John Horwood, Director, wealth management, The Horwood Team

John Horwood of The Horwood Team is part of this year's Wealth Professional Canada's Hall of Fame

John Horwood, Director, wealth management, The Horwood Team
https://dir.richardsongmp.com/web/the.horwood.team/meet-the-horwood-team
Director, wealth management
The Horwood Team Richardson GMP
Years as an advisor: 30

The Horwood name is synonymous with financial advice in Canada. Both John Horwood and his wife, Rebecca, are advisors, as are their daughters, Alexandra and Rosemary. All ply their trade at Richardson GMP, an institution where the family patriarch has a long history. Having previously worked as a chartered accountant in Australia and later in Canada’s mining industry, Horwood made his start as an advisor at Richardson Greenshields in 1987. The firm has switched hands several times in the interim, but the Horwood Team has remained a constant.

“It is a case of whether you build versus buy,” Horwood says. “My feeling was that we had a stable platform and a strong relationship. You can take the easy money and sell up and go somewhere else, but your clients won’t appreciate it, and in the long run, your business won’t appreciate it either. So I was much happier to stay.”

Today his team is regarded as one of Canada’s premier wealth management firms, with a commitment to creating detailed financial plans for its clients. This is standard in the industry today, but that wasn’t the case when Horwood made his first steps as a financial advisor.

“When I started in 1987, we were the first firm, and I was the first advisor, to offer financial planning to retail clients,” he says. “Before that there was no planning whatsoever, and a typical RSP probably had about five junior gold stocks in it.”

Today, Horwood has shifted his focus to reflect the expectations of his clients. Increasingly, that means legacy-building. “Pretty much all of my clients have devolved down to the next generations,” he says. “So now I spend my time on philanthropy and on starting new companies and investing in places where we can really change the world.”

There’s no shortage of opportunities out there, Horwood explains, as today’s disruptors can prove quite lucrative. “We have been investing in biotech and healthcare,” he says. “There are big opportunities in Canada because there is so little capital and so few entrepreneurs. Canada does great research but doesn’t know how to commercialize it.”

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