Investment Management to Preserve and Grow Wealth

Our Family Office builds customized portfolios using the same approach as the world’s largest and most well capitalized investors, focusing on risk. Being an asset allocator and tailoring the amount of exposure to both traditional asset classes (stocks and bonds), as well as non-traditional asset classes (private equity, venture capital, mortgages, secured direct lending, real estate) is how trillion-dollar sovereign wealth funds and institutions like The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board have been managing portfolios professionally for decades. In order to steadily preserve and grow their capital they typically allocate 65% or more to non-traditional strategies (i.e. anything that is not stocks and bonds). We believe ultra-high net worth families and foundations should benefit from that same All-Weather Portfolio approach. Our team’s philosophy, derived from CO-Founder and CIO Neil Nisker’s over five decades investment industry experience combines disciplined asset allocation with comprehensive due diligence in asset class and manager selection. The portfolios we build for clients are designed to perform in up or down markets, generating consistent returns while protecting capital from market volatility and providing peace of mind for a better night’s sleep.

Protecting Your Financial Assets

In many areas of life every year you, the reader, spend thousands of dollars on insurance premiums to protect your hard assets (home, car, jewelry, boat) and soft assets (health, life), only to be happy when you never have to claim the insurance. The one area of assets that you don’t protect is your liquidity. The good news is there is a way to “insure” your portfolio assets. If you build the asset allocation properly, using the full spectrum of investment options, not just traditional stocks and bonds, but non-traditional strategies you can drastically reduce the risk for the same expected returns. The tangible result is an All-Weather Portfolio that is up in the good times, but more importantly, is even up in years when markets are down some 20% or more. At Our Family Office, we construct and monitor these tailored All-Weather portfolios, while adjusting asset allocations in response to market conditions and client goals.

Key components include:

• Asset Architecture™ (reviewing how your portfolio fits into overall net worth)
•  Due diligence on selecting asset classes, global managers (including cybersecurity review)  and investment strategies
• Asset Allocation
• Ongoing risk management

Beyond traditional investments, our innovative investment management strategies also include:

• Non-Traditional Investments (Alternative assets)
• Tax-efficient structuring
• Co-Investment Opportunities

Innovative Solutions Tailored to Your Goals

Our Family Office uses an institutional approach to asset allocation. We provide tailored investment solutions designed to protect and grow your assets in all market environments, what we refer to as an All-Weather Portfolio. Our consideration of overall Asset Architecture balances the liquid portfolio with total family assets to optimize asset allocation and investment decisions at the highest level.

Our Investment Management Services

• Asset Architecture Analysis: There are often assets of significant value outside of the main liquid portfolio (development real estate, income properties, private business, venture capital investments, concentrated positions in public company shares). We account for these exposures while designing the liquid portfolio segment of a family’s net worth to provide the necessary balance when accounting for all assets.
• Strategic Asset Allocation: After an initial analysis, we build a plan for the long-term asset allocation of a portfolio. This plan will be specific to your unique goals and liquidity needs and designed to protect capital and maximize risk-adjusted returns.
• Tactical Asset Allocation Shifts: Within the long-term asset allocation plan for portfolios, there is flexibility to shift allocations opportunistically, altering holdings to enhance protection for portfolios during market volatility or to take advantage of situations with unique return drivers.
• Unbiased Manager Search and Monitoring: We search the world for best-in-class investment strategies in a vast array of asset classes. Close relationships and monitoring of investment managers are key components of building successful portfolios that include non-traditional asset classes. We ensure that for investments of a longer-term nature we are being properly compensated for that illiquidity (also known as receiving an illiquidity premium).
• Institutional Level Due Diligence: Conducting institutional-level due diligence prior to allocating to any asset class or approving any manager for inclusion on our investment platform allows us to ensure that we invest only in areas that compensate us properly for the associated risk and illiquidity, with strong and consistent teams whose incentives align with our clients’. Due diligence is conducted on the asset class, on finding the best manager in the world within that asset class and down to the level of the specific strategy and the team who executes it.   
• Fee Negotiation: As we are only paid by our clients and receive no compensation from the managers we select,   we are empowered to negotiate preferred institutional pricing for our client portfolios in many of the strategies we invest in, resulting in better net performance.
• Consolidated Reporting: Our Family Office provides consolidated investment reporting of all the investments we manage on your behalf. This includes detailed quarterly reports that show net return and risk metrics at the portfolio and individual strategy level, currency attribution, account activity and transactions, and many additional details. An online portal that consolidates portfolio information and is updated daily is also available for more real-time portfolio information. 

Guiding Canada’s Ultra High Net Worth Families to Preserve and Grow Their Wealth Over Time

Quality investment management is more than managing portfolios. We are dedicated to delivering high-quality investment strategies that protect and grow your assets across all market environments. To learn more about how the team at Our Family Office can help you, please contact us at 416-304-9800 or by completing the online form.