right.

So I'm not a lawyer and I'm sure you could find a lawyer to come on and give a much better definition. But roundly, the fiduciary role means that I'm supposed to put the interests of the person sitting across from me ahead of. my own interests. I think that seems obvious on its face, but then when we look at what's actually involved in fulfilling a fiduciary obligation, it's actually quite a bit. It's not something to be taken lightly. But what if you don't? Like who's making the judgment call whether you did or didn't? And if you don't, what are the repercussions? In Canada today, there's not really a lot to say to a financial planner, financial analyst or financial advisor who doesn't fulfill their fiduciary obligation. really the way that this is going to get settled is when the client feels that harm was done to them,

then they would go to court and they would sue and their lawyer would be working to demonstrate that the advisor, the person delivering advice, was in fact a fiduciary. And that's kind of the first challenge here. And you'll see this kind of goes back and forth. Was this person actually in a fiduciary role? And a lot of times, again, the client's lawyer is saying they're making the argument, that person was a fiduciary, and the person on the other side is saying, no, they weren't. And, you know, there was actually a pretty interesting case that came through the Alberta Insurance Council

just this last year, I guess, in 2025, where the insurance counsel suggested that the agent, in a disciplinary report, that the agent in question had a fiduciary obligation. And I thought that was interesting because I have not seen any argument for this. No, definitely not in the insurance end of things. We'll get to that in a few moments. So that's very interesting. Okay, on this CFP front, my argument is that it's come a long way in the last 40 and 50 years. When the course first came out, I wasn't that impressed by it, to be perfectly honest.

And then over the years, it kept getting a little better, took some big leaps occasionally. You were very involved in a lot of that. Obviously, my argument to the basic public knowledge, that's a very good course. And no course can be perfect. And as you say, it all comes down to here's the tools. tower they used by the practitioner, the person who gets the designation. But do you not agree that that's now a strong, strong course? I absolutely do. I would give a ton of credit to FP Canada for really having incremental improvement. And even your comment about how the CFP was a little bit

weak in its early days, it was, I think, still a wise move. They did this thing in 1997, 98, where they grandfathered a bunch of people in. And you did get a swath of people who maybe, if we'd applied a little more rigor, may not have qualified, but they really created a critical mass and made the CFP a thing in Canada. No, I agree. What about the continuing education? Do you think it's strong and where it should be? Yeah, this is a tricky question.

And you might know in the past I did a lot of continuing education work for financial planners. Well, I'm going to cut you. I'll tell your audience, you did something very cool. You did continuing education via podcast. I really thought it was the right way to do it, because it let you do it as an annual undertaking, we did an episode every two weeks, so there was always new content there. It was always topical. FP Canada was really good about helping us get it approved in a timely fashion, had a range of guests on.

I was really proud of it. And it was really this idea that while you're commuting, you could sort of, for sure, learn something. That was always my priority, Dave, is that episodes had to be educated. So you will learn something and knock out your CE credits. What I find is a big challenge here. And this is not just with CFP CE credits. This is the CE credit universe is that people view them largely as a compliance or regulatory obligation and crazy things like December 30th, people emailing saying, where do I find 15 credits over the next two days? So, and I don't know what I would do if I was the regulator here.

It would be absolutely beautiful if all CE was really educational and if it was all educational in the way that matched what your clients needed. But I would say probably 95% of CE credits taken in this country today are done where the person just says, look, I need a credit. Right. Well, do they have to write exams or anything on the materials they take or is this more or less you take it and there's a trust factor here that you've learned it while you took it? There is a bit of variability depending on exactly.

how you're attending and what regulator we're talking about. For the most part, if you go to a live session, so if I went to the Institute of Advanced Financial Planners Conference, for example, which I'll be at in Winnipeg in September, if you go to that IAPFP conference, then you just attend no exam required. You check in, check out. Somebody knows you've been there. But if you do, usually if you do asynchronous, if you do like a podcast,

there usually is a quiz that has to be done afterwards. And some regulators would say you need five questions, some 10 questions, that kind of thing. And what we did is for that podcast, the questions were based on, did you pay attention? So I tried to avoid things you could Google that it would be more like what did Dave say was his favorite football team, for example. That actually makes a lot of sense to me, although everybody already knows that when he listens to the podcast. It's all, yeah, but I get what you're saying, though. Yeah, I was just going to say, I could actually Google that probably and figure it out. So, yeah.

