Globe Advisor

We humans have some interesting requests about what to do with our remains after we die. Some people choose to have their ashes spread at their favourite place – a decision the Walt Disney Co. has been trying to discourage at its theme parks for years – while others opt to have their remains shot into space for a sizable fee. While there may be more options, estate experts caution there are rules around what you can and can’t do with human remains, and ways to manage the request in your will and estate. “Make sure people know what your wishes are. Otherwise, they might do something else with you,” says Carol Willes, B Comm, LLB, MBA, LLM, TEP, director of estate planning at BMO Private Wealth in Ottawa. Here’s what you need to know.

Companies that trade on large stock exchanges are compelled to follow accounting rules laid out in the generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to allow apples-to-apples comparisons, but there are still ways to make bad news look like good news. As an example, red flags can sometimes appear as adjustments in the footnotes of quarterly financial statements, says Zachary Curry, portfolio manager at Toronto-based Greenrock Capital Partners Inc. “If you have one, it’s okay, maybe, but if you start to get adjustments all the way up in the earnings statement, that’s a sign you should be digging a lot deeper,” he says. Here's what advisors can look for.

When clients create estate plans, the focus is often on who gets which assets. But clients also need to consider an estate fund and how to pay liabilities, expenses and final taxes due upon death. “They don’t anticipate the magnitude of the tax bill,” says Tanya Butler, TEP, a trust and estate practitioner at Touchstone Legal Inc. in Dartmouth, N.S. “They don’t think about the expenses, such as preparing a property to sell.” Deanne Gage of Globe Advisor speaks with experts on the strategies advisors and their clients should use to pay off these matters.

When many advisors started out decades ago, they couldn’t have imagined building a practice with a reach extending thousands of kilometres from home, serving clients in multiple provinces or territories. “There’s a mutual benefit to financial advisors to have this wide pool of potential clients across the country they can identify and work with, and likewise from a client standpoint to have access to a financial advisor they like and want to work with whom could be located in Vancouver or Halifax,” says Jonathan Rivard, a financial advisor with Edward Jones, who is located in downtown Toronto, but has clients throughout Ontario as well as in British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec.

Money manager Stan Wong isn’t the type of investor who hangs on to a stock, for better or worse. “I would never want to stay married to a stock or a company because circumstances can change,” says Mr. Wong, a portfolio manager and senior wealth advisor with the Stan Wong Group at Scotia Wealth Management in Toronto. He’s more of an active trader seeking stocks that have carved out competitive advantages in their industries or operate with few competitors. Here’s what he’s been buying and selling.

The holy grail of financial advice may be offering personalization at scale, but so far technology has come up short when it comes to providing it. Kendra Thompson, founder of financial services consulting firm Epok Advice, says that’s partly why years of the “sky-is-falling rhetoric” around robo-advice hasn’t been borne out. Most people still want human advice at some point. She’s optimistic about new technology that allows advisors to anticipate client needs and target advice to a broader client base.

Growing up, Tiffany L Harding, a wealth strategist at Richardson Wealth in Toronto, experienced a huge contrast between her mom’s scarcity mindset and her dad’s carefree attitude toward money. “I saw money as freedom, providing you with opportunities and the ability to make choices,” Ms. Harding says. She spoke with Brenda Bouw about her decision to move out of her mother’s house as a teenager, what motivated her to earn her own money, and how her life experiences help her connect with clients. Listen to the podcast here: https://lnkd.in/gCZqg2uT

Bonds are back, or so the theory went. As central banks embark on what’s perceived as an interest-rate cutting cycle, bond values should be experiencing a significant lift, powering client portfolios. Yet, bond yields have remained much the same as they were in January. “What if inflation is stickier than thought?” says Diana Orlic CFP, FMA, CIWM, CIM with the Orlic Harding Cooke Wealth Management Group at Richardson Wealth. “What if it starts to climb? What if they can’t lower rates?” Joel Schlesinger reports on alternative bond strategies.

Offering a suite of services under one umbrella can be a goal for many advisory practices. But for advisors in growth mode, knowing when to invest in hiring team members and when to partner with external experts may be a challenge. Jason Heath, managing director at Objective Financial Partners Inc., says it’s not always a simple decision – especially for newer or smaller firms. “Each hire is a pretty big jump in terms of capacity, in terms of availability of time,” he says. Helen Burnett-Nichols explains.

In the mid-2000s, a new longevity product hit the Canadian market: a segregated fund that came with the standard maturity and death benefits, plus an additional benefit – guaranteed income for life. While guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefits (GMWBs) have mostly fallen out of favour, writes Jason M. Pereira, advisors should know how they work for clients who still hold them. More recently, a new twist on old-fashioned annuities known as advanced life deferred annuities (ALDAs) has hit the market, albeit slowly. In the second article of a four-part series, Mr. Pereira breaks down how these two options fit into the decumulation toolkit.