Owner-advisors of BC-based practice peel back the layers on their education and trust-based advice approach
It’s been two years since Skyward Financial opened its doors to help younger Canadians get their financial footing. And if there’s one lesson the owner-advisors of the still-fledgling practice has learned, it’s that psychology plays a major part in financial advice.
“The largest challenge when we started out in the industry was that our niche of younger professionals or recent graduates are very much deterred from engaging with the entire financial world,” says Tara Lalehparvar, one of Skyward’s co-founders. “It has the image of being a rich man's world that they don't belong in. So it's very difficult for them to even consider the option of finding somebody to help them plan things.”
While Canadians at large are facing economic and financial challenges, Curtis Holt-Robinson, Lalehparvar’s partner in the practice, says younger people feel particularly vulnerable. While thoughts of homeownership, marriage, and parenthood have certainly crossed their minds, those milestones simply feel out of reach for a large cohort of people.
“Maybe they’ve been told ‘You can’t own a home unless you have help from your parents,’ or ‘you’ll never own a home at all,’” Holt-Robinson says. “The reality is a lot of people who fail simply started out too late or did the wrong things and invested where they shouldn’t. Through our planning process, we show them that milestones like that are not so far off.”
STARTING FROM SQUARE ONE
According to Holt-Robinson, many of Skyward’s planning engagements “start at square one” with saving and budgeting. After seeing many clients come in needing detailed help with budgeting, sometimes on a weekly basis, he and Lalehparvar have developed various budgeting resources and tools to help clients track their cash flow, savings, and expenses.
“Most of our clients have never really paid attention to this before, and it can be quite overwhelming to begin to look at your finances in a very real way,” Lalehparvar says. “We’ve developed spreadsheets where they can set up goals for expenses across a number of categories, then track to see how they did at the end of each month.”
As digital natives, younger Canadians may turn to social media for financial information. But when it comes to advice from finfluencers, Holt-Robinson says it can be difficult to determine where they get their information or what their interests are.
“We created our core education sessions from the ground up, and we cite all of our sources,” he says. “We want to reassure people that we’re telling the truth here, and we’re helping them plan based on a genuine interest to help.”
Holt-Robinson and Lalehparvar are also working to earn their CFP designations; they hope to officially become certificants by the end of next summer. As they go through that education, they’re using the principles and lessons they’ve learned to help clients with financial problems ranging from cash flow planning and projecting mortgage payments to estate and succession planning.
“We’re getting into the corporate space as well, helping small to medium-sized business owners use their earnings more efficiently,” Holt-Robinson says. “We're getting into the group benefits side of things as well, so we can offer support with respect to health insurance, life insurance, and dental benefits.”
Holt-Robinson and Lalehparvar have also developed close working relationships with accountants, realtors, and tax professionals, with the goal of making Skyward a one-stop shop for people to ask questions about money.
BUILDING TRUST AND UNDERSTANDING
Aside from financial education, Holt-Robinson and Lalehparvar take people through a financial planning process free of charge. Those who become clients get help on a variety of areas, including help with managing their investments, and are charged via a fee-based structure.
“We recognize that the old-school commission-based model used in the industry rewards advisors for getting large account sizes. There's not a lot of incentive to work on the actual maintenance of the account and the well-being of the client’s long-term returns,” Holt-Robinson says.
“We made the immediate decision to adopt a fee-based model where we don't get an upfront commission,” Holt-Robinson says. “We just get paid a certain percentage of AUM throughout the year, which makes it in our best interest to work as hard for the client as possible.”
To dispel the intimidation people might feel around financial professionals, Holt-Robinson and Lalehparvar make a conscious effort to be approachable. That includes forgoing stiff office attire in favour of a casual but still-professional look, not sitting in large chairs designed to impress clients, and making sure people understand and play a part in making decisions on their finances.
“We just graduated from the University of British Columbia. Both of us have our bachelor's degrees. We know what it's like to go through the motions of being a broke college kid,” Holt-Robinson says. “We walk the walk, we live the life that they're currently at. So we can come from a place of real understanding.”
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“Because we own our practice, we can empathize with other entrepreneurs who want to focus on the work, but have to also really think about the financial situation of their business,” Lalehparvar adds. “We’re just so lucky to have a client base that we can genuinely really relate to, in every level.”
