Family wealth planning involves significant time and effort, as individuals strive to earn and cultivate enduring wealth capable of benefiting future generations. Consequently, many affluent individuals find themselves lacking the necessary time and resources to effectively oversee the wealth they have amassed. In order to ensure that your hard-earned assets can grow into generational wealth, you need professionals whom you can trust to plan, grow and protect them. This is why you should consider working with a family wealth manager.
While you divide your time between working hard and enjoying life, a family wealth manager will take control of your portfolio and ensure that it grows into real, lasting generational wealth. This requires careful planning, which many people – even those who are adept at creating wealth through successful business ventures – do not have the time or expertise to do. Professional wealth managers devise and carry out comprehensive wealth management strategies, which we use to create real, sustainable growth for our clients’ wealth.
There is no universal wealth management strategy that can be applied to all clients and portfolios. Each client is unique, and their needs evolve over time, requiring planning and strategies that are responsive and adaptable. An expert wealth manager, such as the team members at Nour Private Wealth, will provide you with a range of tools across portfolio construction and wealth planning to insurance and private capital.
All of these tools, utilized with care and precision over time, contribute to the building of real wealth. We believe that your expectations should grow with your wealth, meaning that our services become more effective and valuable the longer we work with you. Our work is divided across five key wealth management :
- Investments: Investment strategies must be responsive enough to move with the constant ebb and flow of the global markets. We construct portfolios that balance risk tolerance with cash flow needs and spreads your capital across diversified portfolios that limit risk while maximizing returns. We monitor your portfolio and make adjustments as needed.
- Wealth planning: Combining the talents of specialized investment managers, tax lawyers, estate planners, and accountants, we create a wealth plan that is unique to each client. To create your customized plan, we take a number of factors into account, including investment goals, risk tolerance, tax exposure, estate options and legal considerations. We help devise effective and efficient plans for retirement and regularly monitor the effect of tax laws on your growing nest eggs. With our expert estate planning service, we ensure that your legacy is passed on to the next generation in accordance with your wishes.
- Insurance: No matter how good your wealth plan might be, external factors can cause things to go wrong. Losses can occur, and you need powerful damage control measures. For this reason, insurance is an indispensable part of any wealth plan. There are many insurance products you can opt for, which guarantee cash benefits if you or your beneficiaries suffer illness or disability or die.
- Group benefits: Many of our clients are business owners, which is why we provide group benefits solutions for businesses. These flexible, innovative solutions anticipate your needs and reduce your administrative burden.
- Pension plans: Nour provides retirement savings options for companies with full-time employees.
Nour Private Wealth has been helping our client grow their hard-earned wealth since 2013. Our clients are primarily entrepreneurs and retired or retiring investors who demand very high levels of service and unsurpassed results. We work with high-net-worth individuals, including professionals and entrepreneurs, as well as family trusts, charitable foundations and estates. We go the extra mile to ensure that clients reach and even exceed their investment goals.
What is high net-worth family wealth management?
Building substantial wealth that qualifies you as a high-net-worth individual is an achievement on its own. However, safeguarding and transforming this wealth into a lasting heritage for your descendants, brimming with valuable generational assets, demands a distinct approach. Engaging in family wealth planning, in collaboration with a skilled wealth manager, becomes imperative to fortify your assets and transition them from personal riches into enduring familial prosperity.
High-net-worth individuals may not have to deal with the kind of financial issues that ordinary wage workers do. Still, substantial wealth comes with its own set of financial and legal issues, which require the help of professional wealth managers to navigate successfully.
A wealth manager will use a combination of the following to help you grow and protect your assets:
- Comprehensive wealth planning
- Asset consolidation
- Risk management
- Safeguarding investments through insurance
- Retirement planning
- Estate planning
What are the benefits of having a family office?
High-net-worth families should seriously consider engaging in a family office. The benefits include:
- An integrated plan for your entire family’s financial affairs, including investments, wealth transfer plans, tax planning and more.
- A comprehensive risk management strategy.
- An investment policy for the benefit of the entire family, including the selection of wealth managers, consolidated performance reporting and effective diversification and consolidation plans.
