Private Wealth Management: Frequently Asked Questions
What is private wealth management?
As a person’s wealth increases, their finances become more complex. Private wealth management offers an elevated level of personalized service, tailored to people whose finances have become too complicated to manage effectively on their own or with a single advisor.
Rather than addressing each aspect of a client’s finances in isolation, private wealth management takes a comprehensive, holistic approach that relies on the input of a team of professionals in many specialized areas of financial planning and wealth management.
Private wealth management is well-suited to professionals like physicians, who have unique financial considerations such as incorporation and more complex retirement planning.
What’s the typical structure of a private wealth management solution?
Private wealth management relies on a team of professionals working together on all aspects of a client’s finances: an advisory team (financial advisor, client associate, and financial planner), and a private wealth management strategy team of specialists in fields such as estate and trust planning, incorporation, insurance, and tax planning. A private wealth management team will also liaise with trusted third-party professionals such as lawyers and accountants.
How much money do I need to qualify for private wealth management?
Private wealth management clients typically need to meet an asset threshold. To qualify for the MD Signature wealth management service, clients must maintain a minimum of $3 million in investable household assets.
How can private wealth management benefit me?
Private wealth management can help you:
- explore whether private banking is right for you
- understand the requirements for corporations in your province/territory
- discover investments and financial planning strategies to reduce your tax burden
- discover provincial alternative funding plans (AFPs)
- fund your retirement
- strategize to maximize the wealth you transfer to your loved ones
- gain a deeper understanding of your values, vision and goals
The right financial advice helps you make important decisions with confidence, such as:
- How you'll invest inside your corporation
- What strategy you'll choose to create a guaranteed income for your retirement
- How you'll protect your retirement funds
- How you'll protect your assets for your children
- Whether you'll draw from your RRSP or RRIF early
- When you'll apply for government benefits such as OAS, CPP or QPP
- What happens to your practice or medical professional corporation when you retire
What’s the difference between private wealth management and private banking?
Both are services aimed at individuals with significant, often complex assets to manage, and both involve having access to a support team of specialists to oversee those complex finances.
Private banking is offered by retail banks and focuses on common banking products and services — bank accounts, credit cards — and borrowing options, like mortgages or lines of credit.
Private wealth management is offered by financial management companies, such as MD Financial Management (MD), and focuses on providing advice and solutions to help you maintain and grow your assets.
The two complement one another: MD Signature Private Wealth Management clients have access to a dedicated Scotia Wealth Management Private Banker and their support team.
What’s the difference between private wealth management and Private Investment Counsel (PIC)?
Private wealth management and PIC represent two different levels of advice and expertise based on client needs and investable household assets.
It’s a tiered system based on the assumption that the more assets an individual or family has the more complex their financial needs are, and the more they will benefit from specialized support.
MD Private Investment Counsel (MDPIC) clients have $200,000 or more of investable household assets and benefit from the services of an MD Portfolio Manager and an MD Advisor*.
MD Signature Private Wealth Management clients benefit from, in addition to a Portfolio Manager and Advisor, the support of an MD Signature Advisory Team and a Private Wealth Strategy Team, as well as access to exclusive events.
When should I consider private wealth management?
Private wealth management may be a good solution for you if you meet the asset threshold and feel your finances have become too complex to be managed efficiently by yourself or by a single financial advisor or financial planner.
Learn more: MD Signature Private Wealth Management
* MD Advisor refers to an MD Management Limited Financial Consultant or Investment Advisor (in Quebec), or an MD Private Investment Counsel Portfolio Manager.