Timothy Stranks explains his role in helping business owner clients through uncertainty and tariff chaos
Business owners have enough to worry about right now. Exporters are facing the potentially existential threat of massive US tariffs, without certainty as to their exact severity, timing, or implementation. Other businesses are dealing with shifting economic conditions and potential knock-on effects of a trade war. Seeing investment portfolios deep in the red right now would only compound that pain.
Timothy Stranks sees his role as preventing that additional source of pain. The Wealth Advisor and Client Relationship Manager at Nicola Wealth serves a number of business owner clients. He explains how he’s positioned their portfolios and their returns expectations to prioritize capital preservation and cash flow. He notes the aspects of client portfolios that are working at moments like these as well as the communication techniques that can help reassure business owners in a difficult moment. He outlined, too, the ways that a well connected financial advisor can help provide additional support to entrepreneurs, furnishing connections that can aid their business operations in a trying time.
“If you're running a cross-border business right now and your personal investment portfolio is down, that's the last thing you need. You want to be focusing on the business, because in the long-run that's where you're going to make the biggest impact on your own financial wellbeing. So now is when we do our best work for clients,” Stranks says.
Since the first threats of tariffs were levied in early February, Stranks has heard two major lines of concern from his business owner clients. On the business side he has heard about steps being taken to make businesses more essential and tailored to customers needs’ with the end goal of becoming ‘irreplaceable,’ as well as moves to open up new export markets. On the portfolio side, he’s hearing one core question being asked: “I’m experiencing all of this, tell me we’re not invested in a bunch of companies experiencing the same thing.”
Stranks is happy that he can reassure those clients and offer them some confidence that they have solid diversification in their portfolios. The structured defence played in their portfolios, he explains can help reassure them during these volatile times.
Private assets, Stranks says, are one of those key defensive strategies. He contrasts privates with public assets, where investors are “a passenger on that ride.” In real estate or private equity, however, there is a team of managers working to add value outside of what the market is doing. Using Nicola’s model of in-house private asset management he can show how his clients’ assets are being worked on and improved in addition to how the market for those assets is shifting.
On both the business and investment side, clients are facing ongoing uncertainty about US trade policy. Rather than a concrete decision about tariffs, we’ve seen the US administration change its tune multiple times. As a result, many businesses and investors are left without clear direction. While the decisions that this uncertainty may provoke are different on either side, Stranks addresses it by telling his clients not to make panicked decisions. Now isn’t the time, he tells them, to change strategy entirely. Tweaks and changes to de-risk businesses and portfolios may have merit, but wholesale strategy changes might not prove wise.
There are also times when business owners may come to Stranks with questions that go beyond his remit as an advisor. When those questions come, he leans on the network of professionals that he and his firm can access to help those clients. For example, many clients may be coming to him now with currency questions. Through his network he has access to FX specialists who can add value to business owners now. Lawyers, tax specialists, accountants, and other professionals can all be mobilized by the advisor to support clients’ business-related questions.
Sometimes, Stranks notes, clients can be introduced to one-another when their skills and business interests might complement each other. While he is clear that his primary role is not that of a business advisor, he can use his perspective, connections and position as a ‘financial quarterback’ to help clients now. As advisors work to help their business owner clients navigate this moment, Stranks argues that simply offering them an objective viewpoint on events and a source of calm can go a long way.
“I think being able to help talk through economic scenarios and give contrasting opinions to what they're thinking is valuable. Stay clued into the landscape and if you have a strategy that is working for you, don't tear up the playbook because we don't know how this is all going to flesh out,” Stranks says. “Patience is going to is going to be an important thing that people need over the next sort of period of time, to help them avoid rash decisions.”
