Tag Archives: Noel D’Souza

Your Money, Your Life – A Discussion with Steadyhand’s Tom Bradley

Tom Bradley, President and co-founder of Steadyhand Investment Management Ltd.

Tom Bradley, President and co-founder of Steadyhand Investment Management Ltd.

Money Coach Noel D’Souza, P.Eng.,CFP® recently sat down with Tom Bradley, President and co-founder of Steadyhand Investment Management Ltd. to talk about what Steadyhand offers Canadian investors how it serves its clients and his perspective on personal finance in Canada.

In addition to Tom Bradley’s leadership at Steadyhand, he selects and monitors Steadyhand fund managers and manages the firm’s Founders Fund. He has over 30 years of experience in the investment industry, including senior leadership roles at other well-known investment management firms. He currently serves as the Chairperson of the Investment Committee of the Vancouver Foundation.

Noel: Tom, who would you say is Steadyhand’s typical client and what services does Steadyhand offer?

Tom: We have a wide variety of clients, but I’d have to say that the bulk of our clients are what we call midlife professionals, in their forties and fifties, busy with kids and careers and the stuff of life. Very smart people who just don’t have the time, interest, or maybe knowledge, on the investment side of their finances, and so they look to us to do that for them.

2016-05-16_1212We also have an increasing number of young clients. Our low minimums, which are ten thousand per fund, have opened that door. But of course we also have many retired clients as well.

Our average client portfolio is around $275 000, but we have many clients under $100,000. We offer them investment management and we offer investment advice, not holistic financial planning.

Noel: I think that’s one of the reasons why Steadyhand’s work resonates with what we do at Money Coaches Canada, and why we work well together; we also typically serve busy mid-to-late career professionals, but we provide that holistic financial planning element.

What would you say is the single greatest benefit that a client will experience when working with Steadyhand?

Tom: I’d say that the single greatest thing we do for our clients is right in our name; we do a very good job of providing a steady hand. Dealing with the ups and downs of the market is crucial to long term returns. We keep people on track. We’ve looked at the data and our clients are letting the power of compounding, which Einstein calls the eighth wonder of the world, work for them in growing their assets over time.

We’re all living longer. We want people to think ahead to what I call the last third of their lives, which is going to start somewhere in their sixties and could very well go into their nineties. We need to get people to think ahead to that last third. Continue reading

Questions to Ask Your Financial Advisor

By Noel D’Souza, CFP®

iStock_000043073486_MediumGetting good financial advice in Canada is a tricky matter – trickier than it should be, in my opinion. The main challenges facing a seeker of financial advice come down to:

  • Can I find someone qualified to assist me with my particular needs?
  • Can I rely on this person to have my best interests at heart?
  • Are we a good fit to work together?

Given these challenges, what is a person to do?

As with so many things in life, being an informed consumer will serve you well. But again, there’s a bit of a Catch-22 here. There’s an inherent imbalance in knowledge when one is seeking advice of any kind. If you’re like me, think of the last time you visited a mechanic and were told “Your right rear differential thing-a-ma-jig is leaking fluid and needs to be replaced. It will take 2 hours and cost X $. Should I go ahead with the repair?”

Huh?!

After all, you’re seeking advice from an expert because you don’t have the knowledge and experience in that area, right? But there are a few basic principles to remember and questions to ask that will serve you well. Continue reading

Money Coaches in Conversation – What you should understand about fees and financial advice

Recently Women’s Financial Learning Centre and Money Coaches Canada co-founder Karin Mizgala sat down with Money Coach Noel D’Souza to discuss the changing landscape of financial advice in Canada.

Women's Financial Learning Centre and Money Coaches Canada co-founder Karin Mizgala

MCC & WFLC co-founder Karin Mizgala

Karin: As someone in the financial industry, it’s very common to be asked by people outside the industry, to explain the different fee structures of financial advice. So, Noel, let’s start with an overview of the common compensation models available to Canadians today.

Noel: The most prevalent model we see in the industry is the commission-based advice model, where an advisor sells products, typically mutual funds or some other investment product, they may also sell insurance, and they receive a sales commission for making the sale and also quite likely receive a trailing commission which is supposed to cover on-going advice and services. Usually the client never sees the commission fees, and we’ll be discussing how that may change in the future, but usually those fees are hidden within the cost structure of the product they are buying.

The second type is fee-based. An advisor will charge the client fees based on the size of the assets under management, a percentage of the total portfolio.

The third model, which is up and coming, is the model we work under; fee-for-service. Clients pay a fee directly and explicitly to the advisor for services rendered and it’s not tied to product sales, or size of assets, in any way.

Karin: So that will sound pretty straight forward to most people, why does it become murky, what are the implications for someone seeking financial advice? What are the benefits and shortcomings of each model? Continue reading