Why I Don't Manage Investments (And What I Do Instead)
When prospective clients learn I don't actively manage investments, I often see confusion flash across their faces. "Isn't that what financial advisors do?"
It's a fair question. The industry has spent decades building the expectation that financial advice equals investment management. But after years of working with Ontario corporation owners, I've come to a different conclusion: for most successful professionals, investment selection is the least important part of their financial planning - and focusing on it first often means missing what actually matters.
This isn't a critique of investment management as a service. It's a deliberate choice about where I create the most value and how I want to work with clients.
The Industry's Investment Obsession
Most financial advisory relationships begin with a conversation about investments. The process is predictable:
Complete a risk tolerance questionnaire. Review current portfolio holdings. Analyze asset allocation. Recommend changes. Monitor performance. Rebalance periodically. Repeat.
This model works well for the industry because it's scalable, measurable, and creates recurring revenue. Asset-under-management (AUM) fees provide predictable income that grows automatically as client portfolios grow, even if the advisor provides minimal additional service.
The focus on investment management also creates clear marketing messages: "We beat the benchmark by 2% last year." "Our proprietary investment process delivered superior returns." "See how we would have managed your portfolio differently."
But here's what I've observed after a decade working with corporation owners: the difference between a good investment strategy and a great one rarely creates meaningful wealth. The difference between good comprehensive planning and no planning absolutely does.
What Actually Matters for Ontario Corporation Owners
When I analyze where my clients gain the most financial benefit, investment selection consistently ranks near the bottom of the list. Here's what typically creates significantly more value:
Corporate Tax Efficiency
Getting your salary versus dividend decision right can easily swing tens of thousands in tax efficiency annually. Optimizing how you extract wealth from your corporation - considering RRSP contribution room, personal cash flow needs, corporate investment opportunities, and overall tax integration - creates far more impact than selecting between two similar index funds.
Most accountants handle compliance and annual filings exceptionally well, but few engage in proactive tax planning throughout the year. The gap between what happens and what's possible is enormous - and that's where comprehensive planning creates real value.
Corporate Cash Deployment
Corporation owners accumulate cash in their corporate accounts - sometimes intentionally, sometimes just because they're not sure what to do with it. This cash sits earning minimal interest while creating passive income complications that threaten Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption (LCGE) eligibility.
Understanding how to deploy corporate cash efficiently - balancing liquidity needs, tax integration, investment strategy, and maintaining business sale readiness - is complex planning work that creates substantial value.
The actual investment selection once you've worked through that analysis? Usually the simplest part of the entire puzzle.
Insurance Structure and Integration
Whether insurance should be owned personally or corporately, how much coverage makes sense given your other assets, what type of insurance fits your situation, how insurance positioning affects LCGE eligibility - these questions create significantly more value than whether your equity allocation should be 60% or 65%.
I regularly see corporation owners with insurance coverage that made sense years ago but no longer aligns with their current financial picture. Or worse, they have no insurance because the complexity of deciding between personal versus corporate ownership created analysis paralysis.
Maintaining Business Sale Readiness
Small decisions made today can eliminate hundreds of thousands in tax advantages when you eventually sell your business. Understanding how corporate structure, passive versus active asset ratios, insurance positioning, and retirement savings strategies affect your ability to use LCGE when selling - this planning work protects enormous value.
Most corporation owners I meet have never had anyone connect these pieces. Their accountant handles annual compliance, their insurance advisor positioned coverage years ago, their investment advisor manages portfolios - but nobody ensures these pieces work together toward business sale readiness.
Advisor Team Coordination
Your accountant, lawyer, insurance advisor, and investment advisor often each do good work within their specific domains. But they rarely coordinate with each other, which means good advice in isolation can create problems when combined.
Someone needs to ensure all the pieces fit together properly. That coordination role - understanding how each professional's recommendations affect the others and making sure everything works toward your goals - creates massive value for corporation owners with complex financial lives.
The Investment Selection Reality
Here's the uncomfortable truth that decades of academic research consistently demonstrates: low-cost, broadly diversified index funds outperform most active management over time after fees.
