Mostly Money With Preet Banerjee

World renown body language expert Mark Bowden gives us a crash course on body language. Why is it so powerful? And how can we use it to increase the effectiveness of communication? We also go through quite a bit of whisky.

Melissa Agnes is the author of Crisis Ready: Building an Invincible Brand in an Uncertain World. She is a leading authority on crisis preparedness, reputation management, and brand protection and is an advisor to some of today's leading organizations faced with the greatest risks. We discussed a number of real-world examples of brands handling crises, including how Equifax handled the breach of millions of customers' data.

I had a great chat with Cait Flanders about her recently released book, "The Year of Less". The book chronicles 12 months in which she spent almost no money other than on essentials. The book has been garnering international press, including making the front page of the New York Times' website. It is definitely not your average personal finance book - it's quite a bit more than that.

The most requested guest on the podcast, Ben Rabidoux, is back to chat about the latest goings on in Canadian real estate and credit. Enjoy!

Scott Terrio is an Estate Manager and President of DebtSavvy.ca Consulting and he joined me to explain the ins and outs of bankruptcies and consumer proposals in Canada. He shares some horror stories, we discuss some of the differences between LITs (licensed insolvency trustees) and credit counsellors, and he explains people's options when their debt loads are starting to become unmanageable.

John De Goey, a portfolio manager with Industrial Alliance Securities, is back to talk about the latest edition of his book, The Professional Financial Advisor IV. Topics include: what to look for in a financial advisor, what questions to ask them, should commissions be embedded, and more.

Luke Kawa joins the show to explain some economic buzzwords, concepts, and theories such as the difference between fiscal policy and monetary policy. He also grades the Governor of the Bank of Canada, and provides his two cents on housing in Canada. Luke is a reporter at Bloomberg, based in New York. You can follow him on twitter at https://www.twitter.com/ljkawa. If you would like to contribute to the charity mentioned at the end of the podcast, you can find it here: https://www.silvercreekpreschool.ca/donate/ Silver Creek has been serving children with physical and developmental challenges since 1975 when local parents petitioned the provincial government for funding and support in starting a program to serve the pre-academic and therapeutic needs of their children.

Is securities regulation about to take a step backwards in Canada? A new model for cooperative capital markets regulation that has been proposed might spell the end (or at the very least, the delay) of any Best Interest Standard for financial advisors in Canada, the end or delay of a push to ban embedded commissions, and more. Professor Anita Anand, one of Canada's most respected authorities on securities law, explains the lay of the land when it comes to securities regulation in Canada and explains the main points from her recently published white paper examining the impact of the proposed Cooperative Capital Markets Regulator on investor protection. To cut to the chase: it looks like it could be a step backwards. Here's what you can do if you want to help drive investor protection FORWARD in Canada, not BACKWARD: 1. Consider supporting organizations that fight for investor protection (like FAIR Canada). Disclosure: Preet Banerjee is, current to May 18th, 2017, a member of the board of directors

Dan Hallett from HighView Financial Group is back to share some thoughts on world of robo-advisors, what to look for when seeking a financial advisor, and to help breakdown the two new reports many investors will start to receive this year as a result of what's known as CRM2 Phase III. And yes, we'll explain what CRM2 means. We also discuss the idea of "regulatory arbitrage" and how that concept might be used to the advantage of some salespeople (to the disadvantage of financial consumers).

Stephen Jarislowsky shares wisdom gleaned from more than 70 years of investing. He is a true investment legend, and still holds some stocks he originally purchased in the late 1940s when we has completing his MBA at Harvard. He launched Jarislowsky Fraser, Ltd. in 1955 and has grown it to more than $40 billion in assets under management, and is personally worth more than a billion dollars. He's led an unbelievable life with unbelievable stories, including being a counter-intelligence agent for the US Army in Japan after the second World War, and having been bestowed 11 honourary doctorates. And that's just scratching the surface. We spoke at his offices in Montreal.

Sandra Foster has updated what is now the SIXTH edition of her plain-language guide to estate planning for Canadians of all ages, levels of wealth, and stages of health. From digital assets, living common-law, what to do if someone has asked you to be an executor, and more, Sandra gives us the low down.

Dev Basu, CEO of Powered By Search, joins me to drink whisky, explain his meteoric rise to being one of the world's foremost experts on digital marketing, and offers his insights on the financial services industry and how they have (and should) approach consumers like him.

Salman Ahmed is a portfolio manager with Steadyhand. He's previously worked as an analyst with Mercer, and later as Associate Director of Active Research at Morningstar Canada. We talk about what Morningstar Ratings are, stewardship of investment funds, and also get into some personal details such as his year and a half trekking expedition around the world and his love of hamburgers.

Mark Goodfield has over 25 years of experience providing accounting, income tax, and wealth management advice. He has experience working with rental real estate, investment companies, professional and consulting practices, amongst many other industries. Mark is the author of “The Blunt Bean Counter,” a blog about income tax, business, the psychology of money and investing topics. The blog won a Plutus award in 2014 for being one of the best blogs in Canada and the United States. Mark is also the author of the book: Let’s Get Blunt About Your Financial Affairs.

Ben Rabidoux is back to share his insights into what has been happening in the Canadian real estate markets. Ben is one of Canada's leading housing and credit analysts.

Randy Cass is the CEO of Nest Wealth, a robo-advisor in Canada that charges for its services through a flat monthly fee instead of the more traditional percentage-of-assets-managed model. We chat at his offices in Toronto.

Alec Chalvardjian is the owner of Bar Freddo, a true Italian fare restaurant he launched after a career in advertising sales. We talk about how the traditional media ad sales world has evolved over the last 20 years, and how planning for a rainy day allowed Alec to be in a position to start his own business after getting downsized out of his corporate job. We spend a a lot of time exploring his passion for true artisanal gelato and pizza, so foodies will especially enjoy this episode!

Navid Boostani is the CEO and co-founder of ModernAdvisor.ca, a Canadian robo-advisor which offers socially responsible investment portfolios in addition to plain vanilla indexed portfolios. We dig into ModernAdvisor's service offering, and whether or not socially responsible investment strategies give up returns in their quest for social responsibility compared to traditional couch potato portfolios.

Karl Martin is the founder of Nymi, Inc., a company who wants to disrupt the field of "user authentication". In other words, how do you prove "you are you" to a machine? By using a simple password? Do you use the same one for everything? What if you could replace the need for passwords altogether and increase security? That's the goal of the Nymi Band. There are countless applications, including financial transactions at POS terminals as well as for online shopping. Not so good for action movie plot devices, though.

Andrew Graham is the CEO of Borrowell, an online lending marketplace for Canadians. We discuss where the idea for Borrowell came from and what kind of financial consumer makes up their target market. Borrowell is aiming to take a chunk out of the high interest rate credit card market in Canada by offering term loans for unsecured debt at lower rates. We also delve into where Borrowell gets the money to fund these loans, what kind of rates they offer, the average loan amount taken out by their users, and more.