There is strength in numbers, as the saying goes. But when it comes to personal finance, this union is usually limited to couples. However, you can also join extended families to gain access to higher-quality and lower-cost advisory services. Services that are usually reserved for the wealthy or wealthy.
In the personal financial services sector, this is often presented as “private management” of personal wealth and assets. Or even “private banking” services in certain financial institutions.
Their target audience? Individuals or immediate families (parents and children) whose total personal assets exceed $2 to $3 million in equity, investments in financial markets, real estate, retirement savings accounts, etc. A threshold that can be difficult to reach alone, but which becomes more accessible when grouped together with relatives or business partners.
These specialists are particularly interested in cases where asset management becomes more complex in terms of investments, tax optimization, business transfer or estate planning.
Complexity sought
“The more complicated it is, the more we like it. Especially when it allows us to bring together around the same table the various specialized advisory services that these people used to consult individually,” says Jean-Sébastien Lemieux, national director of the 1859 Private Management division at National Bank Financial.
At the Desjardins Group, we are also seeing an increase in the number of business people at the end of their careers who want to optimize the management of their assets by integrating that of their loved ones.
For years, we have seen this wave of entrepreneurs and business people coming who, upon reaching retirement age, must transfer their business and assets to their loved ones.
Martin Bray, Vice President and General Manager of Private Management at Desjardins Wealth Management
“We are in the middle of this wave these years. We are seeing more and more groupings of personal assets into family wealth among the relatives of successful business people or investors in order to obtain advisory services better adapted to their personal and family situation.”
At IG Private Wealth Management, financial planner and tax specialist Hugo Lehoux, based in Beauce, points out that integrated and personalized management of family assets is particularly important in the increasing number of cases of business people who “find themselves with a large amount of money” after the resale of their company or business.
“For most of them and their loved ones, it’s the first time in their lives that they feel like lottery winners,” says Hugo Lehoux.
“It seems like a lot, a few million dollars in a family estate. But without proper preparation and management, it can also go up in smoke very quickly!”
Advantages, prerequisites
What are the main advantages of qualifying for “private management” advisory services for personal or family assets?
According to the interlocutors of The Pressthese advantages can be summarized as follows:
- access to specialized and personalized advisory services based on the needs and objectives of each situation (financial planning, taxation, investment management, estate planning, etc.);
- access to financial services and investment products that are more sophisticated and sometimes less expensive (in proportional fees) than those available to ordinary customers;
- access to economies of scale on specialist advisory service fees based on the complexity and scale of personal or family assets.
Furthermore, in addition to the asset value qualification threshold, what elements should be considered when setting up private wealth management for family reunification?
“It is important that we can understand the individual circumstances of the members of a family who are pooling the management of their assets. This is how we can then establish good planning and good integrated management of what they want to accomplish, but also what they want to avoid with their family assets,” summarizes Alan Desnoyers, regional vice-president, Quebec and Eastern Canada, of the RBC Private Banking division of wealth management services at Royal Bank.
At Desjardins, Martin Bray believes that to properly establish joint management of assets between close family members, the participants in this family heritage (parents and children, brothers and sisters) must be willing to overcome their feeling of “embarrassment or unease” in confiding in external advisors.
“The human aspect is sometimes the most complicated element to elucidate in the preparation of a private management plan for family wealth. It sometimes takes an analyst-consultant from outside the family circle to see more clearly among the expectations, interests and needs of each person, and then help them to reconcile in family wealth management,” indicates the vice-president and general manager of private management at Desjardins.