Richard CanfieldPodcast Host and IBC Advisor, Ascendant Financial · Authorized Infinite Banking Practitioner | Author of 4 Books

Why I Left the Traditional Finance Industry for Infinite Banking #shorts

17 Jul 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:59

In this short testimonial, a finance professional recounts how the 2008‑2009 market downturn left many senior clients holding guaranteed annuities. As markets recovered, the value of those annuities approached their guarantees, prompting the speaker to suggest annuitizing or surrendering them to provide income for the seniors. He submitted roughly fifteen surrender applications to his brokerage firm, but fourteen were denied. Shocked by the brokerage’s refusal to honor the contracts, he concluded that the traditional finance environment was untenable for him. Consequently, in 2014 he left the brokerage world and joined the Infinite Banking Community (IBC) as an alternative financial model.

Chapters

We had come off some pretty bad years, '08, '09, and I had a lot of clients in annuities, annuities with guarantees. What happens in the earlier market shifts, I had these annuities and then the markets started going up and I kept them in the markets 'cause they had downside protection. The market value started to approach the guarantees and I went to them and I say, we could annuitize this now. These were seniors, they needed income. I went to the brokerage firm. I forget exactly, but I may have given them 15, let's say, applications. Of the 15 applications to surrender the annuity, 14 out of 15, the brokerage firm denied the application. I was floored. I said, this is not a world that I can exist in. And that's when I moved in 2014 and joined IBC.