Welcome to Canada.Now Figure It Out.
A 90-minute experiential workshop on the real financial experience of newcomers — built for the professionals and organizations who serve them.
Canada welcomes nearly 400,000 new permanent residents every year. Most arrive financially responsible, professionally experienced, and motivated to build a life here.
And yet — most of the professionals who serve them, in financial counselling, financial services, employment, and settlement, are working with a blind spot they don't know they have.
Not through negligence. Through assumption.
* TD survey by Harris Poll Canada, March 2025.
** TD survey by Edelman D&I, 2024.
“Eye-opening. Real. Experiential.”
Not a diversity-training session. Not a financial-literacy course for newcomers. A 90-minute experiential workshop for the people on the other side of the desk — the counsellors, bankers, advisors, settlement workers, and employers who serve newcomers every day.
Empathy Without Assumption
The invisible weight of starting over in a system that assumes you already know the rules.
Bias Lives In The Ordinary
How cultural differences around debt, retirement, and homeownership show up in everyday conversations — in ways most professionals never see.
Questions Are Your Most Powerful Tool
How to create the space for a newcomer to stop performing competence and start telling you the truth.
A clear understanding of what it actually feels like to navigate the Canadian financial system as a newcomer.
Practical insight into how cultural differences around debt, retirement, and homeownership shape every financial conversation.
Three concrete behaviours they can apply in their very next client interaction.
Permission to slow down, set aside the script, and ask better questions.
“Amazing. Interactive. Relevant.”
The room agreed.
First delivered to the full team of a provincial non-profit financial-counselling organization, June 2026.
“This is not really a 90-minute workshop. This is the foundation for a bestseller. And what you just did is part of a Canada-wide tour.”Director of Financial Education,
Financial Services Non-profit
“Not all cards are the same hand. Every player is different. Listen. Be present. Be mindful. Be kind.”
“90 minutes that got me to stop and listen. 10/10.”
“It illuminates things that you don't know that you don't know.”
“It challenged how I approach conversations. It made me realize my own biases, and think outside the box about the people we serve.”
“An insightful presentation that clearly breaks down how to consider finances from the cultural lens and perspective of a newcomer.”
The Format
In person, with a lunch break built in.
Facilitated presentation plus two structured group exercises with full-room debriefs.
Sized for a full team or department.
Financial counsellors, financial-services teams, settlement agencies, employers and HR/DEI teams.
Participant handouts and a feedback survey; slide deck displayed throughout.
Delivered in person across the country.
“Brilliant, fun and educational — something everyone should be aware of.”
Vickram Agarwal is a multiple-time founder, award-winning entrepreneur, and MoneySense columnist — and a contributor to The Globe and Mail, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Inc. He is the founder of S1:E2, a business strategy consulting firm.
Born in India, raised in the Middle East, and educated in the UK, Vick moved permanently to Canada in 2019. He writes about the newcomer financial experience from the inside — as someone who lived it — for a readership of hundreds of thousands of Canadians every month.
And there is no one else doing this. Not with the lived experience, the published voice, and the business mind to make it land.
Bring it to your team.
If your organization serves newcomers, this workshop will change how your team shows up for them.
Start the conversation →