Wealth Plans are Crucial for Prolonged Success of Affluent Families

At HighView Financial Group, we believe that affluent Canadian families – whether they realize it or not – are actually operating a ‘wealth management business’.

In other words, their investable asset base is of a sufficiently significant size and complexity that it is beyond being considered a traditional savings pool earned from employment activities; it should instead be viewed as a wealth management business that is a bi-product of their successful business activities.

Over many decades of advising families of significant means, our experience has been that each family has unique levels of complexity which have evolved over the family’s evolutionary lifecycle. These complex structures are needed to address the delicate balance that exists between tax and estate matters, asset protection and income splitting issues, as well as current lifestyle versus longer term succession and philanthropic goals.

To address these subtle, and sometimes not so subtle matters, these families have surrounded themselves with various professional practitioners – such as lawyers, accountants, investment advisors, and consultants – to provide the technical expertise in each specific area of their wealth continuum, such as estate laws, tax laws, tax accounting, risk management, and investments.

Often, it has been left to the families to try to synthesize the various solutions provided to them; but unfortunately, most often they remained unintegrated. And although on a stand-alone basis these solutions were technically sound, they were often less than optimal as a cohesive solution to support the family’s purpose and journey in life.

In order to combat some of the complexity and to close the gaps between the various elements of their structures, many of these families have searched for a solution that would bring better integration and cohesion with enough simplicity and transparency to provide them with the comfort and ‘peace-of-mind’ that only comes from being confident about one’s environment – a truly integrated wealth plan.

HighView Financial Group is an investment counselling firm that takes a fiduciary approach to affluent family and foundation wealth. Schedule a complimentary discovery session with us.

Click here to watch a video about HighView’s 8 Founding Principles.

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• What Is Wealth Stewardship?
• Thinking Client-First: Goals-based Investing
• How to Build Sustainable Family Wealth for Future Generations (and Why It’s So Difficult to Do)