Sandra (00:02) Well, good afternoon and welcome. I'm Sandra Henderson. I'm one of the co -founders and partners of Delisle Advisory, as well as the Chief Operating Officer. And I'm really thrilled today to host another segment of Beyond the Bank. I'm equally as thrilled to have a fabulous guest today with me, Susan St. Armand. Susan and I have known each other for a length of time. She's a dear friend and an amazing entrepreneur. So I can't wait for you to hear her story.

So let me give you a little bit of background about Susan. So Susan is an entrepreneur. She was the founder and the president of Sirius Group, which is a serious financial services based out of Ottawa, Canada. It is a business that specializes in business and philanthropic planning for ultra high net worth and families that have run businesses. And so really an extensive background for many years.

And also runs a very deep financial planning and in life insurance business So I won't go I want to have Susan tell her story today. So why don't I start there? Why don't I hand it over to Susan and I know you started off like myself in the financial services industry So why don't you take us back to that point Susan and what led you to where you are today?

Susan St Amand (01:18) Great, thanks Sandra. It's nice to be here. And I appreciate the invitation to have the conversation with you. It's always good to refresh and remember and go back to the days when you made decisions that were significant in your life. And certainly this was one of the significant decisions. I had been, I started my career in management training in a bank and spent a lot of time moving along.

through different branches. And a few of the things that I always did was I always did estates. I always worked with business owners. And I always did investments as well at that point in time. And so it was not something that just came out of the blue for me in terms of my grandfather ran a business and he had a business that he left to one son.

and the other two children never owned any of the business and never received any of the benefits and were not very happy about that. So that was not a great story, which I did not want to see replicated with my clients if there was any benefit that I could help. My father had a business as well and I worked in it for as long as I can remember when they put a box under my feet so that I could reach up to the top of the counter.

And that was very enjoyable for me because it was family time and family was tied in with business. And that was important to me. And my father had gotten ill at one point in time and I saw how community really brought forward and assisted our family in surviving and how the flexibility and the ability to have an independent business was very beneficial.

So flash forward to me working in the banking world and watching businesses go through some transitions and things and trying to get the bank to understand the importance of speaking with other members of the family instead of one person and trying to understand sort of the holistic way in which you need to look at clients.

And at that point in time, there was not necessarily a setup. This was a long time ago, it was in the 80s, and there wasn't necessarily a setup in the banking system to allow people to have that type of independence and that type of holistic viewpoint when it came to dealing with ultra high net worth clients and business owners. And so at that point in time, I decided that it was time to change careers, that I would leave the...

banking world and I would start out on my own to follow my passion and drive, which was to help families, to work with communities, to be engaged and involved in a way in which holistically we could work with other advisors collaboratively to be able to provide the results that brought the dreams to reality for our clients.

Sandra (04:23) Yeah, really and when you think about what a courageous step right at that point There wasn't very many people doing that type of planning if you will In the community, I mean it became financial planning became more of a thing in the last 20 years But you would have been at the very beginning of all those days

Susan St Amand (04:44) Yes, yes. And I went originally from banking into the life insurance world because I recognized that having liquidity and the availability for flexibility within people's lives so that they weren't stressed over finances when tragic things happen to them. I really I thought, well, I'll go into that.

first and then I realized as I was doing my CFP and my CLU and my trust and estate practitioner and all of these wonderful designations, I realized that it's not just enough to look after the money and to make sure that there's a flow of funds. You actually need a plan and you need to have some consistency and some ability to be able to help a family walk through the transitions that they go through.

and to develop the skin that they need in order to survive and stay together as a family. Make sure that they can still go to Christmas dinner together and that, you know, maybe ownership isn't all staying within the same family group. Maybe it's changing that ownership structure or maybe it's changing the business itself and getting into a philanthropic initiative, whatever it is that brings family and people together.

so that you can realize your dreams together and stay out of any type of litigation. That is sort of what the passion and drive was to try and make sure that we could do these things. And we've all come a long way because they've got great programs like the Family Enterprise Advisor Program now, which helps to holistically look at families, to work within them.

