Category: Family CFO
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How Canadian Family Foundations Manage Their Investment Portfolios
Across Canada, family foundations take many forms—from small, entrepreneur-led charities to large, multi-generational organizations with dedicated staff and professional advisors. How these foundations manage their investment portfolios can vary dramatically, depending on their size, history, and governance structure. Below are some of the most common approaches used by family foundations today, along with the strengths…
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Family Office Checklist for Canadian Investors
Successful family office wealth management doesn’t depend on being the greatest investor. Optimizing for risk and return matters, but financial goals can often be achieved with plain-vanilla, liquid portfolios. The greater challenge for wealthy investors is succession. When families fail to prepare the next generation to take responsibility, no amount of hot stock tips will…
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Are You Paying Too Much for Investment Advice?
When it comes to investment advice, many wealthy families are paying far more than they realize. The standard model of charging a percentage of assets under management (AUM) seems innocent enough. But hides conflicts of interest. Since, the bigger your account grows, the more expensive it gets. And, not with a proportional increase in value…
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Beyond Returns: Aligning Wealth With Values
When families think about their investments, they often focus on financial returns alone. But for many families today, that isn’t enough. They want their wealth to reflect their values, to become a force for good in the world. Not just a way to grow capital. Recently, we thought about a family in this situation, and…
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Active Returns, Benchmarks, and the Truth About Performance
Many investors describe their portfolio performance in raw returns, like, “my portfolio made 15% last year” or “my portfolio gained $300,000”. While such statements may be true, they don’t tell us the whole story. And cannot tell us whether results have been good or bad. Since, what if the average return was 20% compared to…
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Family Governance: The Missing Link Between Wealth and Legacy
For many families, the challenge isn’t just how to grow wealth. It’s how to make it last. Generational wealth is often lost not because of poor investment decisions, but because of a lack of structure, clarity, and shared understanding. This is where family governance comes in. Yet despite growing interest, most families still ask a…
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Stage 1: Getting Started with a New Family
When a new family begins working with us, we know that the first stage of onboarding sets the tone for everything that follows. It’s not just about transferring data it’s about building trust, creating clarity, and laying the groundwork for a long-term partnership. At this beginning stage, we will be turning complexity into something manageable,…
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Income That’s Built to Last
Step 4 – Why Selling Assets Shouldn’t Be Your Income Plan When a portfolio needs to fund a lifestyle, many investors fall into a quiet trap: generating cash by selling off assets. On the surface, it seems harmless. And, it might even align with “total return investing”. But over time, drawing on your capital base can…
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Restructuring Fees and Aligning Incentives
Step 3 – The Real Cost of Complexity When we conducted a full audit of the family’s portfolio, the most jaw-dropping figure wasn’t performance-related. It was the fees: $330,000 per year. And they weren’t even getting full value for it—until we began restructuring fees to reflect the actual value being delivered. That amount was spread…
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When Wealth Grows, Strategy Matters Even More
Step 1 – Creating a Strategy That Reflects the Family’s Goals When this family approached us, they weren’t in crisis. Their $110 million portfolio was diversified. On paper, it seemed like they were doing most things well. However, despite having three investment advisors at wealth management firms, they lacked one essential thing, a unified strategy.…