Agenda - Monday September 18, 2023


7:45 AM Sharp - 8:00 AM
Your Emcee For The Conference
Introducing Mike Englert, B.A., B.Ed., EPC Compliance Officer & Faculty Member CIEPS Prior to his retirement, Mike spent close to 25 years working in the Life Insurance and Investment business. Most recently he was Vice President of Marketing at a subsidiary of Royal & SunAlliance, one of the United Kingdoms largest insurers. The lion's share of his career, however, was in the U.S. market where he was responsible for the development and marketing of Manulife Financials extremely successful estate and legacy planning products. He was a member of LIMRA's Marketing Services Committee from 1986 to 1998 and served as its Chairman from 1992 to 1994. He has been a featured speaker at Estate Planning Councils, CPA Clubs and CLU Chapters throughout Canada and the United States. He works part-time with Pro-Seminars and the Canadian Initiative for Elder Planning Studies promoting Elders and Elder issues.

*8:00 AM - 9:00 AM*

A 56 Year Perspective - Lessons from a Lifetime of Serving Clients
Drawing on 56 years in the life insurance and investment industry, this talk reflects on a lifetime of serving clients and building lasting relationships. It highlights how caring for people - through every stage of life and every financial challenge - is at the heart of the profession, and why trust, commitment, and genuine concern for clients remain the foundation of meaningful financial advice. Presentation Overview This presentation is a reflective journey through more than five decades in the life insurance and investment profession. It explores the human side of advising - the part that textbooks don't teach and technology can't replace. Overview Structure 1. The Early Years: Learning the Business by Learning People - How the first client meetings, early mentors, and foundational habits shaped a career built on service rather than sales. 2. The Power of Showing Up: In Every Season of a Client's Life - Stories of being there for clients through marriages, births, business transitions, illnesses, and final goodbyes - and how these moments define the advisor's role. 3. Trust as a Career Asset: Why trust compounds like interest, how it's earned, how it's lost, and how to protect it across decades. 4. The Evolution of the Industry: A look at how products, regulations, and client expectations have changed - and what has never changed about what clients truly value. 5. The Advisor's Responsibility - More Than Money: Understanding the emotional, ethical, and relational responsibilities that come with guiding families through their most vulnerable decisions. 6. Legacy - What You Leave Behind as an Advisor : How to intentionally build a career that matters - one that impacts families long after the advisor has retired. What Will the Advisor Learn from This Presentation? Advisors will walk away with a grounded, experience tested understanding of what truly sustains a long and meaningful career in financial services. Through real stories, lessons, and turning points gathered over 56 years, they will learn: Key Takeaways * Why relationships - not products - are the real currency of long term success in life insurance and investments. * How to build trust that lasts decades, even as markets, regulations, and client expectations evolve. * The mindset shift that separates transactional advisors from generational advisors who become part of a family's story. * How to navigate the emotional side of advising, including difficult conversations around illness, loss, retirement fears, and financial setbacks. * Why do consistency, integrity, and genuine care outperform any sales technique over the long arc of a career. How to stay relevant and valuable through industry changes, technological disruption, and shifting demographics. The importance of legacy - both the advisor's and the client's and how to intentionally build it. This is not a technical session. It's a wisdom session - one that reconnects advisors to why they chose this profession and who they ultimately serve.
George Sigurdson BA, CLU
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM

Holistic Tax and Estate Planning
Dale will discuss the importance of having multiple advisors working together in an interdisciplinary team in order to optimize tax and estate planning for the client. This advanced presentation examines the integration of tax, estate, corporate, family, and succession planning within a unified advisory framework. The session demonstrates how addressing these areas in isolation can result in avoidable tax liabilities, structural inefficiencies, and preventable family or shareholder disputes. Emphasis is placed on coordinated, multidisciplinary planning that preserves wealth, protects assets, and ensures that estate intentions are carried out effectively. Presentation Overview Through realworld examples and casebased analysis, this seminar explores practical strategies for integrating tax and estate planning with corporate structuring, succession planning, and family governance. Topics include common planning failures, outdated or incomplete estate documents, shareholder transition issues, inefficient corporate arrangements, and uncoordinated beneficiary designations. The session highlights proactive approaches that improve outcomes during life, at retirement, on business sale, during incapacity, and at death. Participants will leave with a clear understanding of how coordinated, multidisciplinary planning creates more resilient and effective client strategies. What Will the Advisor Learn from This Presentation? Advisors will gain a comprehensive understanding of how holistic planning improves outcomes for business owners, incorporated professionals, families, and highnetworth individuals. The presentation equips participants to identify planning gaps, recognize opportunities for restructuring, and collaborate effectively with legal, tax, accounting, insurance, and financial professionals. Advisors will strengthen their ability to guide clients through decisions that reduce tax exposure, enhance continuity, and support longterm family stability.
Dale Barrett LLB, Tax Lawyer
*10:00 AM - 11:00 AM*

