Ed Schnnurr, President, Unity Group Financial

Ed Schnnurr of Unity Group Financial is part of this year's Wealth Professional Canada's Hall of Fame

Ed Schnnurr, President, Unity Group Financial
https://unitygroupfinancial.com/
President
Unity Group Financial
Years as an advisor: 31

Ed Schnurr’s route to becoming a financial advisor was a bit unorthodox. “I worked as a meat manager with A&P 30-plus years ago,” he says. “I enjoyed working with the people but couldn’t stand the unionization of the industry. I had a brother in financial services and thought it might be a good idea.”

Schnurr made his start as an advisor with London Life Insurance in 1987. Honing his craft over the next 25 years, he eventually opened his own practice, Schnurr Insurance Consulting. The business subsequently became Unity Group Financial, offering a wider range of financial services to reflect the industry’s shift toward more holistic financial planning.

Looking back over the past 30 years, Schnurr says that “the major change I’ve felt is technology. Obviously, this is huge. The ability to get access to information right away is extremely helpful.”

Not so helpful is the increased regulation that goes along with an advisor’s job in 2018. “The regulation in recent years has become almost insurmountable,” Schnurr says. “I understand the need for security and confidentiality, but it has become ridiculous in some cases. The need for three to four signatures from a client on the same page is redundant.”

That doesn’t mean he believes compliance is a bad thing, per se. “I believe that the move to transparency is absolutely the right one,” Schnurr says. “Anything that can be done for the betterment of the client is typically the right direction. But I’ve found my client appointments are longer than they have ever been, filling out excessive compliance documents.”

Time spent on compliance is time taken away from the actual nuts and bolts of financial planning, but Schnurr has some ideas about how things should change. “The redundancy of paperwork with most major institutions is astounding,” he says. “Let’s use technology to make everyone’s lives better.”

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