And you know, interesting, I was on a call earlier today with two ultra high net worth family enterprises and they both commented on how if given the option, they can find an advisor with an FEA and in particular in senior management in family offices and other areas, they will always hire or look for in an advisory firm, an advisor that has an FEA designation because they have seen the difference

that it makes when you've got a holistic site and you understand what families want and you care about the families staying together.

Sandra (07:03) You've touched on so many great points and maybe let's dive into a little bit around the family dynamics aspect of that. So as you've talked about, I mean, every family is different. so understanding the family and what motivates them and what their family values are and how do you keep harmony through all those process? What are some of the key tips that you could say are like, you you go out with a brand new family that you don't know. How do you start that conversation?

Susan St Amand (07:31) That's a really good question, Sandra, because it's not always easy, as you know, to start a conversation about continuity and talking about transitions. But generally speaking, it's meeting with the different family members and trying to get an understanding from them what their purpose is and what they feel the purpose of the family enterprises or the family wealth and where they see their role in things. But most importantly,

how they communicate as a family. How do you have conversations? And do you talk about the important things that are important to each one of you? And what are those common values? And what is the vision that each of you have? And how does that fit together? Because each branch of the family may have a different vision of their future, and they may have different priorities.

So how do you work within those priorities and the different ages and stages of the family members in order to, that each one of them can actually meet their own goals and follow their passion? So I would say the number one piece is communication and education. Learning pathways, bringing people together in ways that are non -judgmental, that are not

that are not putting people in a feel bad situation, but where everybody can come together feeling that they're gonna learn at the same level and, isn't this wonderful? You you may have an artist in the family that may say, you know, I don't know anything about legal documents. And then you may have a lawyer in the family that might say, well, what questions have you got? And let me help you walk through you through them.

And then you might have an accountant that says, let me teach you how to walk through a financial statement and see it from your perspective. Because very similar to a board of directors of a large company or any kind of a company, you want diversity of thought and opinion around the table because that's where you get the best input and the best decision making. It's non -judgment. Let's learn together.

Sandra (09:44) right.

Susan St Amand (09:54) Let's communicate how we feel, but come together with a sense of we want to stay together as a family. Or maybe we're going to go on different paths, but how do we come back together and still stay connected?

Sandra (09:57) you

So, so important. And so there's a couple of things that I think about when you talk about the family governance. So how do you keep that sort of process also, you know, because there's some legalese as we know in some structure that's required. How do you keep the governance structure at the same time of keeping harmony and the communication going?

Susan St Amand (10:33) Another good question, Sandra, because governance means a lot of things to a lot of people. But clear intention, and as I say to the families that I start working with, you need to be clear in your intention. You need to feel comfortable and agree that you're going to set aside the time and the money that it takes to get together and have these conversations and these learning journeys together.

Sandra (10:38) Yeah.

Right.

Susan St Amand (11:00) And if you're not willing to do that from the get go, it's going to be a struggle. know, governance is about communication and decision making. How do we make decisions together? How do we do what's in the best interest of all of us? Because the collective is often much stronger and much more sustainable long -term when you can understand each other and bring together your own perspectives and learn from each other.

Sandra (11:28) All

Susan St Amand (11:29) So the governance piece is really about that. It's really about, just like a board, when you're on a board of a publicly traded company, or a private company, or a charity not -for -profit, if you're on a hospital board and you've never walked through the hospital, then you might want to take a look and walk through the hospital. So it's, you know, if you're not at any of the family meetings, then you may be a little surprised when decisions are made without your

Sandra (11:36) Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly. You've talked a couple of times when we've been chatting about your work as a planner, you work with the families, and then of course you have to partner with others out in the professional community. How do you go about doing that? What I want to get to is, you know, we've talked a lot about independence and trying to find people that are going to partner with you that you know are going to be in that same mindset of working for clients with their best interests at heart.

uphold the highest level of fiduciary standards. So how do you go about that process to find those right people?

