The Best Financial Advisors and Professionals Under 40 in Canada | Rising Stars

Plain-language communication and transparency are the defining competitive advantages for the best financial advisors and professionals under 40 in Canada.

 

Very few clients quit a financial advisor because the returns were bad. That’s the pointed argument made by this year’s Wealth Professional’s Rising Stars, now in its 10th year: three winners, working independently, all landed on the same diagnosis – clients don’t leave over performance; they leave when an advisor buries plain facts under acronyms, macroeconomic shorthand, and confidence dressed up as complexity.

Whether that gap is costing the industry the next generation of clients is worth watching closely. The data on how younger Canadians seek financial advice, explored below, suggests this year’s winners may be onto something. Twenty-seven professionals made this year’s list, continuing the format used in WPC’s 2025 Rising Stars report. Eligibility required nominees to be aged 40 or under as of September 30, 2026.

What sets this cohort apart isn’t a shared technical specialty; it’s a shared conviction that complexity should never substitute for a clear answer.

 

Communication skills, transparency, and accessible client education are the practical differentiators for young advisors overcoming industry credibility gaps. What makes a Rising Star in Canadian wealth management today? For Tina Tehranchian, C.M., senior wealth advisor at CI Assante Wealth Management in Richmond Hill, Ontario, the answer starts with resilience, grit, and a pursuit of excellence – but the practical differentiator for younger advisors is communication.

 

“Good communication skills and being able to present complex concepts in an easy-to-understand manner are key attributes for successful wealth professionals,” she says. “Passion for the profession and caring deeply for clients is another important requirement.”

That framing matters because it reframes a perceived weakness as a strength. Younger advisors have historically faced a credibility gap with clients who assume experience equals expertise. Tehranchian argues the opposite can be true: “Lack of experience is usually the biggest perceived handicap for young advisors; however, having an inquisitive mind, access to a good network of resources with great experience, and showing clients that you genuinely care for them can make up for that lack of experience.”

According to a November 2025 study by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC), Canadians aged 18–34 are the least likely age group to consult a professional financial advisor, with only 20 percent doing so – compared with 57 percent who turn to friends or family and 18 percent who rely on social media, twice the rate of older Canadians. For an industry trying to attract the next generation of clients, that represents both a warning sign and an opportunity: the advisors most likely to close that gap are the ones speaking the language younger Canadians already understand.

Tehranchian also points to a structural gap the industry has yet to close: “Educating youth about wealth planning as a viable career option is an important step that firms should take to discover and develop talent in the industry,” she says, adding that effective mentorship – with defined goals and measurable targets for both mentor and mentee – remains underused as a development tool, echoing how young financial advisors can give back to their mentors elsewhere in the industry.

Catherine Milum, president and CEO of iA Clarington Investments in Toronto, Ontario, goes further, arguing that the credibility gap younger professionals face should be reframed entirely. “There are a lot of people that are doing a lot of really good work; they just can’t articulate it,” she says of what separates a Rising Star from the pack, describing the ability to clearly state one’s own value proposition as “almost creating a brand for yourself.”

On the bias younger advisors often face from more experienced colleagues and clients, Milum offers a pointed comparison. “You go to the doctor, and you get a referral,” she says. “Let’s say you have the bios of the two doctors… one of the doctors has 50 years of experience and went to Harvard… and the other one has five years of experience. I’m going to the person with five years’ experience every time, and the reason is that I think they’re going to be up on more things that are new. I think they’re going to try harder.” Her advice to young professionals who apologize for their inexperience: “use that as your superpower.”

Milum also draws a distinction between mentorship and sponsorship that goes beyond what most firms currently practise. “Mentorship is usually between two people,” she says, “but I think if you really want to help – you move that mentorship hopefully into some kind of a sponsorship,” where a mentor actively advocates for a mentee and creates opportunities they would not otherwise have access to. She practises this herself, deliberately seeking out younger mentors of her own – first a millennial mentor, and now two Gen Z mentors – “because I don’t know what I don’t know.”

