For its annual Dealers’ Report Card, Investment Executive asked leaders at each of the dealers with fewer than 500 advisors what moves they’re making to attract new talent. As competition heats up in the industry, for advisors and assets, these firms are all looking to stand apart.
Smaller firms may not be able to compete with larger dealers on compensation and bonuses, said Geoffrey Barthelot, a partner in strategy and operations for insurance and wealth management at KPMG Canada. But they can often adopt new technology sooner, with legacy systems not being a hurdle.
All five of the smaller dealers in the Report Card pointed to technology as one priority, with a common goal being to automate time-consuming functions such as compliance, client onboarding and portfolio management.
“Small to medium dealers have a higher compliance cost as they have smaller [advisor] bases,” Barthelot said. Using AI in compliance processes could reduce both dealers’ costs and the amount of time advisors spend on administrative work.
AI could help firms produce annual statements as fee-transparency requirements expand, or it could help advisors complete suitability documentation by matching fund details with client objectives, Barthelot said.
As the technology behind it improves, AI could also play a larger role in core advisor functions.
Advisors can learn to prompt it for different perspectives on a client’s financial plan, Barthelot said.
Clients might also gain access to increasingly sophisticated tools and may challenge their advisors’ recommendations more often. That will put more pressure on advisors to demonstrate the value behind the fees they charge, he added.
Dealers can help by providing approved prompts and training advisors to use agentic AI effectively.
“It’s not only about building and deploying the best tools, but also about learning how to use them,” he said.
The summaries below look at four of the dealers with fewer than 500 advisors. Designed Wealth Management, a new Dealers’ report entrant, was profiled separately. They’re listed alphabetically.
Automating for scale and efficiency: Carte Wealth
Carte Wealth is using automation to help advisors scale their practices while also reducing the dealer’s administrative workload.
In August, Carte Wealth began using technology from U.K.-based IntellectAI, backed by Intellect Design Arena Ltd. The platform applies to advisor and client onboarding, said Kirk Purai, president of the dealer. The system automates about 80% of the onboarding process. The dealer mentioned in an emailed statement that the partnership formally began in February of this year.
The dealer is also looking to automate more of its compliance work. Currently, compliance reviews are done through a risk-based and sampling approach. Using an AI system on top of that could help the dealer more efficiently check all documentation and trades against Carte Wealth’s policies and procedures as well as provincial regulations, Purai said.
“We’re going to be audit-ready all the time, he added.”
The firm added in an emailed statement, “We want technology to help identify potential gaps earlier, giving advisors an opportunity to address issues as part of their normal business practices rather than discovering them during a compliance review or audit.” The dealer’s leaders want to support advisors and not police them, they said, noting, “Advisors should be able to focus their time and energy on their clients; building relationships, understanding their needs and providing quality advice with the confidence that Carte Wealth is working alongside them.”
The dealer also wants the ability to bring in advisors without a corresponding increase in administrative staff, he said.
“If we add on 30 advisors next month, it really wouldn’t change the workload,” through automated onboarding improvements.
As Carte Wealth introduces more AI tools, it’s putting guardrails around their use. It launched an AI policy last year and hosts webinars on AI best practices, said Maria Jose Flores, the dealer’s president.
The firm is developing contingency plans in case its technology fails. Alongside “strong governance” policies, the firm said in its statement, “We recognize that technology cannot be our only line of defence.” Business continuity and contingency planning is a focus, with the dealer “continuing to strengthen our plans and processes, so that if a technology platform becomes unavailable or experiences a disruption, we have appropriate alternatives to support our advisors and clients.”
Automation also isn’t a substitute for advisor-client relationships or advisor-leader connections, Flores said. Wealth management remains a “face-to-face relationship business,” and the dealer hosts in-person events that include company golf events to build relationships with advisors.
“Shaking a hand, giving a hug or spending like half of a day golfing makes those relationships stronger,” Flores said. “We chat with our top producers to understand where they’re at, what their clients want to achieve and how we can support them as a dealer.”
Connecting the stack: Peak Financial
Peak Financial is pitching advisors on both its technology and respect for independence — the firm isn’t tied to a product manufacturer and, said Robert Frances, president and CEO, “We prohibit ourselves from having an in-house mutual fund, an in-house wrap or anything that would put us in a position where our management is serving two masters.”
On the technology front, its MyPeak Konnect platform helps create efficiencies in the front and back office. For example, its planning tool (backed by Conquest) is plugged into Peak Konnect, making it easier for advisors to access client information and create and manage financial plans, Frances said.
“We are continuing to improve onboarding and KYC, while expanding tools for meeting notes, mobile use, AI-assisted work and client engagement. The initial feedback on this tooling is overwhelmingly positive,” the firm said in an emailed statement that identified advisor feedback as driving a lot of the work.