- A central, integrated solution for the oversight of your entire family’s financial affairs.
- Coordination of your professional advisors: your lawyers, accountants, investment and insurance advisors.
- A strategic approach to your charitable efforts.
- An impartial and knowledgeable persona who can manage the family’s business, financial and legal affairs if the main decision-maker should die or be incapacitated.
How to invest in a retirement fund and get tax savings
The federal and provincial governments will, of course, have to take their share of your retirement funds. However, there are ways that you can minimize the tax liability on your nest egg. Three of the most effective include:
- Retire in a low tax bracket: After you retire, you don’t necessarily need income, but you do need cash flow. Income is taxable; cash flow is not (at least, not always). You can lower your taxes by having a good mix of fully taxable, low-tax and tax-free income flows.
- Retire in a low bracket with tax-efficient investments.
- Lower your taxes on investments using a systematic withdrawal plan (SWP).
Top inter-generational investment strategies
Fortunes are difficult to build, but they can be remarkably easy to lose. A large percentage of affluent families lose their wealth by the third generation. Intergenerational wealth transfer is not something that should be left to chance. A proactive approach must be taken to ensure that the wealth remains intact, continues to grow and moves without interruption from one generation to the next.
An investment approach that will foster the creation and maintenance of inter-generational wealth is multifaceted and will consist of a variety of financial instruments, assets and wise management decisions. Prudent, risk-adjusted stock market investments, a well-maintained real estate portfolio, a thriving business that can be passed down through the generations – all of these will help to develop lasting wealth, provided they are coordinated by a wealth manager with an eye on the long game.
Does my family need a fiduciary portfolio manager?
If your family has a high net worth, you need someone with both a complete knowledge of the larger economic situation and your specific assets. You need to be able to turn to them for honest, expert investment advice. At the same time, you want to be sure that this individual always puts your interests first. For these reasons, you must engage a fiduciary portfolio manager to handle your family’s affairs.
A fiduciary works under an ethical and legal obligation to put their client’s interests first. This means that fiduciaries are held to a higher standard than other advisors. When you work with a fiduciary, there are no conflicts of interest, no proprietary investment products, no fees received for recommending any specific investment products, and full disclosure and transparency at all times. A fiduciary portfolio manager is something no high-net-worth family can do without.
How to protect your family’s assets with family wealth planning
Before you can pass your wealth on to your children and their children, you need to make sure that there is always wealth to pass on. The need to protect wealth is made easier by the fact that many wealth transfer strategies have built-in protection benefits. Effective estate planning will preserve your family’s wealth by removing your name from assets and putting them into legally-protected vehicles such as irrevocable trusts, asset protection trusts or limited liability entities. Insurance policies are also essential tools to safeguard your assets. Your wealth manager will be able to advise on the best solutions to protect your particular combination of assets.
Best family wealth planning strategies for insurance policies
Aside from insurance that covers your assets against loss, the most important policy you should include in your estate is life insurance. Obviously, life insurance will provide cash benefits to your family in the event of your death. Apart from that, it can also cover the hefty costs that an estate can generate, especially estate taxes. However, it won’t have this benefit if you have the policy in your own name. If it is housed within an irrevocable trust, it will effectively cover the additional risks and costs that your estate may have to deal with after your death.
Probate – What it is, what it costs, how to reduce fees.
Probate is the legal process that begins after a person’s death, as the will is reviewed to determine its validity and authenticity, and various steps are taken to administer the deceased estate. It can be a long, complicated process or a very quick and straightforward one, depending on the estate’s size, the provisions of the will and whether or not there are any disputes.
Probate could also apply to an intestate estate, i.e. one with no will or where the will has been determined to be invalid. In Ontario, probate costs $5 for every $1,000 of assets up to $50,000, and $15 for every $1,000 of assets $50,000. There are ways to reduce your probate fees. These include giving some assets away as gifts during your life, designating beneficiaries on investments such as insurance policies, or joint ownership of properties.
Based in Oakville, ON, Nour Private Wealth is a team of experienced wealth management experts who help high-net-worth individuals grow and protect their wealth. Contact us to find out we can help you with your family wealth planning.