Susan St Amand (12:36) Sandra, I generally start with asking the clients first, who are your advisors? And are they, you know, how do you feel about them? And then I will meet with my clients advisors and we will actually have a dialogue and discussion about how, you know, how they feel their relationship is. And sometimes the clients will actually say, before you meet with them, you should know that

Sandra (12:43) Right,

Susan St Amand (13:06) I've dealt with them because my parents dealt with them or my cousin dealt with them, but I actually am not comfortable with them. And I might like a referral to somebody else. I don't particularly like burning down relationships that have been there for a long time. My emphasis is if this is the relationship you want and you wish to keep it, then let's try and work together and collaborate and holistically bring what's in the client's best interest and do no harm.

Sandra (13:24) Right.

Yeah.

Susan St Amand (13:37) However, there are times when a client will say to me, I need you to get me out of this relationship. Now, that doesn't happen very often. And sometimes what it means is a resetting of the relationship that was there before, because somehow it's gone awry. Somehow there's been a disconnect. So what I tend to look for is who has the same value system.

Sandra (13:44) Yeah.

Act as the code between.

Mm -hmm.

Susan St Amand (14:04) who can understand what the dreams are of the clients and help them to achieve those dreams. And then we will work with advisors behind the scenes. Advisors will often get together and say, okay, here's what the client's desire is. How do we come up with the best solution? So I'll give an example of perhaps the best solution is a reorganization of a company and there's a lot of tax planning and there's...

different pieces to the puzzle and agreements that need to be signed, et cetera. And what we may do is say, this is the best tax result and it saves you the most money, but the client doesn't mind paying tax. They just don't want the result of these two people having to get in a room and negotiate a contract together. So can we find another way to achieve the client's purpose? And it might cost a little more tax.

Sandra (15:00) Yeah.

Susan St Amand (15:00) but it might be less complicated and create a more tenable experience so the family can still get together at dinner.

Sandra (15:07) Yeah, now that makes a ton of sense when you think about the number of There's so many great professionals out in the communities, right and you and you get to work with so many It's about trying though the ones that you feel have the same focus on the client's best interest in the long run I think is the right fit when you think then about when I when I go back to objectivity and I'll use life insure life insurance as an example. So when your people are recommending life insurance

Susan St Amand (15:23) Absolutely.

Sandra (15:38) You've built a solid foundation around planning and insurance and I know you've mentioned that before. When I see sometimes, you know, life insurance plans that don't come along with a financial plan, it always makes me wonder as to what the benefit was or how does this fit into the overall wealth picture. Can you talk about the importance of mirroring those two things together and how it's so important?

Susan St Amand (16:00) Absolutely. It's critical because if you do not align things properly, then you can have unintended consequences. So you may end up with an owner of an insurance policy on somebody's life that's not the appropriate owner. You may end up with life insurance proceeds going into a company where it should have gone into a different company. You may end up with and then

as a result, you may end up paying a lot more tax. You may end up with, you know, if you think of multi jurisdictions, we all have clients in particular, when you're dealing with ultra high net worth, where there are clients who have children or family members that don't live in the same jurisdiction. And if they live in a different jurisdiction, there are different tax situations that you have to consider.

Sandra (16:36) Mm.

All of them. Yeah.

Susan St Amand (16:53) So for example, you may have a US person in your family who lives in the US, is resident in the US, and somebody up in Canada may have set up a Canadian life insurance policy in a company in Canada and not necessarily known how that's going to be treated in the US for the US person and in Canada.

if that U .S. person becomes a controlling shareholder or a shareholder in a Canadian company. So these are all pieces that are very complicated. And when you're dealing with ultra high net worth people and people with wealth, they have complex structures often. So that team playing that making sure holistically that you've got your I's dotted and your T's crossed is critical.

Sandra (17:18) Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Susan St Amand (17:43) Otherwise, the unintended consequences you're causing hardship to a family member, which in turn will cause hardships to everybody else in the family because your goal was to actually have everybody still get together once a year, whatever time of year that is for you at birthday parties, weddings, whatever, and not feel like they have been punished because they're not living in the same country or city or

Sandra (18:02) Yeah. Yeah.

