20+ year industry veteran joins Nicola, explains how other firms can attract talent like him
Errol Kuszner is the type of advisor firms want to hire. An industry veteran with over 20 years’ experience managing wealth at Guardian Partners, BNY Mellon, Fidelity Investments, and Jarislowsky Fraser, Kuszner has specialized in a particularly attractive growth area for the industry. Kuszner’s client base has been high net worth and ultra-high net worth families, already a major target market, with a skew towards their relationship with institutions. He has seen firsthand how as net worth has grown, philanthropic relationships with charities, universities, and hospitals have deepened. He’s watched, and facilitated, a growing degree of intimacy between high-net-worth families and the institutions they support. Now Kuszner is taking his talents and experience to a new role at a new firm.
This month, Kuszner joined Nicola Wealth as a Wealth Advisor | Portfolio Manager, and VP, Institutional for the firm. Operating out of Nicola’s Toronto office, Kuszner says his goal is to work with institutions and families, facilitating introductions and advice that help align a family’s financial and philanthropic goals. Kuszner explained why he elected to make a change in his own career and how Nicola Wealth won him over. He outlined how other firms seeking experienced advisors like him might want to refine or showcase their offerings to make themselves attractive to talented specialists.
“What drew me to Nicola was the chance to take everything that I've learned over 20 years of my career and apply it to a structure that's fully integrated and forward thinking,” Kuszner says. “There’s a structure and a platform at Nicola for teamwork and collaboration, for shared thinking with clients about making the right decisions for them. There’s a robust planning platform that can be integrated into areas like insurance, estate planning, and tax planning. There’s an ability to really provide a complete solution for families, and the families I work with in particular.”
Kuszner views the deepening of services for ultra-high-net-worth families as the Canadian wealth management industry’s ‘next step.’ He cites Nicola as a firm that has grown quickly by focusing on an enhanced service offering for these families. He’s seen the firm add key personnel to better serve those clients, and the chance to work with those experts is some of what attracted him to the firm.
Comparing what he can offer clients now at Nicola against what he could offer at previous firms, Kuszner cites his new firm’s asset management platform. In addition to their skillsets in public markets, he emphasizes Nicola’s well-known reputation as a private asset investor. He highlighted the firm’s real estate management arm, as well as the private equity, private credit, infrastructure, and venture capital strategies that the firm makes available to its clients.
“Nicola’s reputation as a private asset investor is well earned,” he says. “What sets the firm apart is not just the access, but the fact that so much of the asset management expertise is in-house. That often allows for greater control, alignment, and transparency, all of which translate into a more intentional and differentiated experience for clients.”
In only his second week with the firm, Kuszner says he has so far been impressed by the teamwork and network strength at Nicola. He notes that the even the everyday elements, like the investment platform, can be potential “game changers” for client experience.
One of the reasons he moved to Nicola, Kuszner says, was to work alongside specialists with different and complementary expertise to his own. He can combine his portfolio management experience with experts on the planning side to improve the client experience.
“We bring together our strengths and work as one team to serve the client,” says Kuszner. “Clients benefit when their advisor isn’t working in a silo, but as part of a broader ecosystem that’s aligned around their goals.”
In the middle of the intergenerational wealth transfer, with all its myriad complexities and opportunities, Kuszner believes that this kind of collaboration is essential.
While he cites the work and the tools available to him now as key to his joining the firm, Kuszner also highlights a few incentives that stood out about Nicola. First and foremost was the opportunity to gain equity in the business itself. Nicola’s staff are given the opportunity to buy into the firm, both through equity ownership and participation in the firm’s investment strategies. He says that he made the decision to move to Nicola with a view to his own eventual retirement. As firms seek to attract experienced advisors, he believes they need to offer more than compensation and branding, they need to provide the tools to serve sophisticated clients and a structure that helps advisors envision a future for themselves within the business.
“For an advisor, the primary objective is to grow their practice while delivering exceptional service to clients, and that requires a strong team behind you,” Kuszner says. “At Nicola Wealth, we benefit from the scale of a fully integrated firm with hundreds of professionals across the business. It’s a deeply collaborative environment where you’re not on your own, you’re supported by specialists who share your commitment to client success.”
He adds, “Attracting top advisor talent starts with the right incentives: meaningful equity participation, a powerful investment platform, and a shared sense of ownership. When everyone is aligned and moving in the same direction, it creates the kind of culture where advisors stay and grow for the long term.”