The evidence is overwhelming and continues to accumulate: most professionals can't beat simple index strategies after fees, and those who do in any given year rarely repeat that outperformance consistently.
This doesn't mean investment management requires no expertise - proper asset allocation, tax-efficient implementation, rebalancing discipline, and behavioral coaching all add value. But the actual security selection? The industry has spent decades trying to prove it matters, and the data keeps suggesting it doesn't - at least not in ways that justify the fees typically charged.
Meanwhile, comprehensive planning for corporation owners remains underserved. The complexity is high, the learning curve is steep, and it requires ongoing coordination rather than quarterly portfolio reviews. It's harder work that creates more value but doesn't scale as easily as AUM-based investment management.
So I made a choice: focus on the work that creates the most value for the specific clients I serve, even if it means walking away from the industry's standard business model.
So What Do I Actually Do?
My focus is comprehensive financial planning and coordination for Ontario corporation owners - connecting all the pieces of your financial life in ways that actually matter for wealth building and business success.
This means:
Tax Planning Throughout the Year
Working proactively on salary versus dividend optimization, coordinating with your accountant, modeling different scenarios, and adjusting strategies as your circumstances change. This isn't annual tax planning - it's ongoing optimization that adapts to your evolving business and personal situation.
Corporate Structure Analysis and Coordination
Ensuring your corporate cash deployment, insurance positioning, investment strategy, and retirement savings approach all work together to maintain LCGE eligibility and business sale readiness. This requires understanding how each piece affects the others and making recommendations that optimize the system rather than individual components.
Insurance Planning and Implementation
Analyzing how much insurance makes sense given your other assets, whether coverage should be owned personally or corporately, what type of insurance fits your situation, and how these decisions integrate with your broader financial picture. I implement personal and corporate life, disability, and critical illness insurance directly, ensuring coverage aligns with your comprehensive plan.
Investment Strategy Guidance (Not Portfolio Management)
Here's where my approach differs from traditional advisory: I help you develop an appropriate investment strategy based on your goals, timeline, and risk tolerance - but I don't manage the portfolio myself.
This can work several ways depending on your situation and preferences:
DIY Implementation: For those comfortable with self-directed investing, I help you select appropriate low-cost index funds and set up accounts through platforms like Questrade, Wealthsimple, or others. I provide the strategy framework and implementation guidance, while you maintain direct control.
Working With Existing Advisors: If you already have an investment advisor you trust, I'm happy to coordinate with them. I provide the comprehensive planning that ensures your investment strategy aligns with your corporate structure, tax planning, and business goals - while they handle the day-to-day portfolio management.
Preferred Active Partners: I also work with select investment managers who I trust to implement strategies aligned with our planning approach. If you want professional investment management but prefer keeping planning separate, I can introduce you to partners whose philosophy and service model I respect.
The key point: the investment strategy development is straightforward once we've addressed the more complex questions about corporate structure, tax efficiency, and overall planning coordination. The actual portfolio management - whether you do it yourself, work with your current advisor, or engage a partner I recommend - becomes a simple execution of a well-thought-out strategy.
My role is ensuring that strategy makes sense within your complete financial picture, not competing to manage your portfolio.
Implementation Support and Accountability
Good planning means nothing without implementation. I provide the support that helps you actually execute recommendations - whether that's staying on the phone while you set up accounts, coordinating with your accountant on tax strategies, walking you through DIY investment platform interfaces, or ensuring your insurance applications get completed properly.
This is where many traditional advisory relationships break down. The plan gets delivered, recommendations get made, but there's no structured support for the implementation work that turns strategy into reality.
My approach is more coaching than quarterbacking: I help you understand your options and make confident decisions, then support you in executing them - rather than taking control and making decisions for you.
Ongoing Coordination and Guidance
Regular reviews focused on ensuring all the pieces continue working together as your business and personal circumstances evolve. This isn't quarterly performance reporting - it's strategic coordination that maintains alignment between your various advisors and ensures nothing falls through the cracks.
