Kyle Richie knew what he wanted to do from the minute he played classic board game at 12 – now he has $440 million of assets under management
Deciding what career to pursue often takes years, multiple degrees, a bunch of ill-suited summer jobs and a hostel-hopping trip to Asia.
But for Kyle Richie, it took playing a board game when he was just 12 years old. While rolling the dice to buy and sell commodities in Stock Ticker, something clicked and he instinctively knew what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.
Now the advisor heads up Richie Group, IG Private Wealth Management, has $440 million of assets under management and 440 clients, 96-97% of which are medical professionals.
He told WP: “From an early age, I knew what I wanted to do. In high school when everyone else was doing projects on the environment or ‘my pet dog’, I was doing ones on insider trading in the 1980s in Wall Street.
“It was something I really enjoyed and I started investing on my own really early - and it’s just been a real passion of mine all my life.”
Richie’s book has grown 16% in the past year and he believes his love of what he does is at the heart of his success. Work feels like play, so long hours are not a burden and the inner drive to help clients remains undimmed.
His client base taps into a profession he knows only too well, with his family – as well as business associate Andrew Feindell’s – steeped in the medical world. Richie’s dad is an orthopaedic surgeon and his mom, wife, sister and mother-in-law are all nurses, while Feindell’s partner is also a nurse, his dad a cardiac surgeon and his grandfather a neuro surgeon. The lingo, therefore, is second nature to both of them.
Richie said: “We are all from doctors, so it’s just an environment and mindset that we understand.”
He added: “Our clients feel that, with Andrew and I, it’s more like we are one of them. Doctors and dentists get solicited more than any other profession by financial advisors or insurance people and a lot of the time they say it feels like they are being sold something.
“They say regularly to Andrew and me, ‘we don’t feel you are trying to sell us anything, you are giving advice as opposed to just sales … but also you understand how we work and our schedules’.
“Unless you have a family member who is a surgeon, you don’t quite get what they give up in their life. And even from how medical practices run and billing codes on OHIP fee schedules, I know that because I did it!”
Managing this type of client goes beyond just investments, with tax planning a critical element in getting money out of medical and dental corporations efficiently. This feeds into product selection, with the underlying investments having to be carefully selected.
When working with clients’ accountants, Richie believes what separates his practice from others is its forward-looking approach to tax solutions.
He said: “Generally, clients’ accountants are historians – they are saying this is what you did last year, here’s how we can put it down on paper so Revenue Canada is happy or happy enough.
“It’s not that I don’t care what you did last year, it’s that I don’t care that much because there’s not a whole lot I can do about it now. It’s about how we can put structure and strategies into place now so that two, five and 10 years from now, you are paying less taxes and the accountant records the strategy. It’s a much more forward-looking view as opposed to just recording it.”
One of his biggest challenges on a daily basis is misinformation; the internet circulating advice that Richie believes is at best misleading, at worst damaging to a person’s finances. One medical forum particularly irks him – some person “off in cyberspace” critiquing strategies – and he said it’s like recommending a surgery when you’ve never met the patient.
Richie said: “In today’s world, where everyone can become an expert online by having a blog, there is a lot of information circling around that is not factually correct. When people presume that just because someone has a blog they are an expert in the field that is not necessarily the case. It’s not necessarily bad advice but unsuitable advice and if it’s implemented by certain individuals, it can be dangerous to their financial well-being.”