Okay. Now, this next question is going to become a clip for sure. It's one of the questions we are most off that asked, and I think you're the perfect guy to walk our audience through. What are the different revenue models, financial planning models for the firms, for the individuals you see out there? You were good enough to warn me that you were going to ask me this question. And I really thought through how to present this. And I think the right way to think about this is on a grid. We imagine an X and Y axis, and I know every compelling answer has an X and Y axis in it, Dave. But we can think about the licensing that somebody carries. So are you licensed to sell securities?

Are you licensed to sell insurance? Are you certified as a financial planner? So what's the licensing that person has? And then we can draw on our other axis, how does that person get compensated? And the compensation models, there's a lot out here, actually, as I was working through this, I knew there was a lot. So you can do straight commission based. The history of this industry is largely just straight commission based, but a lot of people have moved away from that. You've had a couple advice only planners on the podcast. So you could be an advice only planner and you could charge hourly or you could charge for a project or you could do a retainer basis or a subscription basis. so many ways to do advice only. But we see lots of folks, and you've had a few of these on, where they're charging fees for assets under management or assets under administration.

We can have referral models here, lots of advice only planners or maybe advice-based planners. I'm not sure what the right framing is here. We'll also do referral arrangements with a portfolio management shop, for example. And there are other referral arrangements, some kind of, I don't know, Some stuff that I think you know I'm not necessarily a huge fan of on the exempt market side with referral arrangements. So I think that the two questions to ask, if you're trying to figure out what business model somebody fits in, are what licenses and certifications do you carry? And then how do you get compensated for doing that work?

You describe the assets under management model. In the states, that's, of course, become the big one. And you're seeing it growing over. I always called it the Carolina model just because it's. started there where a lot of the firms went that route. And then for the well to do, it can be quite a good deal because they're often paying 60, 70, 80 basis points a year and they're getting very, very solid financial advice, not just investment advice, but tax planning, estate planning, insurance needs analysis and so on and so forth. But they don't tend to deal with middle

Canada, lower Canada. They want the asset number to be pretty high. That's not available to most of our listeners. A lot of AUM shops are going to have a minimum of 500. $100,000 or a million dollars or sometimes more than that. Right. And it does, you're right, eliminate that middle market. Now, I do find some people in that space will still find ways to serve the middle market. There's some acknowledgement that take on a client today and five or 10 years from now they can become profitable. So you do see some of that.

But yeah, that challenge of how does that middle market get served? I think there are some good answers to this. So first off, I know that it's not going to be maybe a popular answer with some of my clients, but there are good robo models out there. Some of those can be quite effective here. And it's not even just for advice. It can be things like getting your will done. You don't have to deal with a lawyer necessarily to get a will done.

And for people in that kind of middle market, the online will services, willful and epilogue are quite strong here. the access to an advice-only financial planner can help here, you don't necessarily need to get a financial plan updated every year. Dead off. I agree with that. So get one done should last you for maybe five or ten years until circumstances change substantially. But that financial plan can, I think, create a lot of framework really give you enough to set out that map for your future. You know, you mentioned willful and epilogue. Couldn't agree with you more. I think their services are very good. And for a lot of people who don't have complicated estates, relatively young people, et cetera, I think they're an excellent option. You know, going to the advice only, and I've often

used the expression fee only because that's what I grew up with, but advice only is a much better way to describe it. My mind is weak, frankly. It should be advice. I mean, I don't know where I got that. I think I took it out of the states or stuff, but advice only makes more sense. But the criticism you often hear of the advice only approach is that people don't go forward and implement a lot of what they're told to do because that person's not doing the handhold and they're not getting them involved in a specific investments. Interestingly, I haven't seen that as much. I've seen most people implement, but do you think that criticism is valid? It can be. I actually have this experience within my own family, Dave. So my in-laws actually run a successful business just outside

in the Oshawa area. And a few years ago, I knew this. They're, I'm going to say, be set by some of the common biases that we run into. And they had approached me. They knew that I knew people in the space and I could see that there was a need there for a financial plan. And I sent them to a well-known advice-only planner. And it just didn't quite work. And I'm not sure exactly where the breakdown happened, but a plan never got implemented. They didn't follow up. And it is a two-way street for sure.

