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From the Editor: Geoff Kirbyson
I had a know-it-all editor at the Winnipeg Free Press who rolled his eyes at me years ago when I said I was going to look something up online.
It was the mid-1990s and there was one computer in the newsroom that was connected to the World Wide Web.
“The internet,” he scoffed. “It’s just a fad!”
Fast forward a few months and every reporter and editor in the newsroom could look up whatever they wanted during the internet’s infancy. Within reason, of course, the modem speeds were tortoise-like.
(My editor, ever on the leading edge of technology, used his internet connection to do online crosswords in between smoke breaks.)
We had no idea, of course, about the internet’s potential but with every passing year there was something new to distract us from working. There was Wikipedia, then Ask Jeeves (Google it), then Facebook and then spam. And thank God for YouTube introducing us videos of cute cats and people wiping out and hurting themselves.
Today, the internet is practically everywhere and can seemingly do practically anything in a couple of seconds. Dinner reservation? Done.
Have a bet about who won the Stanley Cup in 1948? Got it. Sign off on your new mortgage? No problem.
But now we’re on the cusp of another innovation that has the potential of upending our lives just like the internet did 30 years ago. Maybe even more so.
AI — that’s artificial intelligence for the luddites — isn’t very well known in a lot of circles. Much of the coverage it has received in the media has been about students using it to write high school history papers.
(I’m sure my old editor is convinced this is a fad, too, as his Commodore 64 collects dust in the corner.)
Geoff
Back to School
Advisors Need Education to Reflect the Changing Times
“The work has changed, the issues have changed and the demographics have changed so the education must change, too.” – Evelyn Jacks
Financial advisors need to upgrade their education as society enters the sweet spot of the largest wealth transfer in history or risk losing out to more prepared competitors.
Evelyn Jacks, president of Knowledge Bureau, realizes that not everybody looks forward to “going back to school” but there are significant risks to not adding new courses and designations to your resume because the environment is shifting so rapidly.“
In our tax world, things are changing weekly, the situation can change rapidly in your clients’ lives and economic events are always happening on the global stage. We keep an eye on the life, financial and economic events that can impact a client’s financial decision making. And the role of the advisors, equipped with up-to-date credentials, is to give them peace of mind,” she says.
Knowledge Bureau is a Winnipeg-based educational institute that provides a world-class continuing education for financial professionals focused on the pulse of change.
PRIVATE INVESTMENTS FOR THE PUBLIC
Kinsted Wealth Provides Access to Opportunities Unavailable to the Average Investor
It used to be that you needed a billion dollars to have an institutional-quality portfolio. Not anymore.
Over the last six years, the team at Kinsted Wealth has overseen an evolution of the Calgary-based firm’s investment platform from traditional stocks, bonds and mutual funds to private asset classes, such as private equity, venture capital and even private infrastructure. The move was made after studying the strategies employed by the Canada Pension Plan, the Yale University Endowment and other institutional investors.
“We knew the private markets were evolving to allow access to institutional-quality private managers by wealth management firms, along with improving liquidity conditions. We wanted to get ahead of the marketplace to provide these benefits for our clients,” says Brent Smith, Kinsted’s chief investment officer.
“We thought, ‘if this is good enough for institutions, why isn’t anyone providing private clients with this exposure?”
To access many of the opportunities in which Kinsted invests would normally require a minimum investment of USD$10 million.
Throughout the transition, clients’ fee structures have stayed the same, while the portfolios’ long-term potential has improved.
AI Turning Hackers Into Criminal Masterminds
SideDrawer helps keep valuable client data safe
If you’re curious about the last time something rocked the world with the same impact that AI is having on mankind today, you’ve got to go back a long time.
To the wheel. Or maybe fire.
Artificial intelligence is being integrated into all aspects of our lives but it’s being used for so much more than writing high school term papers with a couple of clicks of a mouse. It ranges from facial recognition on your iPhone and self-driving vehicles to robotics and ground-breaking medical research.
But for all the potentially good things, it is also being harnessed by criminals of all abilities from around the world with their eyes on pillaging billions of dollars.
Ali Qureshi, chief revenue officer and co-founder of SideDrawer, a Toronto-based digital vault platform, says AI can transform the most unsophisticated cyber pickpocket into a villain worthy of being in the latest Mission Impossible movie.
“Before ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms, criminals had to write their own e-mails to trick somebody so they could hack in. It required effort to create a message and have it look and feel believable. Then the e-mail had to fool you to go somewhere. It took time, effort, creativity and a command of the English language,” he says.
“With generative AI it takes one or two prompts to create e-mails that are well written and can fool people. You can use it to create code that puts malware into documents and gives you access to somebody’s computer. The bar is next to zero. In the past, you had to have skill. Now anybody can do it over the weekend. It’s exploding in usage.”
FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESK
The Big are Getting Bigger! A Summer of M&A
Two major mergers were announced recently – and both will have important implications for financial advisors, dealers and wealth managers across Canada.
First, we see Investment Planning Counsel (IPC) buying De Thomas Wealth. Many advisors who recently joined De Thomas came from IPC’s sister company, IG Wealth Management. How happy will these advisors be to be pulled right back into the Power Corp. fold? They left that world for a reason.
