The quiet, rural streets of Sharbot Lake, Ont., may lack the chaotic buzz of Bay Street, but that didn’t stop Wayne Robinson from launching his financial planning firm in that small town 25 years ago. Today, the firm’s clients, who range from Toronto to Montreal, and its $100 million in assets under management indicate that Robinson is doing something right.

“We could have been in downtown Toronto,” says Robinson, who holds the certified financial planner, registered financial planner and chartered financial analyst designations. “But the principles that we apply are probably the same. You can still create new wealth [and] new businesses in small towns and be successful.”

The 61-year-old entrepreneur and his wife and business partner, Alison, built W.A. Robinson & Associates Ltd., from scratch in Sharbot Lake — a town of 1,000 people located 120 kilometres west of Ottawa — in the early 1980s, while raising their three sons, who now range in age from 23 to 30.

Born and raised in rural eastern Ontario, Robinson has expanded his client base entirely through referrals — generating new business among the friends and family members of existing clients.

Now with 30 employees, W.A. Robinson provides a range of financial planning services, including asset management, tax planning and estate planning. The firm caters to a niche of high net-worth individuals, most of whom are farmers or small-business owners, across the rural landscape of eastern Ontario and western Quebec.

As the firm grew, Robinson became eager to provide his clients with more than just advice. He realized clients were seeking safe, income-producing investments for their RRSPs, and he began exploring the realm of mortgage investments. In 1983, he launched Frontenac Mortgage Investment Corp., a mortgage investment pool designed to offer clients safe, fixed-income investments for their retirements.

While investigating the mortgage business, Robinson identified an underserved segment of the mortgage market: mortgages for self-employed individuals and financing for rural properties and renovations on existing homes. In 1986, Robinson launched Pillar Financial Services Inc., a mortgage brokerage firm, to serve those gaps in the marketplace.

In designing the Frontenac pool, Robinson extended the prudent principles that he applies to his own investments. “We’re conservative in life and we’re conservative philosophically,” he says. “We aim for capital preservation and reasonable and sustainable returns.”

It’s crucial for mortgage lenders to understand to whom they’re lending, he adds, and what they’re lending against.

“A mortgage is just real estate once removed,” says Robinson. “We hold ourselves out as experts in real estate and, therefore, we hold ourselves out as experts in mortgages.”

The Frontenac pool drew plenty of interest among W.A. Robinson clients and other investors. In fact, as some clients reached the limit on their RRSP contributions, they approached Robinson, seeking similar investments to hold in non-registered accounts. This inspired Robinson to launch the Mortgage Investment Corp. of Eastern Ontario, a second mortgage investment pool, in the mid-1990s.

Mortgage management now comprises roughly 60% of the business at W.A. Robinson, with slightly fewer than 800 investors and about $60 million invested in the two pools. Having enjoyed such growth so far, Robinson has recently become more aggressive with his growth strategy.

In 2004, he took Frontenac public in order to make the pool accessible to smaller retail investors.

“In these tough times, when people’s portfolios are down, it’s time for us to have a public profile,” Robinson says. “This is a really good fixed-income product — it provides consistent, reliable returns. We think we’re positioned really well.”

In calendar 2008, MICEO and Frontenac had earnings of 7.9% and 6.2%, respectively.

The timing for such growth proved fortunate. Unprecedented market volatility has continued to frighten investors away from investing in mortgages. Although the Canadian mortgage market is much healthier than its U.S. counterpart, the collapse of the market south of the border has made Canadian investors nervous, Robinson says. He has spent much of his time reassuring clients of the high quality of the mortgages in which the pools invest — the majority of which are first mortgages — and distinguishing the Canadian housing market from the ailing U.S. one.

“We pool money and we lend money. It’s a very simple model,” he says. “We don’t package it and sell it to other people and securitize it.”

@page_break@With a loan/value ratio of less than 60% on the mortgage portfolios, Robinson adds, the pools are well positioned to handle some erosion in house prices.

Both pools show strong potential for the decade ahead, too, as baby boomers seek income-yielding investments in preparation for retirement.

“Ten or 15 years from now the boomers will all be retired, or substantially retired,” Robinson says, “and they’ll be looking for fixed-income.”

Robinson earned a degree in biology and chemistry at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., with aspirations of becoming an environmentalist. Finding employment in that field was scarce at the time he graduated, he found a job as executive director of a social organization. Almost a decade of community work cultivated Robinson’s passion for working with people and, in seeking a new challenge, he decided to apply this passion to the financial services industry.

With plans to retire at 70, Robinson hopes to remain active in the business for as long as possible. “I hope to work until I can’t work.”

Robinson is grateful for the flexibility of being self-employed. Designing his own hours, for instance, lets him take advantage of his picturesque surroundings with such hobbies as hiking and snowmobiling.

Robinson has a succession plan in place that will see two of his sons eventually take over the business. One of things Robinson is proud of is the fact that the firm will remain in the family.

“We’ve survived 25 years in this business,” he says, “and we think we’ll be around for 25 or 50 more.” IE