 

Eliminating jargon from client conversations builds trust and demystifies complex macroeconomic planning.

 

Josh Nakesch, a wealth counsellor and shareholder on the board of directors at Kinsted Wealth in Alberta, has built his practice around a single organizing idea: that wealth counselling should be done better than it has ever been done before. It is a vision he describes as deliberately unattainable – a permanently moving bar rather than a fixed destination – and one he says is underpinned by values he considers rare in the industry: integrity, respect, humility, and honesty.

 

Those values, Nakesch says, were present before he entered the profession, but working in wealth management “unearthed the desire to actively exploit them,” particularly because client focus is not always the industry’s stated priority. For Nakesch, the antidote to that gap is the total elimination of jargon from client conversations. “It’s so easy to approach a client meeting and talk about complicated macroeconomic policy… and use terms that aren’t understood,” he says. “Our industry is awesome at overcomplicating things and making them confusing and intimidating for the clients.”

 

That plain-language discipline extends into how Nakesch handles difficult conversations. Rather than avoiding hard news about underperforming investments or market volatility, he walks clients through the original rationale behind their strategy, framing turbulence as something the plan already accounted for. He describes this as an opportunity rather than a burden – particularly with clients “who typically maybe haven’t received good communication in the past” from previous advisors, where a clear explanation becomes a trust-building moment rather than a difficult one.

 

Nakesch also credits deliberate peer learning for his rapid development, describing a habit of identifying advisors who “set the bar very high” in the industry and studying their approach directly. He wears what he calls three separate hats – investment management, client service, and sales – and treats improvement in each as a distinct, ongoing discipline rather than a single skill set.

 

 

Q: Why do you think jargon persists in this industry if it doesn’t actually serve clients?

A: It’s not necessary. You see some of the commentaries, and I reread some of the things five different times. I’m like, ‘What is that? What are they really saying here?’

 

Q: What ultimately separates advisors who succeed long-term from those who don’t?

A: There’s always going to be investment strategies that outperform others and different ways of approaching that to begin with. But at the end of the day, what’s critically important is you have to establish that foundation of having those values in place to be able to approach each of those things with your clients.

 

Q: How do you handle conversations about market downturns or underperformance?

A: I find sitting down with the client in those situations and walking them through the principles that we had in place for the investment strategy… gives them a better sense of ‘We have a plan in place; this is part of the plan.’

 

Q: What drives your day-to-day approach with clients?

A: It starts with the vision: to provide wealth counselling better than it’s ever been done before. Underneath that is this mission of being a destination for wealth professionals in Canada – a leader among wealth professionals – to set that bar higher.

 

Q: What do clients actually want from an advisor, beyond returns?

A: They want to know that they’re working with somebody who’s going to be a good steward of their personal portfolio, their nest egg that they’ve built through their career or successful investment opportunities.

 

Coaching advisors to bridge generational gaps through emotional intelligence and accessible language, Islam argues, is what keeps clients loyal for the long run.

 

 

Bulla Islam, a business development manager at Canada Life based in Vancouver, British Columbia, doesn’t work with retail clients directly. His job is to coach financial advisors – often decades his senior – on how to build stronger practices. That generational gap could be a liability, but he has turned it into his defining professional strength.

 

“I would say it’s a marriage of two things,” Islam says of his approach. “I naturally have a thing for connecting with people… and being able to marry that with my technical abilities.” The second half of that marriage, he says, comes down to translation: taking complex financial concepts and “verbalizing them in a way that is digestible to the normal person.”

That skill was not formally trained; Islam traces it to his own early struggles with financial literacy. “I had a lot of trouble understanding financial concepts. I was never financially savvy,” he says. “It’s only upon stumbling upon the industry that I was like, ‘Okay, this is actually something more people should know of.’” He now treats that gap-closing as a personal mission: “I need to make this information more readily available to the regular person on the street so that financial information is not gatekept like it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago.”

