Gillian Kunza and Michael Konopaski say advisors are focused on believability more than transparency and trust, cutting through the same old, same old that everyone else is selling
Five years after launching Designed Securities Ltd., co-founders Gillian Kunza and Michael Konopaski say the case for a truly believable dealer is stronger now than when they opened the firm, as the word “independent” has been spread thin across the industry.
Designed, which operates as Designed Wealth Management, received IIROC approval in June 2021. Kunza, the chief executive, had been chief compliance officer at their prior dealer. Konopaski, the chief financial officer, brought 25 years experience in the dealer business. Now, the firm has grown to more than 200 advisors, roughly 70 head-office staff, its first billion-dollar branch in Saskatchewan, and a U.S. arm registered as an investment adviser with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
What has not changed, in the co-founders’ telling, is the gap between firms that call themselves independent and firms that operate that way. The term has been adopted broadly enough across the dealer landscape that it no longer carries a clear meaning.
“Everybody claims to be independent. Everybody claims to be unique,” Konopaski said.
“Independence is a hard sell in Canada because Canadian investors don’t rank it. Advisor’s may want independence because they feel constrained in their situation, but the investor wants safety and stability.”
At Designed, independence is structural rather than rhetorical: no transition bonuses, contracts the firm walks through with a prospective advisor before signing, and a model that lets advisors set up their branches the way they want them.
The firm has taken on advisors from close to 50 different dealers, and the pain point most often cited by those joining is their current firm’s interpretation of independence. The contrast comes up in unusual ways. Konopaski recalled one recent conversation with advisors who described the move using the word “emancipation,” a framing that captured how restrictive their prior arrangements felt while at a so-called independent dealer.
Kunza tied the same point to contract design. “We include more detail in our contracts because we believe people should know what they’re signing up for from the start,” she said. “If you bury those details in the fine print, people only discover them later, once they’re already locked in. We’d rather be upfront.”
The five-year read on what didn’t happen
Part of the case for genuine independence is that the disruption forecasts circulating when Designed launched have arrived in slower and narrower form than billed. Order-execution-only platforms were going to take a meaningful share of retail clients. Robo-advisors would press on margins. AI would compress the advisor’s role.
“A lot of talk was order-execution only and how advisors are going to be replaced. I never fully felt that way,” Kunza said. “While Wealthsimple and similar places are doing really well, we still run in a very distinct market. I’m not seeing one of our advisors from four or five years ago drop to $30 million from $40 million because clients decided to be do-it-yourselfers.”
Her read, after almost a full cycle running the firm, is that the industry moves more slowly than the coverage of it suggests. “As much hype as some of it gets, people don’t shift as fast. It’s the same with our sales cycle. You think we’ve got a great deal in a business, but it still takes somebody two years to decide.”
The same caution applies, in her view, to AI. Designed has been pushing advisors and staff to engage with generative tools, and holds several internal monthly advisor working sessions on AI. Kunza still thinks the industry narrative is running ahead of the ground: AI may move through individual practices faster than past inflection points once an advisor decides to adopt it, but “we’re a long way from it replacing the majority of advisors by next year.”
“We’re trying very hard to be progressive and figure out the best use cases,” she said. “But there are plenty of advisors that aren’t going to touch AI, maybe ever.”
The pitch for what comes next: “believability”
Because the vocabulary the industry leans on — independence, transparency, even trust — is wearing out under the weight of overuse, Konopaski is replacing it with something harder to fake.
“We’re trying to become the most believable firm in the industry,” he said. “Believability is way beyond trust. Because with AI, both advisors and investors now have to wonder, can I believe what I’m hearing?”
He distinguishes between the two on a time axis. Trust is earned over years. Believability is assessed in real time, and increasingly under conditions where the audience cannot be certain what was produced by a person and what was produced by a model.
The same idea extends to authenticity, transparency and a willingness to show clients the realities of the business, rather than projecting certainty at all costs.
“We’re not walking around saying we’re the best,” he said. “We’re just real with people. We answer questions in writing, we’re available, and we often go against the grain.”
He acknowledged that approach can run counter to industry standard, where firms are often expected to project certainty and control. In that environment, he said, showing vulnerability, uncertainty, or even curiosity can feel uncomfortable, despite being essential to honest conversations with advisors.
A management team that does not look like the industry’s
One structural feature of Designed shapes its read on advisors and clients alike: roughly 60 per cent of senior decision-makers are women. “You cannot find that anywhere else,” Konopaski said.
Kunza, said the representation extends below the executive layer. “It plays into how far we’ve come, and how we’ve resonated with a broader audience. Our management team is a broad audience.”
Whether the next five years validate the co-founders’ read on the industry will be tested by the firm’s cross-border expansion and by the pace at which AI is absorbed into advisor workflows. Despite the uncertainty, the Designed team has faith their fresh strategy will be vindicated.
“Empathy and trust and transparency are table stakes at this point,” Konopaski said. “Believability and vulnerability, to us, is how we stand out.”
This article was produced in partnership with Designed Wealth Management