I would not say that planner, I would continue to refer people to that person. One of my favorite people, actually. And the family, who knows, who knows if they didn't provide. the right information in a timely fashion, or if they didn't understand what was sent to them, or if they would have been better off meeting in person. I have seen it then where somebody spends the money and doesn't get implementation. I think there are weaknesses in every model. I think it's naive to say that any model is perfect. You know, in the U.S., what I've seen a fair amount is you've got an advice-only planner, then they refer off, but they don't get any commission

from the referral. So there's no bias in terms of whom they're sending them to, but they want them to take that next step to make sure implementation is more likely. That appeals to me. And we don't have enough of that in Canada. I'd really like to see insurance services available to advice only planners where I'm aware of a little bit of this. But if I'm an advice only planner, I'd really like to be comfortable sending my client to a specific insurance agent. And I'd really like to be comfortable sending my client to a specific investment advisor who can execute and doesn't get involved in bunch of the other stuff. Couldn't agree with you more. I think my partnership, and again, you see it stateside a lot, but you don't see it much in Canada yet. The other thing you see in

the states a lot now that's coming to Canada is the advice-only planarer specializing in either a certain demographic or a certain occupation. So I'm only going to work with GPs, or I'm only working with people pre-retirement. That's big stateside. And I think it's going to help people in Canada because you become very knowledgeable about whatever it is you're focused on. I think what we're seeing is a lot of development of those niches. I think that's quite right, or if you're American, I guess, niches. But I think some people don't communicate it very well. I think this is actually an area that advice only planners, or really financial planners in general, can get better at is communicating what those niches are. It's something I work with some of my clients on is developing

those ideal client personas and trying to communicate more directly with those folks that meet that niche. So that's well said and I agree with you. You know, I must give a little plug to the advice only end of things. Man, I've seen some great advice only plans in the last five years. Like, you know, I think I used to do very comprehensive stuff 30, 40 years ago when I helped out people. This is better than what I did because, of course, they have the use of computers now and software and they're able to take it up even a notch from what I used to do. And I, like, I am truly impressed with a lot of what I've seen. A lot of what I think has gotten better in that field too is more connection to human psychology.

For sure. I'm active, for example, in the Financial Therapy Association and I see a lot of people in the advice only world who are connecting with organizations like that. And not necessarily that they want to be

a financial therapist or whatever the case is, but they are just learning more of the tools to have great communication with their clients. No, you're bang on. In fact,

and you know a lot of the top players in our advice only industry. A lot of them are great communicator. You know, they really are. So they don't only have the knowledge, but some of those people are very good at communicating why this works this way, why you should look at this. Like there's some strong people in that end of the industry. I think of Rob Engen here, who was one of your early guests. And Rob runs such a great blog.

His boomer-neckel blog is full of very clear, very thorough communication. I'm envious of what Rob does, honestly. Rob is to me. Like, if you don't like Rob, you're an idiot. Like, honestly, he's extremely nice. He's extremely knowledgeable. He's very giving with the knowledge. He's an outstanding communicator.

Again, if you don't like him, you have a problem. No doubt about it. That's true. He's great in person, too. I was lucky enough to meet Rob here in Emmetton, not long after he finished his QAFB, actually. Yeah, no, he's a very sharp guy. Okay, let's switch over to an area where you still see a lot of problems, an area that has been near and dear to my heart for almost 40 years,

and that's the insurance industry. Now, I want to start by saying there are a lot of very good people. in the insurance industry and things have improved from when I started out in the mid-80s. But that being said, talk to me about some of the challenges that you're seeing. Well, and I recently did this Twitter series where I was sort of critical of the life license qualification program. So right from the get-go, the insurance industry has problems in how it licenses people. So the current iteration of this course has been around since 2016, you can really get your life insurance license with about three weeks of study,

including writing all the exams. At the end of that three weeks, you have not ever done a time value of money calculation, which I find absolutely terrifying. No, terrifying. That's a better word than shocking. You nailed it. Terrifying. It's such a fundamental skill in the delivery of financial advice. So that, and in fact, I just finished an exam prep course for a bunch of students getting ready to write their QAFP. And I'm actually going to be critical here of FP Canada, I think. But those students got an exemption, a lot of them got an exemption while they're going through their financial planning studies with FP Canada because they already had an insurance license. So there's a bit of a bypass FP Canada allows. And these are

insurance agents outselling insurance in the world. And when we did a practice exam question where you had to do a needs analysis using the time value of money, which is the right way to do it. Absolutely. Then they didn't know that was the right way to do it. It was pretty tough, actually. It was a hard object lesson to see. I just, I think you can't get through that course without knowing how to do time, value, of money. So what happens then is you finish that course.