Islam is candid about the credibility gap his age creates when meeting the advisors he coaches in person for the first time. Rather than downplaying his age, he reframes it as generational insight: “My generation is naturally more aware in terms of emotional connections, how money plays a role in your psyche… you connect money to them, specifically to them. And that’s how you connect with each client.” He argues that advisors who build those deeper connections retain clients through bad market cycles precisely because they function as more than financial technicians – acting as a coach or a therapist.

On AI, Islam is measured. He acknowledges that transactional advisors face displacement but argues trusted relationships are AI-resistant: “You’d still want a doctor to confirm your symptoms… we’re talking about your financial health here. So you would definitely want a professional, a qualified professional to take care of you.”

Q: How do you help the advisors you coach think about client relationships differently?

A: It’s not one that’s transactional – it’s not just, “I give them money, they act on my behalf.” It’s more than that. It’s an intimate relationship built on trust, built on honesty, and built on reliability.

 

Q: What’s the payoff for advisors who build that kind of trust?

A: That’s how a lot of advisors actually grow their practices. They have one client whom they take excellent care of, and that client brings all their friends, their family, their kids, and their grandparents. Now you have six other accounts from that one account that you just took care of.

 

Q: Why does this matter more in today’s “attention economy”?

A: In today’s world, we live in an attention economy. It’s really easy to get lost in transactional relationships. So when you find that special person who is genuinely wanting to take care of you, it’s almost a no-brainer for clients.

 

Q: Where did this coaching philosophy come from for you personally?

A: I think somebody did that for me – held my hand, taught me. I feel like I have a responsibility to pass that along, to give advisors the best practices and tips that can make their relationship with their client a special bond.

 

Q: Will AI-driven tools replace financial advisors?

A: You can get any information with the click of two buttons, and it will probably speak to you in a more articulate way than any other human being. But how do you trust that information? You really can’t.

 

Comprehensive financial planning software and clear baseline education replace outdated portfolio reviews to win over underserved clients.

 

 

Mordechai Kuhnreich, a wealth advisor and portfolio manager at Lakeview Wealth Management – Wellington-Altus Private Wealth in Toronto, Ontario, built his practice from nothing – no inherited book of business, no family handoff, just cold calling. That grind, he says, was a deliberate choice: “I was never one of the lucky ones who has a parent that has a business to hand to me… I started with cold calling. It was the real old-school grind.”

 

Since 2025, Kuhnreich says his business has been turning the corner, with growth from markets and referrals overtaking new business generated through outbound marketing. The reason, he says, comes down to what older advisors historically left out of client relationships: planning. “We have our 60/40 balanced portfolio,” he says, referring to the traditional 60 percent stocks, 40 percent bonds asset mix, “We’ll meet to review the returns; we’re not really going to talk about planning because that wasn’t really done back in the day. When I started, everything was based around planning. You start with a plan, and you go from there.”

That gap between old-school portfolio management and planning-led advice has become his primary referral engine. This instinct for demystifying finance also extends into everyday financial literacy. Kuhnreich recalls a client asking him to explain a simple fix to her granddaughter: using an existing, unused line of credit to pay down high-interest credit card debt. “Seems so simple,” he says, “but she couldn’t get over it. She’s like, ‘Well, why would I want to take more debt?’” For Kuhnreich, moments like that prove promoting basic financial literacy matters as much as the products advisors sell.

Kuhnreich connects his approach to a broader demographic shift reshaping the profession: “The average age of advisors in Canada is 50-plus,” he says, pointing to a scarcity of professionals in the 40–55 age bracket that has left the industry without a gradual generational handoff. Kuhnreich embraces technology-forward workflows, including a heavily automated customer relationship management system built in 2020–2021 and early broad adoption of AI tools for note-taking and stress-testing. According to an Accenture survey of 500 financial advisors across the United States and Canada, 96 percent believe generative AI can revolutionize client servicing, but only 41 percent of firms have scaled its adoption. Kuhnreich’s early integration places him far ahead of the norm.

 

Q: What’s driving your recent growth?

A: Growth from markets and referrals is now overtaking new business from marketing. A lot of referrals come from clients whose older advisors focused on a 60/40 balanced portfolio and review of returns, without ever talking about planning.