Second, we see IA Financial Group buying RF Capital – yes, that RF Capital! Advisors at Richardson Wealth, among them some of the largest in Canada, are in shock.
These acquisitions are game changers for the buyers and the sellers.
Not long ago, National Bank acquired CWB Wealth. I know advisors who have already abandoned this new entity, as consolidation like this tends to have far-reaching implications. This leads me to my core question: Why does this even matter?
Expert Advice
3 Ways to Add Cash Flow Planning to Your Practice
By STEPHANIE HOLMES-WINTON
A cash flow plan should no longer be considered optional, nor should it be an ancillary service for financial professionals. It’s a vital component of any financial plan and should be a core service of anyone claiming to provide financial advice. Cash flow touches everything your clients do and all financial products either protect cash flow or create future cash flow.
HERE ARE THREE WAYS YOU CAN MAKE CASH FLOW PLANNING A VIABLE AND PROFITABLE REALITY FOR YOUR PRACTICE.
1. Make sure clients are aware you provide cash flow advice. Today’s clients need far more than investment, insurance and tax advice from financial professionals. A cash flow plan is not a budget so it cannot be replaced with spreadsheets or expense-tracking apps. Instead, it should help clients manage their current resources, and use behaviour-based changes and account structure to free up the funds to implement your recommendations. Make sure it’s part of the conversation with all new clients.
Putting Your Mortgage to Work For You
Empower Your Clients: The Critical Role of Financial Literacy
Robinson Smith wants to help Canadians transform their biggest expense into the biggest wealth-building tool for their retirement.
The president and CEO of BC-based Smith Manoeuvre Services Corp used to be a financial advisor but he gave up his practice seven years ago to help people with their tax strategies through The Smith Manoeuvre.
First some history.
His father, Fraser, who became a financial planner in the mid-1980s and co-founded Vancouver-based Granville West Group, was bothered by the fact that wealthy Canadians were making their mortgages tax-deductible through complex strategies (and expensive accountants) while low- and middle-class Canadians struggled with non-deductible debt. He also saw that Americans were able to deduct a significant portion of the mortgage interest on their principle residence on their tax returns.
Expert Advice
Financing Growth as an Independent Advisor:What You Need to Know
By: THE CLG TEAM
For many independent financial advisors, growth isn’t just a goal. It’s a necessity. Whether it’s acquiring a book of business, expanding operations or preparing for succession, having access to capital can be the difference between stagnation and scale.
But if you’ve ever tried walking into a bank with a commission-based income and asking for a business loan, you already know the challenge. Commission income is viewed as unstable and doesn’t fit into the “box” for most financial institutions. At Care Lending Group (“CLG”) we see it differently.
We believe in the strength of the independent advisor model. We’ve spent years building a lending platform specifically designed to support Canadian financial professionals including advisors, dealers, portfolio managers, planners and insurance agents with tailored financing solutions that make sense for their business structure.
Most of the lending we do is tied to growth. That might mean financing the purchase of a book of business, helping with a merger or acquisition or structuring a buy-in transaction for a junior partner. We also support advisors through succession plans, shareholder buyouts and equity takeouts. In short, we finance the building blocks that allow a practice to grow and remain competitive.
Unlocking New Avenues for Growth
A Look into BCV’s Alternative Investment Strategies
In today’s complex and often volatile market, financial planners and advisors are increasingly seeking innovative solutions to help their clients achieve their financial goals. Traditional portfolios of stocks and bonds, while still essential, may no longer be sufficient to provide the desired levels of growth and income, especially in a world of shifting economic landscapes. This is where alternative investments can play a pivotal role and for advisors looking to provide their clients with access to this sophisticated asset class working with a portfolio management firm with expertise in this asset class, can be a game-changer.
Enter BCV Asset Management, a portfolio management firm that has been building a reputation for excellence since its founding in 2007. Now a wholly-owned subsidiary of ATB Financial, BCV has grown to manage about $6.3 billion in assets as of June 2025. What sets BCV apart is its unwavering focus on discretionary portfolio management. BCV acts as a fiduciary for its clients, which means every decision is made with the client’s best interest at heart, a principle that aligns perfectly with the character of a dedicated financial advisor.
At the core of BCV’s offering are its separately managed accounts (SMAs), which provide a level of customization, transparency and tax efficiency that is often unattainable with mass-market retail investment products. Each portfolio is meticulously crafted based on a client’s unique Investment Policy Statement (IPS), taking into account their specific personal and financial circumstances, risk profile and investment needs and objectives, among other factors. This custom-made approach is a far cry from the one-size-fits-all nature of many investment products.
The BCV Multi-Strategy Alternatives Fund: A Gateway to Institutional-Style InvestingWhile BCV has a well-established expertise in traditional equity and fixed-income strategies, it’s the company’s Multi-Strategy Alternatives Fund that is generating interest among forward-thinking advisors. In the past, access to private alternative investments was the exclusive domain of large institutional investors, such as pension funds and endowments. However, BCV’s growing size and scope have enabled it to bring these same institutional-grade opportunities to its clients.