We’ve added a podcast to our editorial lineup, dedicated to financial advisors and those who work with them. Canadian Advisor.cast debuted Friday, with Rob Carrick as our first guest.
Carrick stepped away from his full-time position at The Globe and Mail earlier this year. He’s continuing to write a bi-weekly personal finance column there. He’s also launched a Substack, and he’s taking on speaking and consulting engagements.
“I felt I needed to pull back a little bit, and have more time to think,” Carrick said during our podcast interview. “I’m doing what I was doing before, but on a more selective, measured basis.”
Carrick has been a respected voice on personal finance and investment matters since the mid-1990s. He and I talked about his 27-year run, covering the dot-com bubble, the credit crisis and, more recently, U.S. President Donald Trump’s global trade war.
The credit crisis was “far and away” the most intense experience he had writing a weekly column for The Globe and Mail, he told me.
“What got me there was how afraid industry people were,” Carrick said. “I’m used to investors being afraid, and the people in the industry saying, ‘Don’t worry … we understand this. It will pass.’ But I didn’t get that feeling in ’08, ’09. I heard fear. I heard voices quivering when I was talking to them.”
Carrick recalled a tip he got from one of his editors. “[O]ne of the big banks in Canada might be having a little trouble, and [I’d] better get on it,” he said. “So I went and had a briefing at [Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation] — just hypothetical, we didn’t mention any bank names. … That was the level of fear and the level of uncertainty that was going on back then.”
These days, the Canadian financial advice industry “is on a nice little upswing,” Carrick said.
“When I started my job, I was really surprised at the number of emails I was getting from people complaining about their advisors,” he said. “I had a healthy skepticism of the advice business. But … I started to meet some very good advisors. I met the best people, instead of hearing from the clients of the worst people.”
Carrick balances his fierce investor advocacy with an understanding of Canada’s financial services industry that is both detailed and nuanced. His work is always well informed, and his reporting honest. “One thing I always tried to do was be a helpful critic, and a balanced critic,” he said.
We closed our interview with a question I’m planning to ask all of our guests: Do you have advice for financial advisors?
“Treat your clients like people,” Carrick said. “Talk to them about how their lives are going. Make friends with them. Find out what their worries are about money, and address them. Don’t make it all about the investments. That’s yesterday’s advice business, and it’s going away.”
Canadian Advisor.cast is available in both video and audio formats, via Advisor.ca and Spotify.