Julie Seberras, CFP®, was awarded FP Canada Fellow distinction in 2025. She’s passionate about financial literacy and committed to advancing professional financial planning in Canada. She says this is especially critical in the current environment, where economic pressures are often top of mind.
As Chair of the FP Canada Standards Panel, Seberras oversees efforts to set, maintain, and enforce financial planning standards that protect the public interest. There’s a focus on adapting practice standards and competency profiles to reflect changes in the financial planning landscape to uphold a gold-standard level of proficiency for the profession.
“I’ve led planning teams for many years now, and whether it’s the individuals on my team who are subject matter experts or it’s the advisors out in the field who are meeting with clients, when we’re trying to determine our own internal firm practice standards, we always look to FP Canada,” she says.
Seberras says her day job—she’s Head of Wealth Planning and Practice Management with Manulife Wealth in Toronto—benefits from her involvement with FP Canada. Specifically, her volunteer work helps keep her current, sharp, and directly connected to the financial planning profession so she can provide better guidance and leadership to her team.
It isn’t always easy to fit extra responsibilities around a demanding job, but FP Canada work is something she wants to find extra hours for. Beyond the fact that it gives her a clear return on investment for her time, it interests and engages her. And, since much of that work is project-based, it allows her to commit to one initiative at a time.
For others in the financial services industry who are considering volunteering for an organization like FP Canada, she emphasizes that there’s huge value in sharing knowledge and expertise to elevate the profession and improve outcomes for Canadians.
“We have lots of underserved Canadians when it comes to financial planning,” Seberras says. “If there’s anything I can do as somebody who is financially literate, somebody who has knowledge, somebody who has expertise and is very passionate about it, that makes me really happy.”
