Investment solutions

The four-step Portfolio Approach

The basis of long-term, successful money management, the Portfolio Approach is predicated around creating a customized investment portfolio that reflects your investment needs throughout the various stages of your life.

There are four steps to the custom Portfolio Approach:

Step 1 : Understanding your needs and goals

Our first and most important job is to listen to you and understand your needs and dreams for the future. We will take the time to understand your specific investment goals, such as saving for retirement or financing a business, and the timeframes available to achieve them. In addition, we will consider your return expectations and tolerance for risk. This “discovery process” doesn't end here—as time passes, and your situation changes, we will work with you to ensure that your investment strategy remains current.

Step 2 : Creating your investment strategy

With an in-depth understanding of your personal situation, we are able to create your investment strategy. This provides the framework for managing your financial assets going forward. It clearly sets out your investment objectives, income needs, timeframes, asset mix guidelines, security selection criteria and review process. Your investment strategy helps keep your investment goals and preferences in clear focus. It also provides a benchmark for measuring the progress you're making towards achieving your goals.

Step 3 : Building your custom-designed portfolio

Once you've approved your investment strategy, we can structure your personal portfolio.

In building a personalized investment portfolio for you, we select from a universe of international investments. This includes:

• Investments for growth, such as Canadian, U.S. and international stocks
• Investments for income, including government and corporate bonds
• Investments for wealth preservation, including guaranteed investments

We also have access to leading-edge investment strategy and research provided by the RBC Investment Strategy Committee, RBC Capital Markets and third-party, independent firms.

You will have a diversified portfolio that conforms to the guidelines and direction you set in advance. This process means you will receive specific, appropriate investment recommendations, and each recommendation will be clear and well thought-out.

Step 4 : Managing your portfolio

The last step in the process is to monitor your progress towards your continued success. We will review your portfolio with you on a regular basis, and recommend appropriate changes to keep you on track. You will also receive detailed account statements, portfolio review statements, transaction updates and tax reports.

For more information, please contact us today.

ESG and responsible investing

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Our values are at the core of every choice we make. Making decisions with greater purpose helps the world become a better place.

More and more people are turning to responsible investing— an umbrella term encompassing the approaches used to deliberately incorporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations into your investment portfolio.

A growing trend

As companies continue to innovate and strive for positive impacts, responsible investing opportunities continue to increase.

Like many of our clients, RBC Wealth Management focuses on community involvement, diversity and inclusion and environmental responsibility to support both current and future generations. To help you create a positive social and environmental impact, we offer a broad range of solutions designed to align with your values and financial goals.

Responsible investing

We can help you invest with purpose and apply responsible investing approaches to your wealth plan, including ESG integration, ESG screening & exclusion, Thematic ESG investing, and Impact investing.

These approaches are not mutually exclusive; multiple approaches can be applied simultaneously within the investment process. We believe there are four main applications of this data:

ESG integration

Systematically incorporating material ESG factors into investment decision making to identify potential risks and opportunities and help improve long-term, risk-adjusted returns.

ESG integration happens at the same time as traditional financial analysis. ESG integration is about understanding the material factors that are important to a company as it helps create a clearer picture in order to better understand the potential impacts to long term value. A few examples of ESG factors include:

ESG screening & exclusion

Applying positive or negative screens to include or exclude assets from the investment universe.

This is often referred to as investing in line with values or values alignment. ESG exclusions and screening can include positive/negative screening, socially responsible investing (SRI), inclusions/exclusions, ethical, faith, and norms-based investing, best-in-class, and seeking leaders’ strategies.

Negative screening

Positive screening

Thematic ESG investing

Investing in assets involved in a particular ESG-related theme or seeking to address a specific social or environmental issue. With thematic investing, there is an intentional allocation of capital to a specific investment theme (e.g. climate change, gender equity, sustainability-related categories).

There is significant investment into technologies that alleviate the threats to sustainability. At RBC Wealth Management, we call the technologies that help tackle the threats to sustainability “SusTech”—Sustainability through Technology. These include:

Impact investing

Investing in assets that intend to generate a measurable positive social or environmental impact. Impact is the third dimension of performance, alongside traditional financial risk and return. Impact investors want a return on their investment, but may also be willing to take a capital loss as long as there are tangible results for the investment. In that way, it is essential to measure the impact of this investment.

