Creating And Managing Your Wealth

Families of significant wealth have unique needs and goals that are best served with a well-rounded holistic approach. Combining asset and wealth management, bespoke investment strategies, detailed due diligence and consolidated reports, RFO Capital Inc. is well positioned to offer multi-generational families an array of financial advisory services tailored to their unique situation and objectives.

Protection, preservation, and preparation is paramount when it comes to how you and your family members manage your day-to-day resources, your assets, your investments, and the emotions that inevitably arise when family and finances intertwine.

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Portfolio Management Advisory*

Acting as your family’s Chief Investment Officer, our investment professionals provide fully independent portfolio management advisory services to guide you in managing and stewarding your family’s financial assets.

Since our inception we have maintained a completely open-architecture model whereby all investment strategies are outsourced to best-in-class solutions from around the globe. This approach has been built to ensure that all our investment options are based on our own independent and objective research and due diligence – not based on any financial incentive to sell or place products. And because we do not manage any solutions internally, or have strategic relationships with financial product providers, our families can feel confident that we are always acting in their best interests.

Our approach allows for flexibility and input. Every portfolio is constructed from the ground up to address the unique needs of each family and the competing needs and objectives that are common in a multi-generational setting. By incorporating existing portfolios into the larger plan, we ensure that incremental changes make sense strategically and ensure minimal tax consequences. New investments are presented to families only after extensive research and due diligence and are only acted upon based on client feedback. Because each family portfolio is bespoke, full transparency is ensured and each investment decision is made with our client’s knowledge and input – a feature that is not possible with model portfolios or more formulaic approaches.

Investment Strategy*

Multi-generational families have unique needs and objectives that are not well served by more traditional approaches to portfolio construction. Traditional approaches to asset allocation are more prescribed – seeking to diversify assets to effectively control risk at the portfolio level and speak to a singular goal and time horizon. However, families have multiple goals and objectives with their financial wealth and are better served through an approach that seeks to allocate capital to different risk and return streams as opposed to simple diversification.

RFO Capital Inc. is a Registered Portfolio Manager in the jurisdictions in which it operates. While we abide by the regulatory requirements that allow us to act as a discretionary manager for our families, we do not commit to any investment without our client’s full knowledge, and input. Our core belief is that by working in an advisory capacity with our families we are empowering them to have knowledge and control over their own financial picture. Aspiring to be a trusted advisor necessitates open dialogue and understanding to ensure that all parties are in alignment.

Due Diligence Advisory*

Independence requires a fulsome manager research function to ensure that any investment solution is properly vetted and assessed before consideration by our families. It is also one of the core functions of a complete family office solution. As one of the largest independent capital allocators in Canada, Richter Family Office and RFO Capital Inc. are afforded unique access to differentiated solutions from around the globe. And our families benefit not only from our deep access, but also from preferred access points with regards to investment minimums and fees. Acting as a fiduciary for our clients necessitates seeking the best access possible and leveraging off the combined asset base of the families that we represent.

While we seek preferred access points with the managers with whom we work, this is not the criteria for their selection. Restricting our process based on fee reductions and preferred access would immediately introduce conflicts into our process. And working exclusively with managers that will provide discounts would impair our ability to find best-in-class solutions.

Our manager research function starts by seeking and identifying differentiated investment strategies that can serve a specific role within our clients’ portfolios. Once identified, these are then run through an exhaustive due diligence process to ensure that if an investment makes its way into our families’ portfolios, we have confidence in its capacity to perform as expected.

Having a reputation as a thoughtful and preferred partner in the investment community has afforded our families the opportunity to invest in unique and differentiated strategies that span both the traditional and non-traditional scope of investments. Having access is important but having the capacity to filter investment opportunities and identify risks is critical. Our research process necessitates multiple face-to-face meetings and on-site meetings so we can truly understand if a strategy is suitable for our clients.

All our manager research is documented and shared with each family prior to consideration for investment. Our focus is on process and repeatability, operational integrity, compliance, and finally, a full tax review so that we can assess performance expectations on an after-tax basis. We will also assess any tax-compliance implications to ensure that families are not saddled with unforeseen tax filings.

We apply the same level of rigor and oversight to all externally sourced solutions, and we will help evaluate investments that are sourced by our families. Our role is to provide independent oversight over the full spectrum of our families’ investments to ensure consistency and effective portfolio construction.

Consolidated Investment Reporting and Performance Monitoring*

Often families of significant means find their way into a wide variety of investments and lack a clear picture of how these investments interact and perform from a consolidated perspective. Having a high level view to how a portfolio is performing offers greater clarity and provides better insight into how each investment is contributing relative to its role. Without a consolidated picture, families may fall victim to comparing returns among their managers without understanding the corresponding risk and become tempted to make poor investment decisions based on relative performance.

Because of our open-architecture, RFO Capital Inc. can provide a completely consolidated picture for our families and include both investments sourced and approved through our due diligence function, as well as a families’ pre-existing investment portfolios. And because we are compensated only by one source – our clients – ongoing performance monitoring and recommendations are not biased through a need to bring assets “in house”. Our approach remains completely agnostic to the underlying investments so long as they perform as expected within the portfolio.

Our consolidated reporting provides a clear view on the totality of our families’ financial resources, as well as providing more detailed analysis of each strategy and investment manager. Reports provide appropriate benchmarking, risk assessment, and historical performance both at the consolidated level and for each discrete investment. Reports are further refined via entities as families with complex structuring should assess risk and performance according to the specific goals and objectives of each entity.

Finally, while simple in its presentation, our reporting structure necessitates the capture and integration of data at the transactional level. Simply put, this provides ready access to a complete and detailed picture of every investment in our families’ portfolios. Capturing information at the transactional level (as opposed to just tracking returns) provides for accurate and streamlined reports that simplify financial reporting to the benefit of tax planning and preparation.

*Richter Family Office is a registered trade name. The Richter Family Office group is comprised of Richter LLP and its subsidiary, RFO Capital Inc., a registered portfolio manager. Richter LLP is an independent firm that provides family office, accounting, tax and business consulting services, with wealth, investment advisory, portfolio management and consolidated wealth reporting services provided via RFO Capital Inc.