“Despite all I have seen and experienced, I still get the same simple thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb towards it.”

~Sir Edmund Hillary, mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist

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According to a 2023 YouGov survey, 26% of respondents listed climbing a major mountain such as Mount Everest or Kilimanjaro as a top travel goal in their lifetime, despite acknowledging the activity’s inherent risks. Something about the human condition seems to draw us to reaching a peak or to overcome a hill-like obstacle, perhaps because the very shape of a mountain or hill inherently draws us to scale it to its peak. It also holds an important place in our language as analogous with achievement, facing challenges, or overcoming obstacles, such as “scaling a mountain”, “climbing to the top” and “reaching the peak”.  

It's also why “scaling a summit” works so well conceptually in understanding the importance of goalsetting, discipline, consistency, teamwork, and having the right expertise and experience to achieve one’s goals. Because scaling a summit such as Mt. Everest’s is a remarkably difficult, dangerous, and still rare achievement. These days, about two-thirds of the very few climbers who even start the journey reach Mt. Everest’s peak, which is a dramatic improvement from just 30 years ago when only one-in-three made it to the top (and survived the sometimes more arduous journey back down).    

Getting you to your summit(s)

Experts have identified some of the key reasons more climbers are making it to Mt. Everest’s summit. These include our increasing ability to successfully forecast the weather, better mountaineering equipment, and improved training of mountain guides. The last point is critical – unless you are a professional mountaineer, few would be foolish enough to even try to make it to the top of any serious mountain without a guide, and more often than not a team of guides, to assist them.

Like so many of our efforts in achieving our financial goals in life, building your wealth, seizing timely financial opportunities, and overcoming life’s challenges, achieving your “summits” is often about working together with your expert guide, and leveraging the knowledge and experience of the team that your lead guide can bring to bear to help you achieve or enhance your success.  

As a client, you know RBC PH&N Investment Counsel as experts in delivering investment expertise, with your lead guide, your Investment Counsellor (IC), providing the advice and solutions that can help you and your family reach your goals. But where your odds of reaching your personal goals or “summits” really increase is when your IC can leverage the experience, expertise, and resources of their partners to scale what can be at times arduous and precarious “mountains”. This includes the expertise of investment and “weather forecasters” RBC Global Asset Management (RBC GAM), and the Family Office Services team “guides” who can deliver the expertise and execution around such challenges as business succession, tax planning, insurance needs, estate planning, and legacy building.

And, depending upon the peak you are trying to scale, that expertise and capability can extend to the broader team of “guides” available through RBC Royal Bank, including experts in the areas of banking, borrowing, and business and family management needs. This also extends to our global banking teams and RBC Capital Markets experts, whose reach can provide clients with all the support and guidance they need to navigate markets, overcome challenges and take advantage of opportunities wherever you may need across the world.      

Your IC and the entire RBC team are your dedicated stewards as you make your way through life and to your goals. How you get to the summit of your life goals matters – doing it right with the right team makes the journey easier, more efficient, and more likely to succeed. We are ready, equipped, and able – let’s climb and reach your summits together.