Go Public continues its expose of Canada’s big banks with its latest charge that most financial professionals in Canada are licensed as salespeople with no fiduciary duty to clients.

Go Public, a CBC News publication, sites a report by the Small Investor Protection Association that nearly 121,000 people registered as financial professionals in Canada, and 96% are registered as dealing representatives.  Dealing representatives are sales people licensed to sell financial investments. They don’t have a legal obligation to act in a client’s best interest.  According to Go Public, only about 4,000 registered financial professionals have a legal obligation to act in the client’s best interest.

This is an astonishing revelation.  Across Canada thousands of people are trusting their life savings with “financial advisors” who are nothing more than salespeople in disguise.  According to the article the term “financial advisor” with a “o” is an unregulated title anyone can use.  However, a financial “adviser” with a “e” is a regulated title.

The financial advisor is not obligated to act in your best interest. Anyone can call himself an advisor, but not everyone upholds a fiduciary standard.

The bank representative, who is essentially a salesperson,  sells the bank’s mortgages to the customer. The bank offers a prepackaged mortgage and the consumer can take it or leave it.

Mortgage brokers, on the other hand, are independent from the financial institutions. The job of the mortgage broker is to shop for mortgages at different financial institutions and find the right mortgage to suit their borrower’s needs.  This role makes them an agent for the client. As an agent, the mortgage broker has fiduciary responsibilities. The mortgage broker must put forth his or her best effort on behalf of the client and put the client’s interests above his or her own.

As a leading mortgage broker in Winnipeg for more than 15 years, Vertuity Mortgage has helped hundreds of families secure the best mortgage for their needs.

Vertuity Mortgage is a licensed mortgage broker who works on your behalf with multiple lenders including local credit unions as well as major banks and other financial institutions. Vertuity Mortgage acts as your agent and offers transparency in all aspects of a transaction.

Just as Go Public has discovered, the big banks force customers into their limited products and most people don’t know there are better options available.

Unlike most large financial institutions, we will give you honest advice and recommend the best product to fit your needs. We cannot stress enough how valuable it is to have access to many different lenders and a real variety of mortgage solutions.

Don’t allow yourself to be forced into something that is not the best fit for you. At Vertuity we deal with every client equally — regardless of income and wealth. We can assure you that we will not save our best products and rates for our most elite clients.

We disclose our processes and procedures up front so a client knows what to expect.  Our “Hassle Free Process” is a process-driven program that guides the client through the mortgage process.  Total disclosure is the norm and not the exception.  We want to find the right mortgage to fit your needs.