Few of Canada’s affluent rely on family, friends or the grapevine for investment advice, according to the RBC Investments Wealth Poll, conducted by Ipsos-Reid. Most depend on professional advisors.

The survey found that 85% of Canadians with more than $250,000 to invest seek advice from financial professionals — and 59% of them don’t rely on anyone other than their professional advisors.

Affluent Canadians are more likely to seek advice about their investments from brokers (46%) or financial planners (23%) than other types of advisors.

Canada’s affluent seek a variety of services: at the top of the list are financial planning (78%), brokerage services (64%) and tax planning (55%) followed by international investing (52%) and estate planning & trusts (51%).

Most hold mutual funds (86%), stocks (77%), GICs (58%), bonds (44%), investment property (36%), segregated funds (31%) or international assets (28%). The majority (58%) state they have less than $25,000 in financial liabilities.

These findings are from an Ipsos-Reid/RBC Investments poll conducted in February. The poll is based on telephone interviews with 1,000 Canadians 18 years of age or older with more than $100,000 in household financial assets excluding principle residence, property, jewellery, or art work.

The sample size of households with more than $250,000 to invest was 509 respondents. Results based on this sample size are accurate to within (+/-) 4.4%, 19 times out of 20.