Philosophy
prudence
We want to be recognized for the prudence of our advice and products we use. If you are looking for aggressive investment strategies and very volatile investments providing unlikely but spectacular results, you are at the wrong place. We choose prudence first, and there may be many layers of prudence in one’s financial life, yet we offer as good returns in the long term as stock indexes, but with much less volatility.
Fairness
It is so important to us to offer planning in a fair way. Fair for the client, fair for us, fair for the companies offering the products. Our compensation is driven by a sense of social fairness, which means charging less than our competitors, and providing better advice to our clients.
If you want to get help and have the feeling that you are treated fairly, not being sold something you don’t need, and paying unfair fees, you are at the right place!
Honesty
The financial advisory industry has incentives that does not always promote the client’s best interest. Extremely few advisors would recommend products out of their catalogue because we usually get paid a % of the assets our clients invest with us.
We take great pride in only offering what we think is to your benefit and be honest enough to tell you if other offerings could be better for you. Every year we recommend to a lot of our Quebec clients to invest in FTQ and CSN funds which are labour-sponsored funds eligible for an extra tax credit. Both of these products are captive, meaning they are only being offered by their respective organizations. We send about 70% of our Quebec clients over 40 to these funds and deprive ourselves of interesting compensation.
Our own personal portfolios are composed of the same vehicles and products that we propose to our clients, we don’t sell anything but the best for our clients and their families, as we would for ourselves and our families.
Intellectual rigour
There are obvious analogies to be made between a chess game and financial planning. You must analyze different angles, try to forecast, prioritize, and ultimately try to come up with the best plan. In financial planning, you analyze these realities: budget, time horizon, taxes every year and at death, marginal tax rate, how much to invest, to withdraw, withdraw from RRSP, TFSA or non-registered assets? Etc.
Intelligence is at the heart of our offering.
Empathy
We care about our clients, and we like to say that a good financial planner is half actuary, half psychologist. We need to listen to our clients and sometimes discover their profound motivations to do a good job.
We treat our clients as if they were family.
For us it’s all about using our talent to help make the world a better and more honest place.