Discovery Series: Unplugged

Aly Damji, President of HUB Capital, joins host Reh Bhanji to talk about a retirement risk that rarely comes up in planning meetings: critical illness.

Aly shares how his family’s fresh start in Canada and his father’s career as a chief underwriter shaped his respect for advisors. Then he explains how advisors can position critical illness coverage as protection for a client’s retirement portfolio. He uses an illustrative RRSP example to show what an unplanned withdrawal could mean for retirement income.

A practical listen for wealth-focused advisors who want to have more holistic planning conversations.

At 23, Jesse Whalen was breaking through concrete with a 90-pound jackhammer inside a water treatment tank, in -30 degree weather. After three months of that work, he woke up one morning barely able to lift his arms. The injury ended his construction career. It also started a seven-year rebuild that made him a Certified Financial Planner with Desjardins Financial Security Independent Network.

In this episode, hosts Reh Bhanji and David Lee sit down with Jesse, a longtime DSU listener who is now a guest. They talk about how he built his practice around one community: Ontario midwives. Midwives are self-employed, paid per birth and on call around the clock. They spend their days caring for other families, and their own finances often come last.

Jesse walks through:

• How his own time off work shapes the way he talks to clients about protecting their income
• How committing fully to a niche changed his social media engagement and client relationships
• The planning realities of his market: self-employed CPP contributions, key deductions and irregular cash flow
• Why he lets clients book time with him rather than chasing them between births
• Using webinars to reach new graduates and midwives who are curious about incorporating
• His advice for advisors still hesitant to commit to a niche

David also plays a round of Fact or Fiction about midwifery in Ontario. Jesse shares the past DSU episodes that shaped his approach, including Episode 19 with Brent Swatuk on mastering your advisor niche and Episode 65, The Warrior Within, with Marco Levesque.

If this episode sparked an idea, share it with an advisor who's ready to find their niche.

Visibility isn't built by accident. Andrew McKeown, Director of Business Development at PPI and President of the Ottawa Advocis Chapter, joins Reh Bhanji and David Lee to share how consistent community events helped build momentum across his region.

Andrew walks through his three rules for becoming the most known advisor in your market: event consistency, the COI multiplier, and the amplifier. He also covers how to plan events your clients will attend, how to think about cost over time, and how to extend every event through social media.

What if we gave advisors their time back?

In this episode of Discovery Series: Unplugged, Reh Bhanji sits down with Sean Downey, President and CEO of Financial Horizons and co-lead of Advice Canada, for a wide-ranging conversation about the future of independent advice in Canada. He is joined by co-host Shaun Downey, RVP of Sales for Western Canada at Desjardins Insurance, which makes for some fun given the two of them share a name (yes, there are two Sean and Shaun Downeys at the table).

Sean makes the case that the biggest opportunity in the industry is not another product, but velocity: giving advisors the technology, data, and support to spend less time managing their business and more time in front of clients. The conversation gets into the technology gap between the wealth and insurance sides of the business, why data consistency across carriers matters so much, the role of AI, and why closing Canada's coverage gap will take the whole ecosystem working together rather than any single player.

It is also a personal conversation. Sean shares how the business runs through his family, what more than 20 years of coaching youth sports taught him about leadership, and why he still believes advice is one of the most noble careers a person can choose.

As Sean puts it, if you want to know what advisors want, talk to advisors.

Watch now on Spotify and YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Some decisions echo across generations.

In this episode, Todd O'Donnell joins host Reh Bhanji to share a story he has carried his whole life. His father was a prominent Ontario lawyer, the architect behind the province's no-fault auto insurance. He was also a man who battled alcoholism and mental illness, and who passed away at just 59.

Before he died, Todd's father made one quiet decision. He took out a life insurance policy. That single act of love gave Todd the foundation to open his agency, provide for his family, and carry forward a legacy his dad never got to see.

Todd opens up about growing up in the shadow of addiction, the fear that still drives him, and the two critical illness journeys his wife Tara has faced. It is an honest conversation about family, mental health, protection, and why the time we share matters more than anything.

Content note: this episode discusses addiction, alcoholism, mental health struggles, the loss of a parent, and cancer. Please take care while listening.

If it moves you, share it with someone and start one meaningful conversation about protection this week.

What happens when the lessons of scarcity become the foundation for building trust?

In this episode of Discovery Series: Unplugged, host Reh Bhanji sits down with Kendall Harris, Director, Strategic Growth - Central Canada at PPI. Kendall grew up on her grandparents' farm outside Mission, BC, where she learned early that life can change in an instant. She watched a scarcity mindset up close: cash in the deep freezer, a distrust of banks, a farm bought on a handshake. She also watched her grandfather live with Parkinson's, and years later navigated her own father's heart attack.

Those moments reshaped how she sees wealth. Kendall shares how her family moved from avoiding the hard conversations to embracing them, and why the invisible asset she now builds her career around, social capital, is often what carries us through the moments money cannot.

