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Wealth Professional recognizes Canada’s best wealth management firms devising innovative and creative ways to provide returns for their clients.
Woodgate Financial senior partner, Jason Pereira, lists a series of challenges that the top-performing firms must meet:
- Do you have a defined value proposition targeting a cohort of Canadians that can deliver value?
- Do you have the knowledge base and systems to deliver in a repeatable way?
- Are you executing and legitimately delivering in multiple ways for clients?
He also underlines the need to understand compliance and utilize technology appropriately.
“Top-level advisors should be embracing positive change and getting ahead of compliance trends because they typically come out with the best practices that ensure things are done in a professional manner,” says Pereira. “Technology is important because we all need it, but technology is not going to fix a problem. It’s there to support a strategy, and it’s more important that processes and strategies are put in place, then technology can help enable all of that at scale.”
Fellow industry expert Vipool Desai, president of Ara Compliance Support, highlights trust as the difference marker.
“There’s a lot of folks who are very competent in providing financial planning and investment advice for good money managers. The real barrier in this industry is trust and being able to earn the clients’ trust and to have open communication with them.”
Wealth management firms' culture
When determining the 5-Star winning firms of 2024, the scope went beyond pure technical ability.
A significant part of that is the environment of the business, its atmosphere and ethos, which is a difference marker in defining the leading wealth management firms.
Desai of Ara Compliance Support says, “The top performers should have an advisory consultative culture as opposed to a sales culture. There is more emphasis on building long-term relationships, perhaps foregoing short-term gain. A perfect example is collecting referral fees or selling products that the advisor is not comfortable with or doesn’t know very well.”
He adds, “That kind of mercenary approach doesn’t work for the best advisors. They should be on the client’s side and be a protector for the client.”
Sharing an insight into the internal culture at Wellington-Altus, Hauser says, “We work hard at providing a leading-edge digital stack and neat features that advisors can capitalize on. Advisors will remember us for being a culture that’s electric and fun, and brings out the best of them as both individuals and professionals.”
This is echoed by Woodgate Financial’s Pereira.
“You should absolutely care about your clients and treat them the way you treat your staff internally.”
This type of mindset and culture has a direct impact on how the firm conducts business.
Pereira explains, “You need an open culture that is going to collaborate, that is going to go the extra mile and beyond, and that is going to be encouraged and rewarded to do that. This framing is important because it enables firms to meet their end goal, which is to better the client’s life.”
Methodology
To find the 5-Star Wealth Management Firms (previously 5-Star Brokerages) of 2024, Wealth Professional solicited applications from firms across Canada. The WP team invited applicants to explain how they were excelling in key areas like culture, compliance, training, and technology. To be eligible, each firm had to be a full-service brokerage with a minimum of three locations.
Winners were judged by the substance of their nominations, based on specific examples of outcomes that were achieved in the last 12 months and the relevant data to support their claims. The WP team carefully reviewed each nomination, examining how each firm had made a meaningful and tangible difference in the financial services industry.