You come out in the world, you get your insurance license. And by the way, the exams are open book exams. I don't know how well known that is. and you can have difficult open book exams, but these are not them. Well, I mean, those questions you were posting a few weeks ago, like, I kept commenting because I was laughing. They really were not good quality questions. Now, hopefully those are not being used on the exams.

That's hopefully they're just sitting on a website as dead material maybe. But once you're finished your life license, you really can do things like help somebody commute a pension. You can give somebody advice to commute a $2 million pension. You can sell to a pharmacist. You can sell an immediate finance arrangement. This is, to my mind, some of the worst of the stuff that we see in the insurance industry today. It's this sort of weird leverage concept using usually overpriced permanent insurance

and poorly communicating, often some tax concepts. And you can do all of that really with maybe two or three weeks of study. You can do a lot of harm to somebody without having, I think, jump through the proper hoops to learn what you should learn before you're giving that kind of advice. Okay, so I want to expand on this. Your two examples there are just wonderful. I saw you give them once before and I love them because, you know, the commuting of the pension, you've got to be able to calculate that properly and look at it from every

angle. And that takes experience, but you're not going to learn how to do that properly necessarily in two to three weeks. Some people may have been great skills to the course already. That's crazy that people can be doing that. And what I've seen a few times is not only have they commuted the, the pension, but then they put it in ultra-expensive investments. Could be SEG funds, for example, with expense ratios of two and a half to 2.7%. There's no way the math works on this on a

probabilistic thinking manner. That one really scares me. And that's probably what's going to happen. If you only carry an insurance license, if that's the entire scope of your education, then the investments you're going to recommend are going to be SEG funds. And there will be somebody out there listening who says, yeah, but Jason, you can get cheaper SEG funds. Okay, that's true. There are some less expensive models out there, but by and large, you're seeing still people using the SEG funds you talk about with 2.5 to 2.7% MERs. And again, you know, I want to make clear that Jason is not saying all insurance agents are out there doing a bad job. I personally have friends in the industry to do a very good job. That's not the point here. What he's saying is that

three weeks of training to get involved in ultra complicated analysis, like whether or not you commute a pension. And to go to your other example, some of the corporate insurance stuff that you see has to be examined, like to the point that I've been around forever, I still get in arguments with actuaries about some of this stuff. That's how complicated it is. So you're not mastering it in two to three weeks. No, and we don't have a lot of clarity on some of these concepts. They're based on some ambiguous interpretations of the income tax act. You have language and insurance contracts that allows the insurer to do what is in accordance with their then current administrative practice. There's a lot of uncertainty with those

things. And they can work. I shouldn't roundly say that I agree. I have a phase never work. But the number of cases where I see them proposed versus the number of cases where I think they actually work, it's an order of magnitude. And you're right to. I know a lot of great people in the insurance space. They're not hard to come by. There are are really solid people doing great business there. Yeah, for sure. You know, I remember this is 30 years ago, one of the presidents of one of the insurance companies.

So if there's a bias here, it's for the insurance company, had a great line to me. He said, Dave, you know, you're critical of some of the things we do. And he said, you're not wrong. He said, the actuaries and our people come up with a product that is good in some circumstances. Then marketing grabs a hold of it, and all of a sudden it's good in most circumstances.

And then the agents grab a hold of it, and all of a sudden it's great in all circumstances. And he said that's kind of the pattern that we're always fighting. And 40 years later, I'm not sure that's changed a whole lot. I think one of the issues there, too, it's impossible to ignore the compensation that somebody can earn in that space. You have the, again, my pharmacist example, pharmacist shows up. It seems like they can write a check for $50,000 a year to pay premiums out of their corporation. I'm the insurance agent who's sitting across from that person.

