Shaun Hauser breaks down most recent acquisition, outlines the future for his firm
Wellington-Altus is indifferent to how they grow. With a CIRO arm and an ICPM arm, the advisory firm is open to growth along any avenue. They push their teams to grow organically, and they’ll acquire teams where they see a cultural fit and a strategic advantage.
Following their recent acquisition of Wickham Investment Counsel Inc. Wellington-Altus CEO and founder Shaun Hauser spoke with WP about the significance of that move and what it can tell us about Wellington-Altus’ growth plans. He explained how the firm is trying to balance its growth against client and advisors’ needs for independence, and the acute problems they are now trying to solve for advisors. He outlined, as well, what the end goal for Wellington-Altus is, whether it’s an eventual sale, expansion into the US, or continued growth in the Canadian market.
“It’s consistent with who we are and how we view the world. When we find great human beings we grow,” Hauser says of the Wickham acquisition. “The folks at Wickham have the characteristics that all of our advisors have, which is they're great advisors. They want to take care of their clients, and they're trying to put their clients in the best position possible to ensure that they're getting what they need in a rapidly changing environment.”
Hauser explained how Wellington-Altus was able to offer Wickham their wealth management infrastructure, including marketing, financial planning, and compliance. Wellington-Altus, he said, offered the Wickham team the ability to focus solely on their clients and to stop worrying about the day to day operational issues of running a business. He sees that infrastructure as key to what Wellington-Altus offers advisors. Moreover, he sees that infrastructure as scalable enough to grow with his firm.
Balancing growth with advisory discretion and client service has been a key tension for any independent firm. As more teams and more clients come on board, with distinct approaches and needs, it can be challenging to ensure that the highest service standards are met across the firm while empowering advisors to act as entrepreneurs. Hauser’s solution is what he calls “mass customization.”
That approach, Hauser explains, involves the firm creating baseline standards in their marketing materials, financial planning tools, operational support, and regional management. All the pieces of support that advisors need are held to a single high standard. From there, those support teams can help customize offerings for advisors. Hauser uses the example of advisor websites. Every team begins with the same core template for their website, but there is a huge amount of customization within that template, allowing each advisory team to articulate their unique approach and value add.
Hauser says the test for that model’s success is a simple one: are advisors staying with his firm? He argues that Wellington-Altus advisors are looking at their firm as a partner and are keen to remain with the firm. He says, explicitly, that he wants advisors to love their work because they will spend more time on aggregate working than they will with their families. He says that his firm comes with a culture of accountability that facilitates trust between advisors and senior leadership and through that trust advisors can feel supported in making independent and entrepreneurial decisions.
Hauser says he’s still working to earn and maintain that trust, on an ongoing basis. Key to that work is addressing the myriad challenges advisors face now. Staffing, he says, is a constant challenge for advisory teams. He advocates for staffing up “wisely,” constructing teams that can grow efficiently and intentionally. He contrasts that approach with the “add bodies and figure it out” approach that others have taken. Succession planning, too, is another rapidly growing issue for advisors and one that Hauser believes an intentional approach to team growth can help address.
Looking at his own firm’s growth, Hauser says Wellington-Altus has no plans to slow down. While he and other senior leaders got their start at Wellington West, which was eventually sold to National Bank, Hauser says there are no immediate plans to sell up. His firm has received four offers to sell over the last seven years, but Hauser says they have all been greeted with a polite but firm “no.” The firm’s investor partners, too, are also in this for the long haul.
US expansion has also been a possibility explored by other firms. While Wellington-Altus does have an SEC-regulated Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) business, he notes that US expansion is not a growth driver for the firm. The key differences in that market, along with its size, scale, and the ongoing appeal of Canada, are enough to keep Hauser focused North of the border for now.
“If you focus on winning the inches, then when you reflect on a year or two and behind you, you're miles ahead,” Hauser says. “That is our focus, day to day, and month to month, quarter to quarter, year to year, there is no 'hey, when we get here, we're going to sell.' That's never been in our view. I don't think we could have got to this size and scale if we thought we're just going to get to a number and flip it. That's not kind of how we roll. The truth is, all of the people that that work at Wellington-Altus are raging entrepreneurs and it would be far too much fun to walk away from this.”
