Transcript

They're our biggest fans and sometimes our biggest critics. For so many of us, family is the driving force, the motivation to make the best decisions possible, especially when it comes to building wealth. I'm Stephanie Mattice with Michael Yip on MYWP's market cast. Today we're bringing in a guest to talk about family and investment planning. Tony Maiorino is the head of the RBC family office services team with Wealth Management Canada, leading a team of 100 that he's going to tell us more about. Welcome, Tony and Michael.

Hey, it's great to be here.

Hey thanks, Steph.

How do you think family factors play into decision-making for your clients?

Well, I think anytime you're bringing family dynamics into family decisions around wealth, it can add a level of complexity. And further to the family dynamics, there's the in-law dynamics. And so all of these things come to bear.

Mike, this is why you wanted to bring Tony in.

Tony's been at the table for many years with the team advising many very large, affluent families. And I think that's the experience that him and his team brings. Life cycle matters a lot with families. So when you're in that wealth-building stage, perhaps you have a corporation, your kids are younger, you're focused on building your company, and perhaps you get to the point where you're going to sell your company and come into some significant wealth at those different stages, I think family plays a bigger and bigger role as you get older.

Tony, how do you describe what you do?

Well, the team family office services is made up of professionals, lawyers, accountants, actuaries, business valuators, tax experts whose role it is to really get to the family, understand the objectives and the goals of the family, and then really provide that Genesis of an idea on moving something forward. So I would say our team works complimentary with many families, professional advisors, their lawyers, and their accountants.

You're working with an advisor like Mike?

Yeah. Our objective is really to be either that first thought of an idea on how to move something forward, or perhaps we're there to validate a thought that has been put forward by somebody else. It could be their CFO, it could be their lawyer, or their accountant who's saying, hey, should think about doing this. And the client wants to get some objective advice. And that's the role that we play in family office services within RBC with the advisors that we work with.

There's a long list here of considerations in terms of US cross-border, insurance specialists, financial planners, business volutes, estate lawyers. So is it fair to say that you're looking out for the best interests of your clients while they're dealing with all of those aspects of life?

Families like that have their own family offices. The services within those family offices, that's what my team provides. Hence the term family office services, the tax planning, the estate planning, financial planning, business owner planning or business succession planning. Charitable giving which is very near and dear to many people's hearts. Financial literacy for their children. These are all services that are available within the family office services team at RBC that Michael and advisors like him draw from to be able to support their families that they work with. They can create a similar infrastructure through the relationship that they have with Michael or advisors like him.

And I think that the ability for us to speak directly with their advisors, our clients, advisors, and sometimes offering similar views or slightly different views or different opinions is very, very valuable for the families we work with. That approach gives them a lot of confidence. And we're also here without a schedule.

One of our business owner specialists might work through 20 or 30 successions of a business in a year, or be involved in a number of successions over the course of a year. Their muscle memory, their knowledge, their working with all of the different law firms and all of the different accounting firms because they've seen so many, they've done so many. The muscle memory is there. I liken it to a golfer like myself who golfs two or three times a year isn't very good. But a golfer who golfs 100 times a season and hits the driving range and hits thousands of balls.

What gives you the edge over anyone else out there in Canada?

It's the length of time that we've been doing this. We've had this team since 2007. Got long-tenured employees. It's baked into our process.

I think very simply, the access that we have to for example, a Prashant Patel who some of our clients may have met or will meet, he goes back decades in the firm. And his experience is significant. And then if you combine that with the investment management expertise of RBC and scale, I think that that's a very tough combination to achieve elsewhere.

What's a big surprise to business owners or founders when they're engaging with your services?

The level of detail that we get into in the interactions that we have with them.

I'm just thinking of one story a few weeks ago where a member of your team did a review of a Florida trust that was supposed to be good estate planning for a Canadian that had a US property. And when they reviewed the trust, they realized the trust wasn't written correctly. The team supporting our clients in this manner gives you an idea of the level of detail.

Another point was sometimes tax planning changes. So knowing where different tax strategies lie in terms of aggressiveness and where they might being reviewed by, let's say, the CRA. I think that's very, very important for our clients to know what our opinion is on that. So the value is, as Tony said, very precise, very deeper than people would imagine.

And you're dealing with complex issues for business owners. Where do you think they need the most help?

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business Owners did a study a few years ago where they said the research showed that 90% of business owners don't have a formal succession plan in place. And so I think that's a huge hurdle. The reality is your business is going to transition to someone else. It's going to happen voluntarily or it's going to happen involuntarily. And so for there to be a plan that's in place that lets everybody know what's going to happen is so important.

One element is in your head if you're ideating that you might give it to employees or you might pass it on to a family member, a son or a daughter in the business, I think these are a lot of ideas that float around in business owners' heads. That's not a formal plan. That actually can be a detriment. Because if you're the only one who knows and suddenly, you're not there to tell everybody, or things have changed, and you haven't documented things down, that can be a real issue.

Succession planning is a very deep exercise. That takes many, many years to do.

I believe very strongly whether it's for planning for your business, planning for retirement, planning to purchase a cottage, whatever it is you're thinking of doing, understanding the pros and the cons of all the different options is the only way you can make the best decision. So going through this planning process really we try to help identify. Here are the pros. Here are the cons. But understanding the implications, that's what's really going to drive that decision process.

What's next on your roadmaps?

That's an interesting question. I think in this day and age, the melding of technology with planning is really where we're focused on. How do we get maximum efficiency utilizing technology for our people so we can provide faster turnaround on the guidance and the recommendations that we're providing and the work that we do with both our clients, our advisors and their centers of influence.

I just saw this week as an example. One of our client COIs used an auto-summary for a Zoom meeting, summarized all the notes, and it did it within 10 seconds. The problem, in my view, is that they haven't had enough guidance. So I think people are looking for somebody and a team and an organization that can help provide them that guidance, sift through all of that information, help them execute.

It's interesting you bring up the summarization tool of a meeting. I was in a meeting where that tool was actually used. And I was blown away by how efficient it was. But I'll tell you, when I received it, somebody had looked at it and had highlighted where there was emphasis by the client or emphasis by myself. Because the tool only knows that I said something.

But the person who sits in the room and notices that the client, when I said something, was nodding and makes that note in the margin, that's the difference. That's the melding of the human side with the technology. The technology doesn't see the client nodding. The technology doesn't see the spouse making a note. The technology isn't able to do that. And that's where we're trying to bring these two things together in the best interests of our clients, their families, and their businesses.

I'm Stephanie Mattice. That was Michael Yip on MYWP's market cast. Our guest today was Tony Maiorino Who's the head of the RBC family office services team with Wealth Management Canada. Thank you, Tony.

It was a pleasure. Thank you.

And of course, Michael Yip on MYWP's market cast.

Thank you.

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