And I know that's going to turn into a fairly healthy check in my pocket. That might be about an $80,000 commission that I'm going to earn on the sale of that product. That's a lot of money. And it's, I think, naive to suggest that there's not some conflict there. Yeah, even subconsciously. I mean, you're going to be influenced by that and not look high and low. Okay, you come in as the czar of all of this. And you're able to, in essence, start over on the licensing front.

I'm not just talking insurance. I'm talking the whole field. Who would be the best approach from the consumer's perspective? How do we help them the most, protect them the most? If I could have the magic wand here, I think what I would like to see, Dave, is maybe where instead of having our licensing all based on product, maybe our licensing is based on, if I can put it this way, complexity. So you talked earlier about the challenge of serving the middle market or that mass affluent.

It might be nice to have a license here that is really a financial advisor's license, where you have stops, where if you get beyond, I don't know, a million dollars, or if you're doing a pension commuted value or anything with leverage or anything beyond maybe index funds, that that's kind of where it caps. So you would have a license that really is designed specifically to serve middle market. And again, if I get the magic wand here, you could sell term insurance, you could sell disability insurance, you could sell critical illness insurance, you have that sort of sort of suite of products. And then if you want to deal with more sophisticated situations,

if you want to deal with trusts, corporations, cross-border, all that stuff where more complexity gets added, that maybe is where you put the CFP in place. And I know FP Canada doesn't want to be a regulator or doesn't want the CFP certification to be seen as a regulatory mark. But I think something like that, where you have a mass market approach and then you have the narrower high net worth complex cases approach? It's a different way of thinking. Like I haven't really heard that advance before. I like it.

Like I think that playing with ideas like that is what we need to do to get us on the right place here or get us in the right place. So no, I think that's a very innovative way to look at it. And again, some of the stuff is so complex that one of the things we have to have is the advisor is turning to somebody else who's more of an expert in that certain area. So for example, when I was helping people all those years ago, I was very weak and cross border. In fact, there was very little material.

to be honest with you back in the day on cross-border. And so obviously you're turning that over to somebody who's doing it on an ongoing basis. You can't just wing it or take your very limited knowledge and try your best for the client. That's not appropriate. Cross-border is a great example. And you think about cross-border. I think we often think it means cross-border Canada, U.S., and that's fine. That covers about a million people living in Canada, tons of people where you are.

Lots of cross-border exposure in the Sarnia area, I'm sure. But then you also have cross-border UK and then cross-border Australia and cross-border France and cross-border Panama. Great, right. And those get so complicated so quickly. It's naive to think that you could serve all of those cross-border. And I've seen, I have a friend actually who's cross-border Canada, Australia, sorry, Canada, New Zealand, France.

Crazy. What do you do, right? I say no to that client. So you ask me what I do. I'd say, no, I can't do it. I'm not the right person for you. Yeah, it is probably the right answer. I actually sent that person to a past guest of yours, curiously.

I can guess which one, because, I mean, there's one of them that has a lot of knowledge about all of that stuff. But you can see, when this stuff gets tricky, you have to have a team of people at the firm who brings all kinds of different skills and knowledge levels. And somebody has to be an advanced accountant that's covering off all this cross-border stuff. It's unfair to think one person can know all about all of this. And again, that's something that going back to the LQP, I hate to tooth this horn again. The LQP does not do a good job of telling people, here's this broader world of people to whom you can refer.

And it really causes people. In fact, this is what went wrong in that case I mentioned before that sort of used the word fiduciary to apply to an insurance agent. Is that person really quite badly overstepped the bounds of their competency? And when I look at the LQP, they didn't actually learn anything about when to go and ask another professional to step in. Yeah, that's a good one because, you know, it's interesting. Like, I get asked by friends a lot of questions, and I think they're dismayed how often I say, I don't know.

Like, they think you have this encyclopedic knowledge. I said, this is tricky stuff, man. Like, I'm not on top of that to the extent I once was, and I'm not on top of it to the extent Aaron Hector is, for heaven's sakes. Like, I don't know the answers to all of these tricky questions. You can't. If you think you know the answers to everything, you just haven't been paying attention. That's exactly right.

And it's gotten trickier over the years, too. with all the cross-border stuff, the trust, all the new products, all the new accounts, all of it. I was saying, I think it might have been even to you before, but I was certainly saying to Jay's Prayer that when I went to rewrite the wealthy barber, people said, well, you have to talk about TFSAs and FHSAs. I said, it's not just that. You now have to show the priorities, how they relate to each other because people can't do them all.