Peak Financial waived the fee for testing the software, helping drive advisor adoption. It’s also held webinars and expanded its internal training and service teams.
“We waived [those] fees because we wanted advisors to jump on it [the planning tool], use it and let us know what they think,” Frances said.
Some of the dealer’s new tools are developed for specific parts of its business, as not every tool is appropriate for every type of advisor (e.g., a mutual fund advisor isn’t trading on the market like a securities advisor). But in all possible cases, software is rolled out broadly.
Hands-on building: Portfolio Strategies
Portfolio Strategies is building some of its own technology, with the help of third-party platforms.
Proprietary platform Responsive App was built alongside VieFund to help the dealer’s advisors, said Jason Bobee, president. “We were heavily involved with its flows and construction,” he explained, and its onboarding function mimics those of direct investing competitors. “Obviously, we cannot have the same flows [as those] because we are in the advisory channel,” he said, but they aimed to create “a very quick” process for gathering client information.
The firm previously used Broadridge, which dealer chairman and CEO Mark Kent said holds a large share of the Canadian wealth-management platform market.
Advisors can use the new tool on mobile devices for client onboarding, editing financial plans and updating know-your-client requirements, among other day-to-day tasks.
Portfolio Strategies plans to add corporate accounts, trades and transfers to the platform, as well as practice-management data such as an advisor’s book size, Bobee said. Processes that require several software providers today will eventually be integrated into one platform.
There’s no set timeline for that, the firm said in an emailed statement, but the work “will be continuous.” AI software will hasten the process, it said.
The main goal is for this new app is to have it “run beside the mainframe. It will eventually be the primary login location for our advisors. The app’s dashboard will allow advisors to multi-[task] under one area,” helping them onboard clients and edit their information, plus trade, transfer and view their practice information.
Still, “There are many processes within a back office that should not be outsourced,” the dealer said. So planning and building is being done carefully.
Outside of that work, the dealer has also built its own ETF platform, said Kent. The platform gives clients access to ETFs for $0.01 per share and a minimum trading charge of $1, with the dealer absorbing custody fees. “This platform is also integrated into VieFund as an omnibus account with a third party,” the dealer’s statement said.
Portfolio Strategies isn’t directly using AI tools yet, but the leadership duo is keeping an eye on future applications.
“We see value in it for the back office … but for the dealer itself, we don’t necessarily see great value in it yet,” Kent said. “AI is fantastic at gathering information; it’s not very good at making decisions.”
Still taking work off advisors’ plates: Sterling Mutuals
Sterling Mutuals uses its OneBoss back-office platform to automate tasks that take up significant amounts of advisors’ time.
As far back as 2018, the dealer launched an automated portfolio rebalancing service for its nominee accounts that works across multiple fund company offerings.
These days, the dealer plans to continue adding tools to its proprietary tech stack, including AI-powered notetaking.
“Advisors in general don’t do a good job in taking notes,” said Rocky Ieraci, senior vice-president. “Every year, regulators publish a list of deficiencies identified through their audits, and advisor notes and documentation of recommendations, suitability and client meetings consistently rank among the top concerns. This reinforces the importance of maintaining thorough, accurate and timely documentation.”
One benefit of AI software that’s used to transcribe client meetings and add to advisors’ notes is, “AI tools can also help identify potential compliance gaps and compile information from previous client meetings, to assist in preparing an agenda for future discussions,” the dealer said in an emailed statement.
The issue isn’t so much advisors missing things, that statement said. The reality is only so much information can be processed by humans, so AI can help pick out blind spots and leave advisors with more time for clients.
The dealer said, “We also recently partnered with Continuum AI to provide a notetaking AI for our advisors to use. It is integrated with OneBoss.”
Additionally, Sterling is trying to erase another advisor pain point through its CE Wallet platform, which hosts continuing-education courses.
Part of the goal is giving advisors access to continuing-education credits in categories that can be harder to find, including business conduct, Ieraci said.
“We want to make sure that we give [advisors access to] the whole suite of credits.”
A leg up for recruitment, but don’t neglect the basics
Technology can give smaller dealers a way to start conversations with advisors considering a move, Barthelot said. But having industry-leading practice-management tools alone isn’t enough to retain them once they join.
In that regard, smaller to medium-sized dealers can use size to their advantage. With only a few hundred advisors, they can often spend more time with every advisor and tailor their services and platforms more closely to their needs.
“When you have 5,000 advisors, you cannot please everyone,” Barthelot said. “A smaller dealer will know your name, know who you are and help you grow,” and no advisor wants to just be a number like sometimes happens at larger firms.