 

Q: What convinced you that planning matters more than chasing returns?

A: You start with a plan, and you go from there. That’s really what people look for – an advisor that’s going to make them feel comfortable that they’re on the right track.

 

Q: What’s kept you motivated as your reputation has grown in your own community?

A: Getting the name out there and being a household name is such a differentiator. That’s the biggest reward I can get when someone in the community just heard about me.

 

Q: How has automation changed the way you run your practice day to day?

A: Really, using technology has taken away all that administrative stress and changed things quite a bit.

 

Q: What’s differentiated your investment approach as your practice has grown?

A: Our team definitely has a focus on private investments – private equity, private credit, and private real estate. We target about a 25–30 percent weight for private investments, which I think is not the most typical.

 

Firms must adopt communication-first training and structured mentorship programs to capture an aging demographic’s shifting wealth assets. If the experiences of this year’s Rising Stars are any indication, the wealth management industry’s next competitive battleground will not be fought over returns, product access, or even fee structure. It will be fought over communication.

Canada’s advisor population is aging rapidly: according to Investor Economics’ research on Canada’s aging financial advisor population, the average advisor age has climbed to almost 53, up from about 50 in 2015, with advisors over 55 now representing nearly 40 percent of all full-service brokerage advisors and managing roughly half of all assets under management (AUM) nationally. Firms that fail to develop plain-language, planning-led communication skills risk losing clients actively shopping for better service, as well as the next generation of investors.

The referral patterns described independently by Kuhnreich and Islam point to a specific and growing client segment: people adequately served by traditional metrics who were never given a real financial plan and are actively migrating to advisors closing that gap. Tehranchian’s call for structured mentorship programs with defined goals speaks directly to why succession planning is a growing challenge for exiting advisors, as more experienced advisors near retirement without an equivalent cohort ready to replace them.

 

Three advisors, three firms, and three different roles within the wealth management ecosystem – and the same answer arrived at independently, regarding what builds a lasting client relationship.

• Josh Nakesch eliminates jargon entirely.
  
   

• Bulla Islam translates complexity for a new generation.
  
   

• Mordechai Kuhnreich replaces transactional portfolio reviews with mind-opening financial plans.

What unites this year’s Rising Stars is a shared refusal to let complexity substitute for genuine client understanding. The advisors best positioned for the next decade of Canadian wealth management are not the ones who know the most jargon but the ones who use the least of it.

 

• Anshul Panday
  
  Director of Fund Operations
  
  Wealthsimple
• Arandeep Biryah
  
  Wealth Advisor/Financial Planner
  
  Nour Private Wealth
• Cameron Cox
  
  Senior Investment Analyst
  
  Cidel
• Carly Gilmore
  
  Certified Financial Planner
  
  Noble Pannu Wealth Management
• Devon Bailey
  
  Investment Advisor
  
  Tetrault Wealth
• Jordan Kaczmarzyk
  
  Vice President
  
  Fidelity Canada
• Jordan Mullin
  
  Associate Relationship Manager
  
  Sagard
• Keeley Simpson
  
  Chief Executive Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, and Portfolio Manager
  
  Aretec Wealth
• Lauren Rudolph Heselton
  
  Investment Counsellor
  
  Kerr Financial Group
• Malik Besseghieur
  
  Vice President, Sales
  
  iA Clarington
• Meagan S. Balaneski
  
  Portfolio Manager
  
  Aligned Capital Partners
• Michael Hogan
  
  Chief Revenue Officer
  
  Four Eyes Financial
• Nathan Di Lucca
  
  Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer
  
  OneVest
• Paul Bilenki
  
  Senior Vice President
  
  Oak Hill Asset Management
• Peter Hatziioannou
  
  President and Co-Founder
  
  XIB Asset Management
• Ryan Bevelander
  
  Associate Wealth Advisor
  
  Nicola Wealth
• Shauna Tremblay
  
  Financial Advisor
  
  Desjardins Financial Security Independent Network – Toronto West Centre
• Spencer Vermette
  
  Investment Advisor
  
  Wellington-Altus

 

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