5-star wealth advisory firms revealed

Wealth Professional has just unveiled its 2024 5-Star Wealth Management Firms list.

The list recognizes all the work wealth management firms do to advance the industry and ensure that advisors can provide the highest level of quality service to their clients. The firms recognized on this list represent some of the best wealth management firms in Canada, who are constantly finding new and innovative ways to drive returns for clients.

All firms listed had to be a full-service brokerage with a minimum of three locations. Applicants were invited to explain how they excelled in key areas like culture, compliance, training, and technology.

Jason Pereira, senior partner at Woodgate Financial, explained some of what top-performing firms must achieve. He says that they need to have a defined value proposition targeting a cohort of Canadians, a knowledge base and systems to deliver in a repeatable way, and delivery across multiple facets of service for clients. He drove home the need for compliance and tech innovations that serve the needs of advisors.

“Top-level advisors should be embracing positive change and getting ahead of compliance trends because they typically come out with the best practices that ensure things are done in a professional manner,” says Pereira. “Technology is important because we all need it, but technology is not going to fix a problem. It’s there to support a strategy, and it’s more important that processes and strategies are put in place, then technology can help enable all of that at scale.”

In offering his own insights into what makes the difference for firms, Vipool Desai, president of Ara Compliance Support, emphasized the importance of trust.

“There’s a lot of folks who are very competent in providing financial planning and investment advice for good money managers,” Desai says. ”The real barrier in this industry is trust and being able to earn the clients’ trust and to have open communication with them.”

You can find the full list of winners here.