Your financial needs unified under one roof
Kerr understands the importance of having all your professional advice integrated – so strategies work together and not against each other – in order to achieve the greatest results. The best way to accomplish this is to have the same small group of experts and professionals handle all your financial needs under one roof. Our Integrated Investment Management service offers our clients the combination of tax return preparation, investment management and access to financial advice. If your goal is to simplify administration of your financial needs, Kerr’s Integrated Investment Management Service will be your best fit.
We believe in taking the time to develop an individually-tailored, tax-efficient investment portfolio and plan – one that incorporates a full knowledge of your financial goals and assets.
Through our subsidiary, Kerr Financial Advisors, we offer Investment Management using a customized multi-manager approach with access to leading institutional high-net worth managers. We are a fee-only firm and adhere to a long-term strategic approach to the stewardship of assets entrusted to us based on the following four characteristics:
Experience – with over 50 years of combined experience managing portfolios for high net worth individuals and family offices, our team of investment counselors are all Chartered Financial Analysts and collaborate regularly with highly qualified outside experts and professionals in order to approve manager selection and discuss portfolio positioning given the prevailing economic and market conditions.
Customized approach guided by our deep knowledge of financial planning and taxes – our team of experts and professionals assess each client’s personal financial situation and objectives in order to develop a tailored investment policy and portfolio strategy that is suited to their unique needs.
Multi-manager approach – we provide coordinated access to select investment managers and incorporate a disciplined due diligence process in selecting and monitoring their performance.
Integration – we ensure your investment strategy is well-integrated with your family's tax and financial planning situation and strategies in order to optimize your financial resources.
Our Integrated Investment Management service includes: • Tax estimates and installment recommendations • Financial projections to help you assess the ability of your assets and to meet your needs and to periodically review savings or spending targets • Net worth updates, coordination of RRSP/TFSA/RESP contributions as applicable • Review of tax planning for the portfolio at year end • Identification of financial priorities & opportunities for you to consider including access to financial advice regarding questions that arise from time to time.
Our Integrated Investment Management service includes preparation of Canadian income tax returns for you and your spouse and minor children. These are prepared in house by the same team that provides you with financial advice and in close consultation with your investment advisors at the firm. This allows us to use our deep knowledge of your situation to ensure completeness of your returns and tax deductions - and also affords us the opportunity of assessing tax planning opportunities as we finalize your returns. We include payment of tax balances from your accounts (if you wish) as well as all communication with the income tax authorities.
While our Integrated Investment Management Services generally comprises Investment Management, Tax Return Preparation and Access to Financial Advice, we do have the flexibility to adjust our services to best suit your specific needs. In some cases our clients have requested additional support with other financial or estate planning needs or accounting and trust management services. Kerr Financial is willing to work with you and your family to provide the combination of services that best address your current needs.
- What does “Fee Only” mean?
Kerr Financial is a fee only advisor, meaning that the only person who pays us is our client. We do not receive any other form of compensation in the way of commissions or trailers. We therefore provide objective advice, free from pre- conceived biases. We have a fiduciary responsibility to act in our clients' best interests.
- Why should my family consider Kerr as an advisor?
We have developed a sound- customized multi-manager approach to investment management built on many years of experience with high net worth and family office client portfolio management which gives you access to world class managers that combine to complement risk adjusted returns. We have depth of tax and financial planning knowledge and can bring this to your portfolio to ensure its most tax effective management. And we are a small boutique firm so we can provide you a highly customized approach and you will work with the same small team of advisors who know all aspects of your financial situation.
- Can you give me some examples of the integration of financial planning with portfolio management?
Having full knowledge of your family net worth and having done projections to understand your spending or savings targets, we are well positioned to help you make decisions about your ongoing income needs - Can you afford to give your kids a gift of capital? Can you make a major charitable donation - and how should you do this most tax effectively? Do you need to downsize the house in retirement and, if so, what can you afford as a replacement? How much can you withdraw regularly from the portfolio while still preserving sufficient capital? And, we can help you identify financial priorities and opportunities as they arise with changing circumstances, tax and economic environments.
- Can you give me some examples of tax and investment integration?
Like other firms we look at your portfolio at year end to see if we should harvest tax losses to offset gains realized in the year. And we look at how to most tax effectively hold different asset classes between different family accounts depending on the tax attributes of each account. But with a greater knowledge of your tax situation we can go further. We identify the benefit of realizing losses to carry back to shelter capital gains realized in previous years. We harvest additional taxable income in years that it will help to utilize medical or charitable tax credits. We put in place appropriate income splitting strategies to lower your overall family tax bill. And we are attuned to the tax attributes of all aspects of your portfolio.
- What is unique or different about Kerr’s investment process?
Kerr’s process is customized to your individual needs and informed by deep knowledge of financial planning and tax provided by a team of highly accredited individuals working together. Kerr uses an institutional due diligence process to select and monitor managers which gives you co-ordinated access to world class managers that pair well together to optimize risk adjusted returns. With our diversified professional team, we ensure that your investment strategy is well integrated with your family’s overall tax and planning situation to help optimize your overall financial resources.
- Why would I choose the integrated investment management service?
The main benefit of our integrated service is the confidence it provides you of having your financial affairs looked after by one small team of professionals working closely together. We ensure that your tax and investment strategies are aligned - and you have one point of contact with professionals that know your overall situation. Specifically, the integrated service has a number of benefits. It allows ongoing financial planning that takes into account the full knowledge of your financial goals and resources; it allows us to ensure that your assets are most tax-effectively structured and managed; it ensures that you are selecting and managing the best investment professionals to meet your needs; and it helps facilitate the completion of accurate tax returns with minimal hassle on your part as many of the tax slips and information is already close at hand.
