Our Mission
We partner with our clients to help them make better investment decisions. Our relationship is forged in honesty, integrity, competence and the interactive search for strategies to enrich their lives.
As a team, our ultimate goal is to provide you and your family with a comprehensive and tailored plan that can help build and protect your wealth.
How does our unique Total WealthCare™ Process work for you? Let’s find out.
At its core, our holistic approach to financial planning is simple. We start by getting to know you and your goals, followed by examining all aspects of your financial position, preparing a roadmap, and then methodically guiding you to achieve your dreams.
STEP 1 DREAM PLAN
Our Total WealthCare™ financial planning process involves getting to know what matters to you most, clarifying your current financial position, understanding your goals and dreams, highlighting any issues, providing written guidance and strategies, and then assisting with implementation followed by periodic review. Plans may be comprehensive or focus on goals such as retirement, charitable giving and/or investment. In all cases, we ensure personal attention and a holistic approach.
STEP 2 PORTFOLIO DIAGNOSTIC
This process involves analyzing all aspects of your existing investments to help reveal efficiencies, reduce unwanted risks and structure your portfolio for success.
We will weigh the correct balance between:
- Asset Allocation
- Geographic Allocation
- Style Allocation
- Risk Analysis
- Fees Analysis
- Returns Analysis
- Cash Flow Methodology
How is success achieved? It requires access to a great deal of information on a regular basis. It requires expertise. And most importantly, it requires objectivity and discipline. We believe that to create the best long-term results for your portfolio, objectivity is key. As independent advisors, our decisions and advice are tailored to you with no bias in our process.
Portfolio construction involves a key component, the Investment Policy Statement or IPS. This instrument will define the factors that ultimately lead to all your investment decisions. It will outline such considerations as risk tolerance, liquidity and downside constraints, expected returns, rebalancing and cash flow requirements.
STEP 3 RISK MANAGEMENT REVIEW
You can rely on us not only to examine the risks you and your family may encounter in achieving your financial goals, but also to create contingency plans should there be adverse circumstances.
Some of the risks we consider are:
Short-term cash What if an emergency struck your family? Could you come up with enough immediate cash without disturbing your long-term portfolio?
Critical illness What if you or your spouse were diagnosed with a critical illness and could no longer work? Where would your income come from? Who would pay the medical bills? What about ongoing treatment?
Disability What if you or your spouse suffered a long-term disability? Would the coverage from your work be enough? The Bank of Canada tells us “4% of all mortgage foreclosures in Canada were caused by the death of a breadwinner and yet 48% were caused by a disability”.
Premature death One of the risks that we never wish to consider is the premature death of our spouse or partner. Beyond the emotional trauma, what happens financially? It is critical that your life insurance will provide for loss of income for your family. We will review your existing plans and recommend any updates or added coverage that may be needed.
Long-term care What if you or your spouse needed long term-care? Do you have enough assets to provide the income necessary to pay for care in a long-term facility?
Estate planning Do you have the goal of leaving a tax-efficient estate to your children, grandchildren and/or charity? Have you had conversations with your loved ones about your intentions? We can help you work through the complexities of this critical component in your planning.
Any of these events would be difficult enough emotionally and financially. That’s where a Risk Management Review comes in. We look at each specific risk so we can make recommendations on how you and your family can navigate them in the event that they occur.
STEP 4 RETIREMENT CASH FLOW AND PLANNING REVIEW
A critical process in securing the comfort of your financial future and achieving peace of mind. It involves understanding the entire picture and working toward your minds-eye of the retirement years that already are or will be, unique to you. This includes on oft-overlooked discipline in managing tax efficient income streams from all eventual resources to meet and sustain retirement cash flow needs. Estate transfer goals may also form a part of this discussion.
STEP 5 ESTATE AND TAX PLANNING
Have you thought about what will happen to your family when you’re no longer there to care for them? A common theme is the delay to engage in estate planning with the misconception that the process will be overwhelmingly complicated and time consuming. We analyze all your assets, both current holdings and anticipated growth, and formulate a plan to pass them on to your beneficiaries or to charitable organizations. As part of this process, we help you complete what is called a “Will Companion”. This document contains the details of your personal financial information that family members or professionals need to know in the event of death or incapacity. The Estate Directory states your wishes and outlines assets, liabilities, account information, and whom to contact. When you engage in our Estate and Tax Planning process, you can feel confident that:
- your estate value (after taxes) will be maximized.
- delays and stress will be minimized for family members.
- you will leave a legacy to your heirs as intended.
STEP 6 PROGRESS REVIEW
Once your Total WealthCare Strategy™ is in place, it is important to review your progress on a regular basis. We request that once per year we are able to coordinate a Progress Review to review any or all of the following:
- your future goals
- any changes to your personal situation that may have an impact on your planning
- a review of your portfolio in relation to market and economic factors
- any changes to your personal situation that may have an impact on your planning
- any changes to the risks associated with achievement of goals