Clarity Over Complexity
Every financial strategy involves what I call a "Stress Premium" - the hidden psychological cost of complexity, inflexibility, or uncertainty.
Traditional investment management often carries a high Stress Premium: decision anxiety about whether you picked the right advisor or investment approach, performance monitoring stress as you watch quarterly returns fluctuate, inflexibility when your advisor controls your investments and you want to make changes, dependency on the advisor's availability and judgment for every decision.
My approach reduces that Stress Premium significantly: simple, broadly diversified investments you can understand and explain, clear frameworks for making decisions rather than dependence on advisor judgment, direct control over your investments (whether you implement yourself or through partners you choose) while having guidance available when needed, focus on comprehensive planning value rather than investment performance pressure.
This aligns with my core philosophy: every strategy gets evaluated for both financial return and Stress Premium. Sometimes the most sophisticated outcome comes from the simplest approach.
The Fee Structure That Follows
Not managing investments directly means I can't use the traditional AUM fee model. Instead, I work on retainer or project fees based on the complexity of your situation and the scope of ongoing planning work.
This creates better alignment: you pay for comprehensive planning value rather than for assets I'm managing. If your portfolio grows, my fees don't automatically increase. If you need more planning support during a particular year, we adjust accordingly.
For insurance implementation (personal and corporate life, disability, and critical illness), I work on commission when implementing policies - always disclosed and discussed upfront, with the understanding that this represents implementation work rather than ongoing portfolio management.
This model isn't for everyone. Some professionals prefer having everything in one place with a single advisor managing all aspects of their financial life. That's completely reasonable - it's just not what I offer.
What This Means for You
If you're an Ontario corporation owner looking for someone to actively manage your investments and beat market benchmarks, I'm probably not the right fit. There are many excellent advisors who focus on that service.
But if you're successful, your business is generating strong cash flow, you have multiple advisors who don't really coordinate with each other, and you're not sure if you're optimizing your corporate structure for tax efficiency and business sale readiness - then comprehensive planning focused on connecting all those pieces probably creates significantly more value than investment selection ever could.
The question isn't whether investment management is valuable. It's whether it's the most valuable service for your specific situation - and whether you want someone taking control of your portfolio or helping you make better decisions about your complete financial picture.
For most Ontario corporation owners I work with, the answer is clear. The real value comes from comprehensive planning that addresses tax efficiency, corporate structure optimization, insurance integration, business sale readiness, and advisor coordination.
The Path Forward
This article isn't trying to convince you that my approach is the only way or even the best way. It's simply explaining what I do and why I do it.
Some corporation owners need comprehensive planning coordination more than investment management. Others want everything bundled together with a single advisor, even if it means higher fees. Both approaches can work - it depends on your specific situation, preferences, and what you value most from an advisory relationship.
What I've learned is that being crystal clear about what I do and don't do creates better client relationships than trying to be everything to everyone. Corporation owners who understand my focus on comprehensive planning over portfolio management self-select into relationships where I can create the most value for them.
And honestly? Not managing investments directly means I can focus entirely on the planning and coordination work that genuinely excites me and creates the most impact for the specific clients I serve.
The best financial advice doesn't come from impressive investment returns or sophisticated portfolio strategies. It comes from clarity, coordination, and helping you make confident decisions that align with your goals.
That's the service I provide. That's the advisor I am.
If this approach resonates with you, let's talk about whether working together makes sense. If you're looking for something different, I'm happy to point you toward advisors whose models might be a better fit.
Because ultimately, the goal isn't finding a financial advisor. It's finding the right financial advisor for your specific needs.
Mitchell A. Shields, CFP®, CLU®, TEP is the founder of Still Water Financial Partners, a financial planning firm dedicated to helping Ontario corporation owners achieve clarity and confidence in their financial lives. He believes comprehensive planning creates more value than investment selection for most successful professionals. Learn more at StillFP.com
This article is provided for educational purposes only and does not constitute personalized financial advice. Please consult with appropriate professionals regarding your specific situation.