Bruce Sellery used to sell insurance door to door, in London, Ont. It was tough, as anyone who’s done it will agree. He knew his product and he was comfortable with the cold calls, many of them freezing cold in fact. But he had one clear disadvantage — he was 13.
“My brother sold me his year-round property maintenance business for 50% of year-one revenue and book value on equipment,” he said. “I cut lawns, and I did snow removal. But I didn’t just clear people’s driveways, I offered snow insurance.”
He understood what insurance was? “Yes,” he said. “When I was 13, I was 43.”
Given what was clearly a natural penchant for marketing, Sellery went on to become a brand manager with Procter & Gamble (P&G), the famed consumer goods giant. A decade on from his grassroots start, he earned one of the business world’s great early career gigs.
The list of former P&G brand managers who’ve gone on to lead remarkable careers includes former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, marketing consultant Jim Stengel and Meg Whitman, the former CEO of both eBay and Hewlett Packard and former U.S. Ambassador to Kenya.
Now a CEO himself — of the non-profit agency Credit Canada — Sellery says his time at P&G taught him the value of rigorous, process-driven execution.
“You developed a framework for everything,” he said. P&G fostered creativity as a process. “[You] create the creativity.”
With this, he reached down under his desk and pulled out the training binder P&G gave him some three decades ago. It is as close at hand as any Credit Canada document.
The organization has delivered credit counselling and other services since 1966. Its founders were social services professionals who saw a recurring theme among the clients they served — poverty, often exacerbated by a lack of financial literacy and basic money management skills.
“We counsel 10,000 people a year,” Sellery said. “It’s the best job I’ve ever had.”
He accepted the leadership post in February 2021, having already established himself as a broadcast journalist with BNN and CBC News. Sellery is also an author of personal finance books and host of the Moolala podcast.
Credit Canada needed a reset. The Canada Revenue Agency revoked its charitable status in 2018, and then long-time CEO Laurie Campbell left the organization in early 2020. During a one-year interim period during which Keith Emery and Mary-Anne Beatty stepped in as co-CEOs, the organization had to switch to a virtual client-service model because of the Covid pandemic.
Under Sellery, Credit Canada launched holistic financial coaching programs, available on demand by video chat. Counsellors provide support on debt counselling, debt management and consolidation and money management.
Newcomers to Canada can access a budgeting app called Butterfly. There’s also an AI agent called Mariposa that conducts digital debt assessments.
“Our mission is to help people get out of debt so they can get back into life,” Sellery said. He wants financial advisors to pitch in.
$2.5 trillion
Even as Credit Canada makes progress, consumer debt across the country remains shockingly high. It topped $2.5 trillion last year, according to Equifax. In the first quarter of this year, average non-mortgage debt hit $21,859 per consumer. About 1.4 million Canadians missed one or more credit payments in Q1.
Clients come to Credit Canada with money problems, but there are almost always foundational issues in the mix. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a prime example.
According to the Canadian ADHD Resource Alliance, 4–6% of adults across the country have been diagnosed with that form of neurodivergence. Another 5–7% of kids have received the same diagnosis, which indicates that financial advisors will see more of this in the years ahead.
“We don’t diagnose ADHD,” Sellery said. But counsellors do look for signs. And if it’s been diagnosed, they’ll talk with clients about taking their medication.
“It’s even broader than that,” he said. “It’s, ‘how’s your marriage?’ Advisors think they can’t ask that question. Why not? It’s the single biggest financial risk that most people face. The failure of a marriage is devastating.”
Sellery believes financial advisors should be talking with their clients about more than just long-term planning. “How can you possibly claim to be delivering on your fiduciary duty if your sole focus is investments? I don’t think you can.”
And clients absolutely should not be saving for retirement if they’re carrying high-interest consumer debt.
“I’m evangelical about that,” he said. “There’s no way that any investment is ever going to exceed the price you pay on that credit card.”
TransUnion, a credit reporting agency, reported that the average credit card balance among Canadians at the end of 2024 was $4,681, up 5.7% from a year before.
Sellery said the wealthy are no different. He believes financial advisors should challenge their clients.
“Engage on cash flow,” he said. “Even with people for whom cash flow is abundant. It is a direct link to goals. … I don’t want to shame anybody, but if we have a full understanding of what’s at stake, you’re going to eliminate that credit card debt, and the financial advisor should focus the client on that.”
Advice only
The problem of course is that advisors who earn their living on product commissions aren’t incentivized to deliver that kind of advice. Even fee-for-service advisors, Sellery said, are focused on planning within the confines of insurance and/or investments.
“If you take a million dollars from me and buy a place in Phoenix, I lose,” he said, describing a perspective some advisors hold. “There’s a fundamental disconnect.”
Sellery said clients are better served by an advice-only model that rewards advisors for providing guidance on something more than just assets under management (AUM). Canadians of modest means are served poorly by the industry — if at all, he said.
“If you’re low- to moderate-income, or low- to moderate-AUM, you’re getting nothing,” he said. “It’s one of the things we’re really looking at, at Credit Canada. How do we fill that gap? What is the non-profit version of that?”
Sellery’s investor advocacy informs everything he does, as both a CEO and journalist. He has carved out a position for himself from which he can provoke the kind of conversation he and his team members believe needs to take place. He’s more than just a good communicator though — he knows how the business works and what its unintended consequences are. He deserves a listen.
This article appears in the June issue of Investment Executive. Subscribe to the print edition, read the digital edition or read the articles online.