Q Wealth helps latest Partner solve a 'good problem to have'
This article was produced in partnership with Q Wealth Partners.
Q Wealth’s latest partnership with Walker Family Financial addresses crucial aspects of modern wealth management: business support integrated with technology adoption, and practice adaptation.
Walker Family Financial had been part of a traditional securities dealer, and many of these dealers struggle with technology integration and platform development. But by emphasizing the importance of supported independence in scaling wealth management services to meet client demands, Jared Rabinowitz, founding partner of Q Wealth, is offering a compelling solution.
“When we meet prospective new Partners, we start by asking about their challenges and opportunities,” he says. “Paul Walker and his team had a great problem to have. Paul explained that WFF served a relatively small group of established families and corporations, and they had the opportunity to significantly increase the business in the next couple years but the prospect of scaling up their operation to handle the growth seemed daunting. Paul and Q Wealth coming together was a natural fit, because creating scale and efficiencies for advisory practices is one of our greatest strengths at Q Wealth Partners.”
Walking through the decision to partner
With over 40 years in the business, Walker, founding partner at the Ont. based firm, brings a special kind of magic to building deep client relationships. Walker’s clients are truly his friends, with many sharing the snow-bird lifestyle with him between “home” in Owen Sound, ON and home-away-from home in sunny Florida.
Walker is also known for his entrepreneurial spirit and philanthropic efforts, and his approach aligns with Q Wealth's values. “Paul is the rainmaker. He is a major relationship guy. He's very influential in the community there. He's charitable, very philanthropic and he's also an entrepreneur, a true entrepreneur,” executive partner at Q Wealth Stephen Gasparek notes.
Another cornerstone of this partnership is the shared vision for succession and long-term continuity. Although Walker plans to stay in his client’s lives for a long as possible, he recognizes that change is a constant in life. Walker Family Financial has a robust next-generation succession plan in place with his son and several other members of his extended family involved in the business to ensure continuity for clients. Q Wealth finds its services and vision align well with the next generation of advisors who typically range between ages 30 and 46 but can vary a few years either side of that spectrum.
The synergies between Walker and Q Wealth go even deeper than may be obvious on the surface. “We have been partners at Barrington Wealth partners, MGA for 15 years,” Walker adds. “The Q Wealth platform enables us to be partners as well, making us part of decision-making processes, including voting on who becomes a partner. As with Barrington, we instantly got that feeling with Q Wealth that we’re dealing with people who care. It felt like family, and they genuinely cared about who we were and what our goals were as they needed to know whether we fit with the rest of the advisors that were already part of Q Wealth.
“Being associated with a large company is not inherently wrong, but it often means individuals remain uninvolved with the high-level decisions. You are who you are without being involved with what really is happening at the higher levels.”
Looking towards a more advanced model
Large organizations have been attempting to turn things around but have encountered significant challenges with their incumbent ownership and management structures, legacy technologies that are difficult to pivot, and in developing a platform suitable for the discretionary portfolio management space. They operate as traditional securities dealers, which complicates their adaptation to the shifts underway in the 21st century of wealth management.
Q Wealth is going after the best of the best - financial advisory practices who share their philosophical alignment. These firms recognize that larger dealers are not keeping pace with the rest of the industry, making change necessary.
Scaling your practice
Walker Family Financial manages a small yet significantly wealthy group of clients; about 20 households, with whom Walker has developed deep relationships encompassing entire families, he’s got his arms around the younger generations within each client household —something that sets him apart from typical advisors who usually lose the business as soon as the primary client passes away.
These clients are heavily involved in substantial assets, ranging from farmlands to car dealerships and other successful businesses. Now, as they begin monetizing what they’ve spent a lifetime building, Walker had been finding it wasn’t uncommon for clients to show up in his office with a cheque for $5 million to $10 million.
Walker saw the potential to double his business in short order. However, his concern remained the handling of this growth. Fortunately meeting Q Wealth offers a scalable solution that can manage substantial business volumes and customize services to fill front-office gaps.
The Q Wealth model and maintaining a clients-first approach
Gasparek explains how Q Wealth has the capability to simply plug in and offer complete services to an advisor, giving them the confidence of consistency in what is offered.
“Every advisor we speak with lacks confidence in the back office of their dealer,” Gasparek says. “They are also skeptical about the back-office infrastructure. Our entire company is designed to support these advisors and help them grow. We choose to work with fewer partners because our goal is to facilitate their growth. We're not aiming to be a hotel for hundreds of advisors; our focus is on quality, not quantity.”
Both firms anticipate that this partnership will not only enhance their service offerings but also foster a robust growth environment tailored to the sophisticated needs of their clients. “Having institutional style management and the solutions Q Wealth has access to is just the sweet spot for our clients,” Walker says.
