Two advisors weigh in on their approaches to alternatives, tax & estate planning and how those have set them apart
Clients expect more of their advisors. They want deeper service, wider expertise, and differentiated outcomes across a range of financial outcomes both inside and outside of investment management. That’s why, amid a host of categories celebrating broad excellence in advice, the Wealth Professional Awards highlight specific areas of specialization. The awards for Advisor of the Year – Tax & Estate Planning and The Centurian Asset Management Award for Advisor of the Year – Alternative Investments emphasize how adding specialized knowledge both in asset management and financial planning has become a route to growth and success for advisors.
Nominees for each of those awards recently spoke with WP about how their approach to those niches has helped differentiate their practice. Christopher Warner, Wealth Advisor and Client Relationship Manager at Nicola Wealth outlined how tax and estate planning has become a core part of his practice and a real value add for clients. Jennifer Williams Investment Advisor at Cresco Wealth Management of Wellington-Altus Private Wealth spoke to how she uses alternative assets to control for volatility in client portfolios, producing better behavioural outcomes. Both advisors emphasized the importance of gaining specialized knowledge and celebrating specialized successes through awards like these.
“We’re elevating people we think are exemplars of the industry, and if we hold them to be good examples of what we want, then that elevates the industry as well. It shows people what to strive for, gets people following the right pathway,” says Warner.
Williams adds that in any form of specialization, communication is essential to creating success.
“I’m a big advocate for concise, compliant communication in a way that anyone can understand,” Williams says, “When I explain one of the, the alternatives that we’re using, it’s in a way that the client can understand.”
That clarity of communication, Williams says, helps her focus on alternatives achieve better client outcomes. Behaviour is often a significant barrier to success, when investments experience volatility or behave in ways that clients didn’t expect, they may want to get off the ride. What is lost in those moments, Williams notes, can be very significant, especially compared to the outcome if a client was able to stick with their plan. Mitigating behavioural mistakes, she says, is a core reason she and her team have become alternatives specialists.
In Williams’ practice, the primary allocation to alternatives comes through covered call strategies, which she says offers a means to monetize and invest in market volatility, thanks to the volatility premium in options prices. She adds other liquid alts exposures to that mix, ensuring that clients gain diversification benefits while ensuring the liquidity requirements of a retail investor are met.
Williams’ approach is underpinned by communication and education, connecting asset allocation directly to the financial plan that she and her team have built for their clients. She can show how tax efficient income from some of those alts allocations can serve a client’s plan and ensure they understand what they can expect from their portfolio in different market environments. Her specialization in alts has not come at the expense of her wider focus on financial planning, as well as her passion for supporting women’s financial wellbeing and education. The alts expertise she was nominated for is part of how she achieves those wider holistic goals.
Chris Warner, for his part, finds that planning can come with significant and immediate impacts on a client’s overall financial situation. He argues that the right plan is often more significant in its impact than a particular asset allocation decision.
To achieve that impact, Warner works with clients on tax planning, compensation planning, cash flow, philanthropy planning, and estate planning. It’s a specialization that has helped him better serve a cohort of high net worth clients, noting that those clients tend to come with more complexity and that, when dealing with larger account sizes, a marginal increase in efficiency can result in far more significant additional benefits.
The tax and estate planning process also allows for deeper connection with his clients. Warner notes that through this work, he gains a fuller grasp of what his clients really value in life and what they want to achieve with their wealth. In the case of both Warner and Williams, their specializations have earned them a place at the WP awards because they use that specialization to meaningfully answer the core question every client asks their advisor: ‘am I going to be okay?’
“For other advisors, I would say focusing on the things that you can control. So maybe not talking too much about those things we can’t control, which I think happens a lot in our industry,” Williams says. “It’s managing to bring peace of mind to clients. There’s a lot more than just the portfolio in that.”
The 2026 WP Awards will be held in Toronto on June 4, 2026 – Register to attend here.