That's the tricky part of the rewriting process. You cover a lot of material in a very consumable way in that book, and kudos, because it's so complicated. But I think I really like how you did break it down topically. And the characters are for such a good purpose in that book. So well done to you for getting that out there. And I think that people are actually reading it. I see people reading the well, which is people don't read books anymore.

So nicely done in that front. You've nailed it. That was our biggest single concern is would people read it, especially younger men, because they've dropped out of the nonfiction area completely. So thank you for saying that. But also your compliment means a lot to me because you're hard to press. Honestly, if you like the bug, I actually feel better right now than I have since it was released,

because if I could impress you that I feel pretty good. It's quite good. And actually, I mentioned this when you and I chatted. Before I was ever in the business, I was a soldier, as you had said before. Yes. And when I was, I think when I was 19, I do remember reading the book when I was deployed to Bosnia, my father, who was in the business, who was actually an insurance agent, so not, you know, interesting.

Yeah. He sent me to Bosnia with wealthy barber and richest men in Babylon. And I read them both over there. And they both do a good job of setting you up with, if nothing else, the pay yourself first concept. Yeah, you nailed it. I mean, especially the original wealthy barber. That was the thrust was the pay yourself first concept. And, you know, George Classen wrote, obviously the richest man in Babylon, I think back in 1934.

And even now when you read it, it's got some things that aren't great from a societal perspective. But the basic lesson is still very good. And it still gets you to turn the page into your point. that's one of the hardest things to do now is get people to read. Absolutely. So, and I would love it. This is, I think, something that we do need a lot of is just good. And you've had a lot of good influencers or financial education folks on the podcast. I think this is something that we really need a lot of is that exposure to the idea that there is good financial education to be had out there.

And just learning who to follow, who to read, who to watch videos from. It's so good. So you've got great stuff. And you had Melissa Leong on not that long ago. Ben Felix is an early guest. There's just tons of great stuff out there, plain bagel. Melissa went over so, so well. And I mean, Ben is one of my heroes. I mean, that sounds a little strong, but he really is. I devour his stuff. I think he's so good. And I think the plain bagel's a bit of a genius. I mean, his humor is so subtle in those videos. And he's such a great

explainer. Like, he's a very sharp guy. If you watch those, you can see. This is an intelligent person. But, you know, yeah, we've been very lucky. And you're right. If we can all draw attention to those voices that can truly add value. And you know, the common denominator, and you know a lot of these people personally is they are very passionate about helping people. It sounds corny, but they really are. Like when you speak to Aaron Hector, he's a bit of a nut, but he's a nut because he wants to help people so badly.

It's one of the things that bugs me a little bit here. Aaron posts these amazing things on Twitter and LinkedIn. Just goes to such depth. And then you'll always get, and there's a predictable crew, you'll get somebody who has a beef about something Aaron posts because they have a philosophical disagreement with Canada Pension Plan or they disagree with the politician that made the policy that Aaron's talking about or whatever. And Aaron, he seems to draw these things where people think that's the place to have these policy debates. And really, Aaron's just out there doing awesome work on the education front.

It kills me to see those, I don't know what they are, those kind of side conversations about elections. Everything gets politicized now, doesn't it? I mean, it's just the nature of the beast. I'll tell you a funny Aaron Hector's story. I said it once before in the podcast. When I was writing The Wealthy Barber, there was an expert opinion out there unanimously agreed to that I didn't quite agree with. I was thought, I don't think that's quite right.

And so I'm punching into chat, GPT, but of course, it's just regurgitating the expert opinion, right? It's drawing down from the land. And I really couldn't get anybody. And I thought, I know who will have thought about this many times, Aaron Hector. I didn't even really know the guy. And I'm getting his number, calling him up and say, have you ever thought about this? And, of course, he had thought about it from four different angles and came back and said,

yeah, you're on the right side of this argument. And so I felt more confident and ended up putting it in the book. But no, he's a very sharp, very caring guy. And again, I find that we have a lot of passionate voices in Canada. I mean, you're like that. You want to see people do the right thing. Now, you and I are talking more about the industry, but I do want to ask you one financial question. When I was doing this again 30, 35 years ago, I found that in most cases,

you should just leave the pension alone. Is that still true that in most cases you should leave the pension alone? I think there are very few cases where it makes sense to commute a pension. The math can work out to favor it. And there is sometimes an estate planning argument to be made. I think often that's kind of ill-informed. So I would say, yeah, probably 95, maybe 98% of the time. So it hasn't changed?

