Episode 4 – How a Family Office Gives Your Time Back
Download MP3Welcome back to the Our Family Office podcast. Over the course of this season, we're exploring the areas of focus for a purpose built family office and the ways in which a family office can improve the lives and relationships of Canada's wealthiest families. On today's episode, we'll be discussing family administration, and I'm happy to be joined by our cofounder and chief investment officer, Neil Nisker. Neil, thanks for joining me.
Neil:My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.
Adam:So when we talk about family administration, that is the the quote, unquote paper shuffling role. It's the preparation, administration of trusts, bookkeeping services, you know, reporting, that kind of thing. And to some people that may be, you know, kind of the dry stuff, the stuff they may not wanna do. Neil, I'll open it to you. Talk about how these services fit into the broader integrated service offering that we offer as a firm?
Neil:Thank you, Adam. Our family office, has 6 very solid legs to our table. Investment management, of course, is important. We manage our family's liquidity. Risk management is an important aspect of what we do, which includes, assessment of risk.
Neil:It could be tax risk. Are you taking too little or you're taking too much? It could be reviewing, wills are part of planning, asset protection, reputation risk, which is very, very important, especially for families who have teenagers. You spend your whole life building a good name for yourself, a positive reputation, and in minutes or seconds, that can be destroyed by an act of a member of the family. Integrated planning, of course, whether it be estate planning, which involves tax, and or a business strategy, etcetera. Family continuity is another leg to the table where we prepare the heirs or or future heirs, who will be inheriting funds, about aspects of how to be a great receiver of the benevolence being bestowed upon them. Also educating, that generation, about wealth and and risk and investments. Strategic philanthropy, is also important to us. Many of our families have set up donor advice funds or family foundations. It's important to give back, and I think it's incumbent from all of us to leave the world a better place than we found it. And personally, I think the world's upside down right now.
Neil:Family administration is the last leg, the 6th leg to our, hopefully, solid built table. And that involves everything from tax preparation to trust administration, accounting, and bookkeeping, invoice payment. And these are all the things that, well, they're just not fun. I don't know of anyone who looks forward to performing these functions. And as a family office, we're happy to take this stressful task away from our families and do it for them. Again, it's about saving time.
Adam:And I know, Neil, that you like to to talk about time and think about kinda what time means for people and especially for our clients, and you like to say that time is the currency of the future.
Neil:Yeah. Adam, thank you. I've been using this expression public speaking for well over 3 decades, and I believe that it is so true, that I continue to repeat it, not just to myself, but anyone who will listen. And thank you in advance for listening to this whole podcast. Time is the currency of the future.
Neil:And by that, I mean, you can always make more money, but you cannot make more time. The time that you don't spend with loved ones today and in the future, whether it be your children or in my case my 7 grandchildren, you can never get back. They're only this age once. The time you don't spend, you know, with your passions, be it golf or guitar playing or writing poetry. Okay, you'll never get back.
Neil:So focus on, okay, the fact that you do have a lot of time. Okay? Now we know there are 2 things guaranteed in life, and that's death and taxes. And I'm not gonna comment on taxes. I'm not gonna say they're too high, but you know they are.
Neil:I will focus on death only because you don't know when or how, but we all will die. Hopefully, not for a number of years or decades, but that is something that we know will happen. In the meantime, how will you use your time? How will you be most productive? How will you find the most enjoyment? It may be travel. It may be golf. Whatever you do, focus on what you love doing best, and leave that that administration and things that you don't love to others.
Adam:So the leaving to others, I think, is so important. You know, when we look at our client families at the ultra high net worth Canadians, the ultra wealthy Canadians, the benefit of that wealth is that they truly have the choice to spend their time how they want to spend it. They are able to outsource. They're able to pay someone to do those tasks that they don't wanna do. And they don't need to worry about, you know, a few dollars here and there if it means that it can save them hours of time.
Neil:You know, Adam, that's a good point. Let me give us some context. Every family has a number of trusted advisors. They have a banker, a stock broker, a money manager, an accountant, and a lawyer. When was the last time all of those trusted advisers were in a room with the family members?
Neil:And the answer is never. Well, our family office is the room. Okay? And we're agnostic as to who we deal with, but we wanna be the hub of the wheel. We wanna be the ones helping you organize all those trusted advisers. We wanna be that extra set of eyes. We want to be the firm, your family office, that actually coordinates, looking at your bill payments, looking at is anything falling between the cracks? Are you overpaying? Looking at, is there redundancy in the services being provided? And administrative services are just one of those aspects.
Adam:And I think when you talk about us being the the hub of the wheel, really, in order to serve that function, because someone may be listening and maybe feeling like which we found with some, you know, new clients that we've started to onboard them. It's hard to give up control. Right? Especially successful families, they think what I've been doing has worked. Right? I've done it my way, and look how well it's worked out. Right? They're not ready to give up control. So the first step before really we can serve these functions as well as we're capable of is we need to get to know that family as well as they know themselves. And I know that's something that you like to say all the time.
Neil:Yeah. No, Adam. Thank you. You know, in getting to know the family, we'll spend several hours. You know, I won't tell you whether it's 5 or 10 hours between the team that will be leading that family, But we will get to know them through a, what we call, discovery.