Susan St Amand (18:12) province as you are. So there are so many delicate pieces that can mess up a transaction at a time that's critical for a family going through a transition and life insurance in particular because we all know life insurance pays out at the death of somebody and there that is one of the most difficult times in any family's experience and so you're not thinking

necessarily the way you would have before and fingers get pointed and issues come up that never would have arisen before. So that whole governance and decision making piece and looking at things from a high level and then drilling down and having that line of sight into what you're doing as a family for the family and how each individual is being impacted and how each professional fits into

Sandra (18:52) Yeah, so important.

Susan St Amand (19:10) their advice and giving and making sure that it fits in tightly into the puzzle. That is just critical or as I say, the unintended consequences are a family suffers.

Sandra (19:22) Makes a lot of sense. So when you think about where we're at today in 2024 and planning has come a long way, ultra high net worth families are becoming much more sophisticated. Where do you think this is gonna go in the future for professionals and professional firms like ours? You know, we're independent, we operate our own businesses now. Where do you think this goes for the future for clients looking for providers and partners as they manage their wealth?

Susan St Amand (19:52) When I look at the future, I think of what I'm getting phone calls on almost weekly now. And that is there are more and more ultra high net worth families saying, we want to open our own family offices because we want to bring in our professionals that we believe are the best in their field to collaborate together. We don't necessarily want to go to one institution or organization.

that is going to look at us like another, you know, it's just another one, we'll do the same thing, we'll do the same pattern where each one of these families is very unique, just like each person within that family is very unique. And so their preference from what I'm hearing more and more and more is we want to build a team or we want to join a team that actually has this type of holistic

viewpoint, but there are a bunch of independents that think differently and actually bring the different perspectives in. If everybody works for one organization, you're getting one top -down perspective that is viewed by maybe five or six people within that organization, but it's still within that organization. When you're dealing with different independents, then you're getting the input.

from various different organizations, from various different viewpoints. You've seen different types of plans. You've seen different types of families. I mean, we say this all the time in the FEA world, and that is if you've seen one family, you've seen one family.

Sandra (21:35) Such a good point.

Susan St Amand (21:35) And I think every family wants to be treated as they are, which is they're all unique. So they don't want a cookie cutter and they don't want a process that's been handed down by somebody else. They want something that's going to fit with them and that's going to allow them to achieve what their dreams are and their purpose and listen to what their purpose is and focus on how they can achieve their purpose.

Sandra (21:41) Yeah. Yes.

Mm -hmm.

Just such great points. I look forward to those days when people understand the value. I mean, I think in the United States, the independent model has been around for a number of years and is growing exponentially. There's something like over 17 ,000 independent firms in the US. And so we know that's here in Canada to now, but it's going to even get bigger. And so I'm excited about that, what that means for the type of value zone.

services that we can provide to the high net worth and ultra high net worth families. It makes a lot of sense.

Susan St Amand (22:38) Yes, I agree, Sandra. We're often behind the US in some of these areas. And we're blessed in Canada to have very strong financial institutions. absolutely, there is no doubt. And there is a role for everybody in this. But I do see that ultra high net worth families are saying, I'm unique and I want to be treated the way I am and that is unique.

Sandra (22:50) Yeah.

Yeah, I love it. Well, Susan, anything else that you'd like to add in for today? know time's gone by very quickly, but we've covered a lot of aspects.

Susan St Amand (23:16) I just want to thank you, Sandra. think it's, you know, every time we have a new independent coming into the field, I think it is incredible. It is a wonderful, I've been independent, as you said, for, I think since 1990 now. So it's been a while and it's sometimes been a little, you know, challenging in terms of finding other independents. And now that we've got so many, I am so excited.

Sandra (23:32) Yeah, I love it.

Susan St Amand (23:44) because I think that we have an opportunity and I think the opportunity is incredible. And I think that one of the things as an independent is you have one goal and your goal is to do what's in your client's best interest.

Sandra (23:59) Amazing. Couldn't agree more. Well, Susan St. Amand from Serious Financial Services in Ottawa. Thank you, Susan. I know your time's valuable and so I really appreciate you taking the time today. So, Have a great one. Thank you.

Susan St Amand (24:09) Great.

Thanks, YouTube.