Category: Strategic Planning
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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.…
-
Step 3: Involve the Next Generation
Once systems are in place and the portfolio is clearly understood, the next natural step is often the hardest to approach: preparing the next generation. In many families we work with, adult children and spouses are kept at arm’s length from the finances—not out of secrecy, but out of habit. The older generation may have…
-
When Diversification Backfires, Streamlined Stewardship Steps In
Case Study: How One Family Reclaimed Control of Their $30M Portfolio A client came to us with a $30 million portfolio spread across three investment advisors. On the surface, everything seemed in order—diversified across Canadian and U.S. equities, fixed income, real estate, alternatives, and cash. A textbook case of manager diversification. But beneath the surface,…
-
A Modern Family Office Transformation
Case Study: From Paper Trails to Peace of Mind When we meet families like this one, we often find a familiar story. Wealth built over time through hard work and intuition, now managed with the same habits that once served well—but are beginning to show their limits. It’s at this crossroads that family office transformation…