Is your job stressful?
Yes – it can be! But the interesting thing about our job is it really is-at its core-it's a process.
In our increasingly chaotic world, we’ve met many new clients who have such anxiety about their finances that it has led to decision paralysis. They feel the need to react. Or just do something! From our arm’s length perspective we can provide the clarity and the peace of mind that clients need, to help them to stick to the plan that we put together with them. We keep things in perspective and hopefully can be a calming influence in an uncertain time.
Consider the planet Earth when viewed from space. It looks like a big blue ball with some white features. One cannot see the different weather systems causing mayhem around the globe. Perspective. It’s our best advantage and it comes from our experience, our research, and our firm’s depth. In the end, it really comes from our own empathy towards our clients, we feel. In times of chaos and anxiety, the thing our clients need the most is the reassurance that we got this and they’ll be okay.
Do you enjoy what you do?
We do! So many service professions have intermittent engagement with their clients or customers. A lawyer might do a house purchase, mediate a dispute, draft a Will, or settle an Estate. Other professionals provide service on-demand as an accountant, psychologist or chiropractor might. Imagine a career where you have a lifelong professional relationship with individuals and their growing families, from the time when they are young professionals in savings mode, all the way to end when you help them with transferring wealth to their beneficiaries. It’s kind of nice – many have become lifelong friends.
Why don’t you deal with as many people as possible?
While we generally serve wealthy families and individuals across the country, we unfortunately cannot deal with everybody. We actually turn down more business than we serve. We’re a team of five and we like it that way. There are plenty of investment teams with dozens of team members out there. What do all these people do?? We don’t want our staff fielding dozens of calls a day. And who loves staff turnover?? We don’t want to become people managers any more than our clients want us dealing with hundreds of other families - they want us just dealing with them. If they could have us as their very own family office, they would!
How experienced are you?
Our team has very deep experience and, importantly, we are experienced in all types of capital markets and economic conditions. Our team members, combined have been in the investment industry for over 125 years. We have experience in addressing the important financial matters successful individuals face, including asset preservation, tax planning, cash flow management, education finance, company/practice valuation for purchase or sale and, ultimately, the ability to enjoy one’s financial independence.
Why should I choose Montgomery Ouimet Wealth Management?
As a team, we share the same philosophical outlook when it comes to the job we do as asset managers. We’re a team of investment pros who have been around long enough to know how to keep our clients out of trouble when things are going sideways, and we know how to ensure our clients are along for the ride when the markets are busting out.
Discipline. Discipline. Discipline.
We had to say it three times, so it would stick. While your brother-in-law, your golf partner, your colleague at work, and virtually all of the media and prognosticators are full of opinions, strategies and scare-mongering, our clients know that they can count on us to stick to our discipline. We have a plan for you and we stick to it. The rest is just noise.
Accountability.
We only have to say this one once. Our client’s returns are there every quarter for review. We charge our clients their investment costs quarterly, in a transparent manner. We are accountable only to our clients (and the regulators!) and if our clients are not happy, they can fire us.
Care.
We are people who deeply care about the welfare of our clients. We have dealt with some clients for over 30 years. This doesn’t happen if things slip through the cracks, and we always want to make sure that we do not risk a loss of faith. To this end, we ensure that our communications and systems of operation are very tight. We act swiftly to make sure things do not go down the wrong path. It’s all about taking the time and making sure we get it right.
How can we check you out?
We can think of three ways you can be satisfied as to our integrity, acumen and judgment.
The first place anybody would look would be Google. So we’d say take a deep dive and go at least seven pages and we’re pretty sure there is nothing nefarious there! Brian will have all sorts of stuff about oatmeal and scotch and community rink building. Chris runs a lot and has links to his involvement with charities and Run Ottawa. Olivia is definitely not the one-armed stunt woman from South Africa of the same name. And Christine and Aileen simply cannot be found on the internet, and we find that to be quite the feat!
Second, the CIRO Advisor Report (Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization) is the easiest way to ensure that an advisor licensed in Canada does not have any disciplinary actions against them. CIRO has a site called Know Your Advisor: Advisor Report
You can click on the Advisor Reports directly below for Brian and Chris.
Brian Montgomery, CIM Senior Portfolio Manager and/or Chris Ouimet, CFA, CFP, Portfolio Manager
Third, we would provide on request, the names and phone numbers of clients in similar situations to yourself, who will have agreed to share their own experiences working with our team. We regularly also provide historical returns of similar client portfolios, with names and details redacted of course.
How does Montgomery Ouimet Wealth Management get compensated for what you do?
We are discretionary portfolio managers. We manage money for our clients on a fee-for-service platform. We earn a fee for the amount of portfolio assets under management, not for the specific investments we recommend. We are not motivated at all to offer certain types of products. All of our clients’ investment costs are transparent and shown on their investment statements.
What’s your minimum investment, and what are your fees?
Our minimum investment per client family is $500,000. Once that threshold has been met, we will work with people with small balance assets, but they tend to be family or friends whom are referred by our existing clients. This is an important point by the way, as we prefer to deal with as many family members as possible to assist you in your family financial planning.
Our fee schedule is scaled, depending on the amount of assets under management. The higher the assets under management - the less the management fee. Our average client pays roughly a 1% fee. We try to ‘household’ our client families for billing purposes, so that the smaller amounts held by, perhaps children, can access their parents’ lower fee regime.
OK! This all sounds good to me and my family. What happens next?
Great!
We’re sure you’ll like it here.
Head over to the tab I'd Like To Become a Client...What Comes Next? and the steps are all laid out for you.
Give our Associate, Christine a quick call at 613-566-3566 to start the ball rolling.
We will set things up from there.