A third dimension of performance

Invest with a greater purpose

RBC Wealth Management can help you integrate responsible investing into your portfolio. Contact us today to learn more. 

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Required disclosures

Research resources

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The strategies, advice and technical content in this publication are provided for the general information only and benefit of our clients. This publication is not intended to provide specific financial, investment, tax, legal, accounting or other advice for you, and should not be relied upon in that regard. Readers should consult their own professional advisor when planning to implement a strategy to ensure that individual circumstances have been considered properly and it is based on the latest available information.

Like any type of investing, ESG and responsible investing involves risks, including possible loss of principal. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. This material has been prepared without regard to the individual financial circumstances and objectives of persons who receive it. All opinions and estimates constitute the author’s judgment as of the date of this publication, are subject to change without notice and are provided in good faith but without legal responsibility. It is not possible to invest directly in an index. Nothing in this communication constitutes legal, accounting or tax advice or individually tailored investment advice. RBC Wealth Management does not provide tax or legal advice. All decisions regarding the tax or legal implications of your investments should be made in connection with your independent tax or legal advisor. The information contained herein has been derived from sources believed to be reliable, but no representation or warranty, express or implied, is made by RBC Wealth Management, its affiliates or any other person as to its accuracy, completeness or correctness. 

â / ™ Trademark(s) of Royal Bank of Canada.  Used under licence.  © Royal Bank of Canada. 2022. All rights reserved. 

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Guided Portfolios

Enjoy a highly disciplined approach to equity investing with RBC Dominion Securities Guided Portfolios. With Guided Portfolios, you follow a highly disciplined RBC investment strategy process that guides your decisions to buy or sell individual equities.

Key features and benefits of Guided Portfolios:

• Invest in our top-ranked stocks from various sectors of the economy
• Benefit from sector weightings based on our most current investment outlook
• Remove the guesswork and emotion from buying and selling individual equities

Designed to fit your needs and style

There are a wide range of Guided Portfolio to help meet different financial objectives, including growth-oriented Canadian, U.S. and global equity portfolios, as well as income-oriented Canadian and U.S. portfolios.

A Guided Portfolio could be ideal if you:

• Want to follow a highly-disciplined investment approach with proven results
• Want guidance with all your investment decisions, while retaining final decision-making authority

Contact us

The freedom to live the life you want

If you desire greater freedom to focus on what’s really important to you, and the confidence of knowing that your portfolio is in the care of trusted professionals, we invite you to consider Private Investment Management, our premium level of discretionary wealth management. 

Busy professionals and executives, travelers, retirees and snowbirds often find that the greater their wealth, the more time they require every day to manage it. If you are responsible for investing for a not-for-profit organization, foundation or endowment, you may also find that the expertise required to make investment decisions according to specific guidelines can be time-consuming and complex. 

Whether you need your time to focus on your career, manage the needs of an organization or travel outside of the country for long periods, Private Investment Management may be the right solution for you.

How it works

By delegating your investment management to an accredited portfolio manager, who works within your specific investment preferences, constraints and risk tolerance, you can free yourself from and still be confident that your investment plan is on track. Because your approval is not required for every single transaction, we can make time-sensitive decisions quickly, helping you get closer to your investment objectives and freeing you from the burden of daily portfolio decisions. 

A dedicated portfolio manager to serve you 

You can be confident in the management of your wealth, because only experienced investment advisors who have met strict industry-wide qualifications for education, assets under management and investment experience are licensed to provide this level of discretionary investment management. 

Investment policy statements capture your needs

The Investment Policy Statement is your specific mandate that details all your objectives, goals and constraints in managing your portfolio. You can think of it as the charter or master plan that we create to manage your portfolio.

Essential standards for quality and oversight

Every portfolio we build is based on core asset quality requirements that set the standards for security concentration, industry and sector diversification, market capitalization and credit quality. An additional Portfolio Implementation and Risk Monitoring Group monitors the portfolio for alignment with our investment management guidelines and the preferences, constraints and other unique directives set out in your customized Investment Policy Statement. An additional compliance team ensures that your portfolio meets industry regulations and legal standards. By auditing our work, as well as the portfolios we manage, this team can help provide you with even greater peace of mind.