I don't think so. And actually, I give props to Adam Chapman here. So Adam was just on Andrea Thompson's podcast. And I don't know if you listen to Andrea's podcast, but top notch, good stuff. Yeah. So, and Jennifer's use was on there too. I shouldn't overlook Jennifer. But Adam made the argument that even if you're going to put that estate need first, that we should

be looking at a copycat annuity, which is essentially a way to create a pension where you own the pension instead of the employer or plan sponsor on the pension. And I thought that was a good argument. and it gives you the best of both worlds in a way if you're not necessarily happy with the risk you take by staying with that employer, like the Nortel problem, right, where the company goes broke and your pension suffers for it. So I think even in a case like that, I think it's really hard to justify taking all of that money and putting it into your own hands to manage. I think there's so many risks with that that are so hard to spell out in a way that's clear enough. Yeah, that's interesting.

good answer. And I think that 95 to 98% that's kind of held true all of these years, that when you do it, the analysis from all the different perspectives, I think you're bang on there. What are your things in the industry you're happy about? The trends you're seeing out there on the education front, on the advice delivery front that you think are positive. I already mentioned a couple. So you were good enough to ask me about pro bono financial planning and really the Canadian Foundation financial planning is doing good work. I think FP Canada continues used to make good incremental improvements to the financial planning programs. The new proficiency model with zero, I'm a big fan of.

So this is, it's not all the way there yet. It's, again, incremental. But the old securities course was a joke, honestly. I don't know how long it's been since you wrote it, but it was a difficult enough exam, I suppose. But I don't think, hey, hey, I got the highest mark of the country on that course. I don't want you out there saying it was a joke. I like to tell people that was the most challenging course in world history.

That's what I tell people. Yeah, that's what I tell them. I said it's way harder than the CFA. The Canadian Securities Exam is the most challenging course in world history. Yes, thank you. I was going to put that in with AI, but you saved me the time. So thank you. So, but they have really revamped the proficiency model there.

And it's going to get a lot tougher to get securities licensed. Good. And it also is going to be, I think, more practical. I think what you're going to find is that the way that this develops out, the education that somebody takes to deal with a client is very focused on the skills you need to deal with a client. And then you'll have, it's sort of a hub and spoke system where you'll take this core exam. And then the spokes will be determined by the type of interactions you're having with clients or with the securities that you're selling. Yeah, I like all of that. And by the way, I agree with you about the CSC back in the day.

In fact, I always felt with the course being the way it was, you should have had. had to get 80% or more to get your pass. That was always my argument. Yeah, that's probably about right. The other things that I'm a big fan of here, the Financial Planning Association of Canada, which I already mentioned, just such a great home for people who take the business of financial planning seriously. And I already mentioned IAFP, but their push to a fiduciary obligation for their members. Those are things that I really am a big fan of and I think paint a good future for us. If we just keep doing those things, if good financial planners align with those organizations, we're in good shape. Yeah, I agree with you. And I think another positive is that we're seeing,

you've mentioned a lot of the names, but Melissa, all these people, they're getting higher and higher profiles because of all the podcasts out there, because they're being interviewed, because they're talking to each other through Twitter and other forums, and everybody's learning and growing. And it's setting the bar higher and higher. Like when you see the Jason Pereira and you see how seriously he takes all of this and his knowledge level, it pulls everybody else up too. People want to be doing those types of things. You mentioned Rob earlier. I think this is all feeding off itself in a very positive way. I think in the early days of influencers, there were some folks out there who were charlatans or close to it. And I think there's been a good response now from the industry and you

have Jessica Morehouse, for example, with this kind of virtuous flywheel effect where you're right, there is this nice cross-promotion. I think that the people who are doing a good job of this are starting to promote each other more and creating, I think, now a world where it is possible for a consumer to make a distinction between what is good financial planning content and what is more questionable. You mentioned Jessica. We had her on, and you can see again the passion to help people. You ended up being her instructor, helping her get her course. And we talked off-air. I love the fact that she was very open with her followers about how she's not naturally gifted with this area in terms of the math parts, et cetera. And I felt that was great. But here's the

