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Nearly thirty years in Canadian financial services — most of it spent inside the system, watching people get handed a product and told it was advice. The Financial Collective exists because those are not the same thing.
Mortgage Broker serving clients across Ontario. All applications are subject to lender approval and full qualification.
For most of those years I worked inside a major Canadian bank. It taught me the business properly, and I was good at it — more than $800 million in mortgages funded over the course of my career, and a place in the top 5% nationally within my mortgage network. But a mortgage specialist inside a bank can only ever offer you that bank’s products — one shelf, one set of terms, one answer to every question. When the right answer for a client sat on somebody else’s shelf, there was nothing I could do about it.
That is the whole reason The Financial Collective exists. As a broker I can go to many lenders instead of one, and I can tell you when the answer is to do nothing at all. Neither of those was available to me before.
I spent nearly thirty years inside the system watching people get handed a product and call it advice.
My job is to help you avoid surprises — not react to them.
Banks, credit unions, monoline and broker-channel lenders. They price differently, they underwrite differently, and — the part almost nobody checks — they calculate penalties very differently.
What breaking this would cost, what happens if your income changes, what the renewal looks like in five years. Those belong in the conversation before you sign, not after.
Plenty of my conversations end with a recommendation to stay exactly where you are. That is a legitimate outcome, and it is one I am free to give.
Worth explaining rather than just displaying — most people have no idea what any of them are.
Formal training in the Canadian strategy for gradually converting mortgage interest into tax-deductible interest. It is a genuine strategy with genuine risks, and the certification means I have been taught the mechanics properly rather than picking them up from a forum.
Specific accreditation for advising homeowners 55 and over on reverse mortgages — a product that suits some people very well and is wrong for plenty of others. The training is largely about telling the difference.
An independent review platform where clients post about their own experience. The reviews are theirs, not mine, and they are published where anyone can read them.
An industry recognition awarded on production and standing within the profession.
Useful context, and some of it genuinely bears on the work.
Married, two grown children, and two dogs called Petey and Lenny who are considerably less interested in mortgages than I am.
My wife and I hold residential rental property and a short-term rental. When we talk about an investment file, I have filled in the same forms and had the same arguments with the same lenders.
Award-winning, and a long time ago now. Coaching teaches you to explain the same thing four different ways until one of them lands — which turns out to be most of this job.
Usually on market updates, building a business, and holding yourself accountable to goals. Happy to do it for your team or your office.
My podcast on finance, life and business — the money decisions people actually face, and the parts nobody warns you about.
Waterloo Region is home, and most of the work happens by phone, video and secure upload wherever you are in the province.
Lending is provincial, so where you are matters far less than people expect — but knowing a market properly still counts for something.
No application, no credit check, no obligation. Tell me what you are trying to do and I will tell you honestly whether I can help — and if I cannot, who can.