Grow Your Book of Business with Living Benefits Protection That Works While Your Clients Are Still Living
Your clients are living longer, working harder, and facing risks that no investment account alone can solve. A serious illness, a disability, or an unexpected long-term need can unravel even the most carefully built financial plan - and leave families in crisis. This presentation will provide an overview of living benefits solutions and how they can help advisors better support their clients financial security. Presentation Overview As clients continue to evolve, advisors are looking for practical ways to offer protection that goes beyond traditional coverage. This session will highlight key living benefits options, discuss how they can fit into a client's overall plan, and show how advisors can use these solutions to better serve families and businesses What Will the Advisor Learn from This Presentation? By the end of this presentation, you will be able to: * Identify the gaps in your clients' existing coverage that living benefits are designed to fill * Match the right product - critical illness, disability income, or long-term care insurance - to specific client profiles and life stages * Position living benefits within a holistic financial and estate plan, not as an add-on, but as a foundation * Handle common objections with confidence and client-centred language * Grow your practice by opening conversations with families and business owners who need protection they don't yet know they're missing
Perry Wong CPA, CA	Monica Fortney Agency Director

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

The Second Sale: See the Risk. Know the Story. Make the Case

What does it really take to move a case from application to issued?

The truth is that the work begins long before signatures hit the page. It starts with curiosity, better questions, and a genuine commitment to understanding the client - their circumstances, their motivations, and the risks that others may only see as data points on a form.

Through reallife cases, practical insights, and lessons learned from years of navigating both straightforward and complex applications, Micheline explores the advisor's role in ensuring a case is clearly understood, accurately framed, and thoughtfully presented.

From doing the homework and setting realistic expectations to collaborating effectively with underwriters - and knowing when additional information, context, or persistence is required - this session examines the work behind the application.

More importantly, it highlights what truly differentiates an advisor: the care taken, the questions asked, the relationships built, and the responsibility to serve both the client and the insurer with professionalism and clarity.

Getting the application signed may be the first sale. Understanding the risk, knowing the story, and making the case - that is the second sale.

Presentation Overview

This presentation provides a practical, experiencebased look at the advisor's role in underwriting success. Through case studies and realworld examples, Micheline demonstrates how advisors can:

* Gather meaningful client information that tells the real story

* Identify red flags early and address them proactively

* Frame risk in a way that supports clear underwriting decisions

* Communicate effectively with clients and underwriters

* Build stronger, more collaborative relationships with insurers

* Present cases with clarity, context, and professionalism

* Advocate for clients while respecting the insurer's need for accuracy and risk assessment

The session blends technical insight with humancentered advisory skills, showing advisors how to transform applications from simple submissions into wellsupported, wellexplained cases.

What Will the Advisor Learn from This Presentation?

Advisors will walk away with:

* A deeper understanding of the "second sale" - the critical work that happens after the application is signed.

* How to uncover the real story behind the client, beyond the data points and disclosures.

* How to identify and articulate risk in a way that supports both client and insurer decisionmaking.

* How to set realistic expectations with clients before, during, and after the underwriting process.

* How to work collaboratively with underwriters, including what information matters most and why.

* How to recognize when a case needs more context, more documentation, or more persistence.

* How to avoid common pitfalls that delay or derail applications.

* How to present a case clearly, confidently, and professionally, increasing the likelihood of approval.

* How to strengthen client trust by demonstrating competence, diligence, and advocacy throughout the process.

This session equips advisors with the mindset, tools, and communication strategies needed to elevate their underwriting effectiveness and deliver better outcomes for clients.

Micheline Varas

12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

Building Trust Quickly with Customers Makes You Ready for the Future

In a rapidly changing marketplace, the advisors who win are the ones who build trust faster and more effectively than anyone else. In this powerful session, industry icon Van Mueller reveals simple, repeatable techniques that help you create instant rapport, deepen conversations, and turn first meetings into long-term relationships.

You'll leave with practical strategies you can use immediately - approaches that increase appointments, improve client engagement, and elevate your overall success. If you want to future-proof your practice and strengthen every client interaction, this is a session you won't want to miss.

Presentation Overview

Most advisors talk products. Top advisors talk purpose, clarity, and confidence. This session teaches how to make that shift in a way that feels natural and earns trust instantly.

In this session Van will share how to EASILY and QUICKLY build trust with a prospect or client so that they act on your recommendations.

You will be able to have success with your very first meeting when you return home from this meeting.

The skills are easy to learn and will increase both your appointments and increase your success leading to more results in those appointments.

What Will the Advisor Learn from This Presentation?

Advisors are facing:

* More competition
* More client hesitation
* More complexity in planning conversations

The advisors who win are the ones who can build trust faster than anyone else. This session is designed to give them that edge.

The Core Benefits for Advisors

1. Master the skill clients value most: trust
2. Techniques you can use the moment you get home
3. Increase both appointment volume and appointment success
4. Learn how to thrive in the future marketplace
5. Stand out from competitors who still "sell" instead of "serve"
6. Benefit from Van Mueller's decades of field-tested experience

The Advisor's Takeaway

They leave with:

* A repeatable trust-building process
* Better questions
* Stronger first-meeting outcomes
* More confidence
* A future-ready client experience

Van Mueller LUTCF, LACP

1:00 PM - SCAN Out and Adjourn