Advocis, the Financial Advisors Association of Canada, has released five senior managers as part of the organization’s ongoing re-structuring.

“We’ve made some changes at the organization and as part of our new strategic direction, Advocis has been developing and implementing a new business model over the past year,” Peter Tzanetakis, the organization’s vice-president of regulatory and public affairs, told Advisor.ca.

The managers who left the company last Friday were:

  • Chief Operating Officer, Taylor Train.
  • Senior Director, Marketing, Oriana Melo.
  • Vice President International Relations, J. P. Larda.
  • Chief Compliance Officer/Chief Privacy Officer, Therese Reilly.
  • Senior Director, Sales and Distribution, Kim Stanley.

Tzanetakis confirmed the list of individuals released by the organization but would not confirm whether Advocis plans any further staffing changes in the near future.

Moving ahead, Advocis sees the departures as just a part of their evolution.

“We’ve moved into that next phase of our business model by streamlining and re-aligning our head office operations,” Tzanetakis said when asked about the connection between the new business model and the terminations. “The whole purpose of the re-alignment of our operations is to better reflect a streamlined approach to better delivering quality service to our members and prospective members in the future. That’s essentially why some of those changes have occurred.”

The changes will include opening up some Advocis products and services to non-members. The decision to do so can be seen as a new chapter in the ongoing competition between advisor organizations for loyalties and membership fees.

“We certainly are looking at opportunities to attract a different type of member who hasn’t particularly been interested in joining full membership,” he said.

As part of that strategy, Advocis recently opened the Chartered Life Underwriter program to non-members and plans to open other previously restricted courses as well. In doing so, Advocis hopes to demonstrate its value to prospective new members.

“We’ve got a strategy to attract those new members and attract individuals to participate in Advocis programs and services that we offer and simply it is a re-aligning internally here to make that happen in a streamlined and more effective way.”

This is not the first upheaval at Advocis driven by bottom-line considerations. In early 2001, the Canadian Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors, one of two predecessor organizations that merged to form Advocis, was faced with a $3.1 million loss and released 29 employees. At the time, CAIFA executives characterized that move as part of a larger new strategic plan designed to broaden the organization’s membership.

Al Emid, a Toronto-based financial journalist, covers insurance ,investing and banking.