Q Wealth's exclusive partnership with renowned thought leader Brian Portnoy and his team at Shaping Wealth promises to unlock the human dimension of money
This article was produced in partnership with Q Wealth.
Many people believe money defines wealth, but our most valuable assets are time and energy because - at the end of life – money can’t be exchanged for more experience points. In the last 25 years, the science of human flourishing has proven that a life well lived, is filled with positive experiences, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. The old mantra of sacrifice until 65 and then you’ll get to enjoy the fruits of your labour was always a flawed concept, but most boomers believed it. Millennials and Gen Z however are determined to take a different approach to life. This is among the reasons why connecting money and meaning is at the heart of a fundamental shift happening in the advice business, moving away from investment-centric presentations of advice to more human-centric, interactive experiences with their advisors.
Q Wealth Partners has led the way in Canada with this progressive approach, with the firm’s partners reaping the benefits of its unique supported services and technology platform, which integrates wealth management, financial planning, and client experience.
To supercharge this offering, and continue revolutionizing the client experience, it has created an exclusive partnership with globally renowned behavioural finance expert and author Brian Portnoy and his Shaping Wealth team, who have been at the vanguard of positive psychology in finance.
Portnoy commented "It was clear from the jump that the team at Q Wealth got it. That this was about a broader conversation about wellbeing, about flourishing. Money is a part of that conversation but only one piece and figuring out how money fits into a meaningful life is what unlocks the future of financial advice. I felt lucky to have been introduced to Q Wealth and now doubly so to have this partnership opportunity."
Stephen Gasparek, CMO and Head of Partner Admissions, remarked, "Our collaboration with Shaping Wealth is a turning point, elevating Canadian industry standards through a unique client experience. Our focus on exceptional client and partner experiences sets us apart. Brian Portnoy's team shares this philosophy, we're thrilled about the mutual growth opportunities this partnership offers."
Portnoy added "The central concept for Shaping Wealth, what drives us, is funded contentment. This is the ability to underwrite a meaningful life and it pivots the conversation from being rich to growing wealthy. The former is just about a number and rarely satisfying. The latter reveals wealth as a mindset, one that is more achievable than most realize."
In 2024, many clients – and especially women and younger generations - want this level of care and attention when it comes to their wealth advisory service, according to Jared Rabinowitz, executive and founding partner of Q Wealthq wealth
. He believes advisors don’t yet fully know how to deliver a client experience that's centered around connecting money to meaning. “The industry is being flipped on its head, and no-one has the playbook for it,” he says. To that end, working in collaboration with Shaping Wealth, Q Wealth aims to produce a program that’s immersive and interactive, giving its advisors the tools to unlock “the human dimension of money.”
As well as gaining access for its partners to Shaping Wealth programs, training and content, Q Wealth will work with Portnoy to develop the ultimate next gen client experience, informing the next iteration of Q Wealth’s technology platform in the process. By agreeing to share mutual intellectual capital, Q Wealth believes it will truly be at the forefront of shaping the future of advice, with its partners and their clients set to reap the rewards.
Critical to the agreement is that the pioneering practice management program that emerges from this work will be exclusive to Q Wealth in Canada.
“The client experience has to be supported by the technology platform,” Rabinowitz adds. “Q Wealth has been trying to accomplish this with version 1.0 of our Q Suite platform, but there is a much higher bar [we can reach].”
Rabinowitz first came upon positive psychology, a relatively new branch of psychology largely credited to Martin Seligman, the former president of the American Psychology Association, more than a decade ago. In a landmark speech in 1998, Seligman challenged the psychology profession to ask itself how to maximise wellbeing for everyone, rather than solely focusing on addressing disorders. Investments are important, of course, but the client experience should be about connecting a client’s resources (time, energy and money) through a better financial planning process, to life satisfaction; rather than just the sole pursuit of having enough money. Clients also struggle to formulate goals, and need guidance to explore what they want to accomplish next – which will change frequently through their life and financial transitions.
Rabinowitz admitted that, despite talking about it a lot, he had made slow progress actioning his own version of this philosophy in the business – until he met Portnoy at Future Proof in 2022. A coffee chat became a meeting of minds and then a friendship. Rabinowitz went through Shaping Wealth’s marquee program, Building the Behavioural Advisor (BTBA), to personally evaluate the progress Portnoy and his team of multiple PhD specialists had made. He concluded that Shaping Wealth had succeeded in synthesizing the vast knowledge of this emerging field, and turning it into a learning management platform for wealth advisors.
“Advisors and their staff need to train up to have more EQ,” Rabinowitz says. “This has been a business where it’s all about IQ, but clients don't really care about how much you know until they know how much you care, and honestly, normal people aren’t interested in financial products or markets. To be the advisor of the future, you have to facilitate conversations with the client and their family to really understand what the money is for. What are their hopes? What are their ‘anti-goals’ - beyond just outliving their money?”
Portnoy is revered as a thought leader on this approach where advice goes beyond the maths. Instead, it focuses on finding out how someone’s money can amplify the person they truly are, and how it can help them relate to the important people in their life. But advisor input in this regard needs to be complemented by immersive technology to complete the client experience, delivering it with personalization, finesse, and efficiently at scale within the advisory practice.
It’s early days for the advisor pioneering these new techniques, and for most clients, Rabinowitz says, the outcome is overwhelmingly surprise and delight. Yet for a few it can feel intrusive and uncomfortable, because they’re simply not used to having such dialogue with their advisor.
“It’s because of a disconnect and expectations,” he says. “They’re expecting stocks, bonds and a pitch about a more efficient portfolio, but are getting an invitation to do more of the talking, opening up about values and the emotional matters surrounding money and family and life. Those conversations don't happen organically at the kitchen table - people avoid difficult conversations, especially with their spouse. What if the most important conversations in life are the ones we might never have?”
“Of course, some people just want you to invest a million dollars for them and keep it straightforward but due to wealth transfer – first to Mom – and then to the kids there's a new wave of clients, soon to control most of the wealth in the developed world. Robo advisors failed because value conscious clients can buy a 60/40 balanced ETF portfolio for less than 20 bps, so the robos are actually too expensive for what they offer. The new wealth management client craves HUMAN advice, they want to have a much more collaborative approach to how they integrate life and finance. And they want that connection between money and meaning – which is why that’s become our mantra at Q Wealth.”
The fusion of the deep subject matter expertise at Shaping Wealth with Q Wealth’s unique partner platform promises to take the client experience to a new level. In doing so, it will create an enhanced, and exclusive Q Wealth client experience for its Partners that no one else in Canada will be able to rival.