funnier thing. I have noticed over the years a lot of the people who kind of struggle to learn this, it doesn't come to them naturally, have ended up being outstanding financial planners. I've seen that pattern over and over again. I see this too. I really like this sort of comparison to professional athletes where kind of the journeyman hockey player is going to go on to be a successful coach and the person who was an all-star, that person might not be the pest coach. Yeah, it came too naturally to that person. They didn't have to kind of think it all through and they didn't have to deal with failure as much, all of those different types of things.

But no, again, I really like the way she handled herself. Okay, we're going to wrap up here. What thoughts do you want to leave us with? What are you worried about? Let's start with that. What am I worried about? I do think that on the investment side, we are seeing a lot of stuff kind of creep in. You mentioned index funds before.

I think most people are well served by index funds. But I am seeing more and more gambling type behavior, fishing for return where you don't need it. Oh, my goodness. For young adults, the sports gambling thing is an ad. It's crazy. Yeah, I think if I was picking on one, you know, I have young grandchildren and a son who is sort of at that age where sports gambling is really trying to hook him. And I just hope he's not spending a bunch of money on those apps. I'm pretty sure he has an account on one of them, which is dangerous in and of itself.

But I hope that doesn't ambush people. It is really that kind of gambling type behavior. And I've seen good arguments for why this is happening where it just seems like there's no point to having good behaviors. And you do a good job with the Sura of character in wealthy barber of kind of dismissing some of that, I think. Yeah. And I think, too, it's it sends to be a male problem almost exclusively. And again, I've said before, I'm not trying to be sexist against men, but it's 90-something percent of the gamut. gambling, the sports gambling and of the gambleification of meme stocks, et cetera, is male. And so I think

testosterone does play a role. It makes you more risk oriented, et cetera. So yeah, I think that's a very good, legitimate worry, unfortunately, that we're facing right now. And what about, you know, we talk about an every one of these episodes, the housing challenges for the younger generation. That's a concern for all of us. Yeah, the housing thing, this is a difficult one. I have actually helped. So I have three children and we helped all three of them with their housing. Nothing too elaborate. One thing that I wish could change a little bit here, I think a lot of young folks, and I'm going to sound critical. I'm going to get an OK boomer comment here. I know this. I think a lot of young people want to be in that 2,700 square foot house right out the gate. You've talked a lot about the virtue of a simpler housing decision. I think if you can be a little bit more realistic about it, you know, I'm in Edmonton and you can get into condos here, decent condos and decent neighborhoods for well under $400,000, which is still a lot of money. People ask me about what's the secret to financial success? And I say buy a house in Edmonton in 2004, but that'll do it. Yeah, you obviously can't do that anymore. I do think that if we were a little bit more

realistic about housing aspirations that would help a bit and not expecting that you're going to get into your dream home when you're 27 or 28. Now, that's easy advice in Evanton. In the GTA, I don't know, Dave. That's difficult. You know, I're on the same page. I basically said that in the wealthy barber. I don't have an answer for the GTA. Roy Miller, the wealthy barber, does not know exactly what to tell you. Don't live there. I mean, it's just very challenging. It's basic arithmetic. This isn't complex financial planning. This is simple math. It just is so difficult to get in without parental help. And we go back to that,

choose your parents wisely line that used to be a joke. And now, unfortunately, has become an important commandment in personal finance, which is not where we want to be. Look, wrapping up, I want to say thank you. You know, you're one of the people I most respect in this industry. I think you've added incredible value to the Canadian financial planning scene. And that's why I'm dismayed to hear that you're drifting out of it to some extent.

You're keeping your fingers in it, but you're getting involved in a med tech idea and you're an entrepreneur by nature. so I hope you do stay involved in the field. I'm never going to step out of the field altogether. They've doing this kind of thing, my social connections, financial planning association of Canada volunteer work. I have my fingers still in the financial planning pie. That's good.

Well, listen, it was a real, real honor having you on the show. You command great respect in our industry, and thanks so much for coming on. Thank you very much for the opportunity. A real honor for me.