About a month ago, Sun Life changed the compensation structure on their early cash value par product.

You probably heard about it. A lot of advisors had opinions. Most of the conversation focused on what Sun Life was doing and why. Was it good? Was it bad? Was it fair?

But I think most people missed the bigger story.

Because that comp change wasn’t really about Sun Life. It was about where the entire industry is heading. And if you’re paying attention, the pattern is hard to ignore.

The numbers tell one story. The gap tells another.

Here’s what’s been happening for years now, and it’s accelerating.

Volume is dropping. Premium size is going up. The number of advisors entering the business isn’t keeping pace with the number leaving it. And the cases getting written at the top end of the market are getting bigger, more complex, and more sophisticated.

Sun Life made their change largely for their own individual business reasons. But what it reflects is a broader reality. The top of the market is expanding. The advisors doing $500K, $1M, $2M+ cases are writing more business than ever. They’re combining par strategies with corporate planning, estate work, charitable structures, living benefits. They’re operating at a level that would have been rare 15 years ago.

And the middle? The advisors doing solid work, writing decent volume, trying to grow?

They’re stuck.

Not because they’re lazy. Not because they don’t care. But because the system that used to move people from the middle to the top doesn’t really exist anymore.

The thing nobody talks about

The most successful advisors I know in this industry, almost without exception, came out of the old career channels. London Life. Sun Life career shops. Manulife career agencies.

Those systems were operating at a very high level until about 2010 to 2015. Then they started to decline. Some shut down entirely. Others shrank to a fraction of what they were.

But here’s what those channels actually did, and this is the part people forget.

They didn’t just teach you products. They didn’t just teach you underwriting guidelines or tax concepts or how to run an illustration.

They taught you how to sell. How to overcome objections. How to stick handle a conversation when someone pushes back. How to ask for referrals without sounding desperate. How to build centres of influence. How to work a room. How to identify opportunity in a casual conversation and turn it into a relationship.

That wasn’t in a manual somewhere. It was in the culture. You’d sit in a bullpen with people who were doing it every day. You’d hear someone on the phone handling an objection you’d never thought of. You’d go to a study group on a Tuesday night and someone would break down exactly how they built a $3M case from a single introduction at a golf tournament.

You absorbed it. You copied it. You made it your own.

And then those channels disappeared.

What replaced them

Look at what the industry talks about today. Go to any conference, any MGA event, any carrier session.

Practice management. CRM tools. Compliance updates. Product knowledge. New product launches. Tax changes. AI tools. Recruiting. Platform features.

I’m not knocking any of that. It matters. You need to understand the products. You need to be compliant. You need a functioning CRM. You probably need to start learning what AI can do for your practice.

But if I’m being honest with myself, none of that is what moves an advisor from the middle to the top.

None of it.

What moves you is the ability to have better conversations. To identify opportunity. To build relationships that compound over time. To develop centres of influence who actively want to send people your way.

And almost nobody is teaching that anymore.

The carrier sessions are focused on, “Here’s our new product, here’s where it fits, here’s how to illustrate it.” The MGA events are focused on tools, platforms, compliance, recruiting. The conferences are focused on whatever the hot topic of the year is.

Where is the session on how to actually grow your business?

A denturist in Eastern Ontario

I had a meeting a couple of weeks ago with a denturist. We were working on a deal for him personally. Straightforward stuff.

Midway through the conversation, he mentioned something casually. His entire business is dentists. He works with two to three hundred very successful dentists across the Eastern Ontario region.

Think about that for a second.

Two to three hundred successful dentists. Professionals with income, assets, corporate structures, insurance needs, estate planning complexity. And this one person has trusted relationships with all of them.

That’s a centre of influence. If you properly identify that person, build the relationship the right way, add value to their world, and earn their trust over time, that single connection could transform your practice.

These people exist everywhere. Denturists. Accountants. Lawyers. Property managers. Business brokers. Recruiters. Consultants. They’re sitting in your city, in your network, sometimes in conversations you’re already having.

But the skill of recognizing them? Of knowing how to approach them? Of building something that actually turns into a pipeline of introductions?

That’s not something you learn from a product webinar.

The Ottawa Estate Planning Council

I went to the Ottawa Estate Planning Council meeting recently. The room was filled with accountants and lawyers. People who are there specifically to network with professionals in adjacent fields. People who, by the way, are exactly the kind of centre of influence that could change an advisor’s business.

And there were barely any advisors in the room.

I don’t say that to criticize anyone. I say it because it’s a perfect example of the gap.

The opportunity is right there. A room full of accountants and lawyers who showed up specifically because they want to connect with people like us. And most advisors don’t even know the meeting exists, let alone how to walk in there and start building relationships that matter.

This is what the old career channels used to address. Maybe not directly, maybe not in a formal curriculum. But you’d be around someone who was doing it, and they’d say, “I went to the Estate Planning Council meeting last month and got two introductions.” And you’d think, “I should be doing that.”

And then you’d go. And then you’d figure it out.

What I think is actually missing

The industry has a messy middle problem.

The top is thriving. They figured it out years ago, many of them through those old career channels, and they’ve compounded their skills and their networks ever since.

The bottom is always going to have turnover. That’s the nature of the business.

But the middle, the advisors who are good, who care, who want to grow, they’re not getting what they need to make the jump. They’re getting product training and compliance updates and CRM demos. They’re getting the technical stuff.

What they’re not getting is the human stuff.

How do you have a conversation with someone who just told you they work with 300 dentists? How do you follow up without being pushy? How do you add value before you ask for anything? How do you build a referral relationship that lasts ten years instead of ten minutes?

How do you walk into a room full of accountants and lawyers and leave with three meaningful connections?

How do you take a casual comment at a dinner party and turn it into a $500K case?

That’s the training gap. And it’s getting wider every year.

So here’s my question

If we know the top advisors built their practices on soft skills, relationship development, and COI strategy, and we know the channels that used to teach those skills are mostly gone, and we know the middle of the market is where the growth potential actually sits…

Why isn’t anyone building the thing that fills that gap?

Maybe someone should.

Talk soon,

Andrew