Neil:And we will interview, the father, the mother, we'll interview adult children individually, sometimes collectively, and the idea is getting to know them well. And I must say, Adam, and you kind of took the words out of my mouth, and that is many of our families, after that discovery process, after they've been with us for several months, say you know us better than we know ourselves. Thank you. And the added value that we bring by the coordination of all these different service offerings, including the things they don't wanna do. And it's not the things that they don't have experience or expertise in.
Neil:It's they don't wanna do it. For example, you know, whether you have wealth or not, you hire people to do the things that, one, you don't like to do or you don't think you're qualified to do, whether it's painting a house, cleaning a house, having a driver, a limo to the airport, things that you find it's more convenient, it's a better use of my time if I do other things that I'm passionate about, and leave this to others. So you're constantly paying people throughout your whole lives to do things that you don't like to do, or you'd rather do other things because you enjoy them more. Family administration is one of those things that, yes, you did them, okay, but now you have an opportunity to offload that to a firm, and guess what? Can do them better to give you that freedom, to give you that time to do the things you're most passionate about.
Adam:Well, that's it. Right? You don't need to be chasing your investment managers for tax slips. You don't need to be getting a a note from your accountant saying, this is how much you owe. Oh, now I gotta figure out I gotta move money around so that I can pay CRA to make sure that it's done and all.
Adam:I mean, there's better uses of your time. Right? You don't need to worry about that when these things are integrated or when you integrate enough with a family office, even if you have outside professionals that the family office is working with, but the family office gets to know you well enough that they can have those meetings on your behalf. Right? You don't need to have a separate meeting with your accountant, your lawyer, your banker, so on and so on. Your family office can, first of all, serve a lot of those functions, and second, meet with those people on your behalf while you're off living your life. And then we can check-in with you once we've kinda taken the ball to the 99 yard line and say, you know what? Here's what we recommend. Here's why it makes sense. We've spoken to the professionals. Everyone's on board, and what do you think? And in almost all cases, the client will say, thank you very much. Sounds great. I'm gonna go ahead with what you recommended, and now I'm gonna go back to the golf course.
Neil:You know, it's interesting. When we meet a family for the first time, and this is, you know, long before they sign up, They said, you know, what can we expect from you? And we don't answer in a term of better tax planning and saving you 1,000,000 of dollars, and we don't answer it in terms of a better risk adjusted return. But I simply say, what you can expect from us is a much better night's sleep. And nothing makes me feel better than after a meeting with a family when the husband, or the wife, the mother or father, calls me and says, you know, Neil, that was a great meeting. I really, really wanna thank you and our family office. I will sleep much better tonight. That makes my day, could make my weekend, puts a broad smile on my face. And that's one of the reasons we started Our Family Office, is simply to add value to someone's life and make it better for them. Life is complicated enough. Having wealth is complicated enough. More wealth, more challenges. That's why we created Our Family Office. That's why we're purpose built. We are not like banks who just call themselves family offices or accounting firms where it's an add on, okay, or stockbrokers because it's a right leaning friendly term.
Neil:We are purpose built, the only one in Canada that started from scratch, bringing experts from the different walks of life to build a very, very solid table to serve our families.
Adam:And I think that so well describes kind of our ideal client family relationship. It's when we have earned the trust of a family over time to the point that they are really making best use of, as you said, all the legs of the table. Right? There's investment management, strategic philanthropy, risk management, you know, where tax estate planning, administration, where all of these pieces are working together. We are the central hub. We are ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. All of your professionals are steering in the same direction in a way that because of how well we know the family, we know is gonna be something that that you're happy with and that is gonna give you a better night's sleep.
Neil:It's working. Our families are very, very appreciative. They love our model, the fact that we're owned 50% by our families. They love the fact, that they're represented on our board of directors. It's a different model. We wanna be here, so the grandchildren we're serving today will be clients of the firm when they're grandparents. Obviously, we're not doing it to make the most money in the world. We only onboard 1 family a month, 12 a year. We don't want to ever compromise our service offering. The relationship we have with our families is very unique, not just in Canada, but around the world.
Neil:And we're very, very pleased that, we're able to serve this function. And this will be our legacy, helping these families in a way that they didn't know they could be helped.
Adam:Neil, thanks for today's discussion as always.
Neil:Thank you for having me.
Adam:I hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Thank you so much for listening. Our family office is Canada's 1st purpose built shared family office, and the Our Family Office podcast is produced by Henry Shew. Please visit ourfamilyoffice.ca for more information about our firm, and don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe so you don't miss an episode. See you next time.
Adam:The information in this podcast is presented as a general educational and informational resource only. While certain participants in this podcast may be registered to provide investment advice as a representative of our Family Office Inc, itself a registered firm in certain Canadian jurisdictions, this podcast does not provide individualized investment, financial planning, legal, tax, or insurance advice, nor is it meant as a recommendation to any listener to buy or sell any specific securities or otherwise take any other investment action. Any action you may take as a result of the information presented in this podcast is your own responsibility. Our Family Office, Inc. And each of its representatives that participate in any podcast disclaim that any listener should rely in any way on any of this content as investment, tax, legal, or insurance advice.
Adam:Listeners are encouraged to consult with their individual investment adviser and other financial professionals prior to taking any potential investment actions or making any insurance or tax decisions.