Frederick Pratt Jr., CFP, CLU is a 2025 Wealth Professional Canada Top 40 Under 40 Rising Star, Certified Financial Planner at Desjardins Financial Security Independent Network in Ottawa, and one of the most engaging guests we've had on this podcast.

He's also a golf champion with a gift for mathematical patterns that most people wouldn't believe until they see it live.

In this episode, Fred draws a clear line between golf course management and financial planning, and the parallels are hard to ignore. Reading the terrain before swinging. Knowing which club to pull and when. Avoiding the double bogey moments that quietly add up over time. It all connects.

Fred walks us through his TERP framework, a one-page Tax and Estate Retirement Plan designed to show clients every income source, every asset class, and every planning gap at a single glance. He explains why he calls life insurance an "estate enhancer" on that plan, and how that language shift changes client conversations entirely. He makes the case for participating whole life as a legitimate asset class, breaks down why a 5% tax-efficient return outperforms a 7% return when tax planning is missing from the picture, and challenges advisors to rethink what a complete financial plan actually looks like.

And then there's the Magic of Prime. A pattern-recognition ability Fred discovered at 11 years old that lets him work through complex decimal calculations in real time, with no calculator. It started with fractions in grade five. It ended with 25-digit answers on demand.

Some people see a medical file. Others see a story. In this episode, Reh sits down with Romeo Vitagliano, Senior Vice President of Strategic Underwriting and Planning at HUB Financial, for a conversation about the human side of a business that runs on data, process, and precision.

Romeo traces a 45-year journey that started with a knock on the door in 1950s Montreal, when the "insurance man" collecting premiums on his father's policy planted the first spark. From cold-call rejection as a young agent to his first day in underwriting on December 1, 1981, he walks us through the moments that shaped how he sees risk: a client in a wheelchair he wishes he'd sat down with, a cousin with epilepsy who got covered when someone asked the right questions, and the Charles A. Will philosophy that became his compass, does this make sense?

Along the way he shares a marathon runner nearly declined for a slow heartbeat, an intergenerational case where the real win was trust rather than a placed policy, and a whirlwind history of underwriting from the plagues of 16th century Europe to today's world of longer lives and more complex cases. He closes with the four pillars of his Human Algorithm, Process, People, Product, and Purpose, and a longevity twist from his own family that reframes what any of us are really underwriting for.

If today's conversation resonated, follow Discovery Series: Unplugged, share it with a fellow advisor, and stay curious and connected.

On the eve of Canada Day, we celebrate a career devoted to Canadians. After more than 35 years shaping the financial services industry, Yves L. Giroux sits down for his final interview before retirement. In this special episode marking five years of Discovery Series, hosts David Lee and Rehan Bhanji honour the leader who helped modernize the Desjardins Individual Life and Health Insurance division and built a national network rooted in one purpose: improving the quality of life for Canadians.

Yves traces the full arc of his journey, from a young goalie in Cap Rouge to a summer spent planting 55,000 trees, where he learned that success is built on process, not luck. He shares the moment that shaped his mission: watching his father, an MIT-trained professor, take advice from a trusted insurance agent and seeing firsthand how advice changes lives.

Along the way, Yves opens up about raising four kids while building a career across Canada and Europe, the leadership lessons that defined his teams (leadership belongs to everyone, and curiosity is your compass), and the proudest moment of his Desjardins career: stepping out of the way so young talent could build something better than he could alone.

The conversation also takes on the question facing the entire industry. With nearly 40% of advisors aged 55 and over, is this a demand problem or an access to advice problem? Yves makes the case for scaling advice without losing its humanity, and for protecting more Canadian families along the way.

And then there's the twist. After losing his father just 18 months into his retirement, Yves reframed what time and legacy really mean. His next chapter? Becoming a park ranger, returning to the forest where his story began.

This is a tribute to a once-in-a-lifetime leader, and a reminder that this business was never about products. It's about people and the lives we improve along the way.

Listen now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. If this episode sparks the leader in you, follow Discovery Series Unplugged and share it with your network.

Every morning brings a fresh headline about trade, tariffs, and where the economy is heading. For the business owners and families your clients protect, that noise turns into real questions: does this change the plan we built?

In Episode 125, hosts Rehan Bhanji and David Lee sit down with Desjardins' Chief Economist Jimmy Jean, CFA, and Deputy Chief Economist Randall Bartlett, CFA, to cut through the panic around the 2026 CUSMA joint review. They unpack what the July 1st review date actually means (here's the short version: it's a checkpoint, not a cliff), the three paths the agreement could take from here, and why unpredictability itself has become the new baseline.

Along the way: why having roughly three quarters of Canadian exports heading south is both a strength and a vulnerability, how squeezed household budgets are quietly reshaping the protection decisions families make, and where Canada's real economic leverage actually sits. Plus a round of Trade Trivia that proves your hockey stick has a passport.

Whether you're guiding a business owner through cash flow uncertainty or helping a family rethink their coverage, this conversation gives you the language and the anchor points to lead with clarity.

Access the full Desjardins CUSMA report here to keep these insights handy for your next discovery meeting.

Access Jimmy & Randall's Op-Ed for the FutureEconomy.Ca here