Ian Cummings manages his time as wisely as he manages his clients’ money.

The Investment Planning Counsel advisor divides his time between practices in Toronto and Southampton, Ont., 200 km north on the shore of Lake Huron. And he devotes his time to advice. Cummings has arranged his practice in such a way that everything except his advice is outsourced, so he can focus on doing what he does best — dealing with clients.

“You set a course, give advice, then the rest of the team takes over,” he says. “Ninety-five per cent of client enquiries are taken care of at the office.”

The office Cummings refers to is that of business partner, Bill Black, another IPC advisor who has his own book of business in nearby Owen Sound. Black’s office is staffed to manage Cummings’ administrative work and compliance, as well as his own.

Cummings pays Black’s office for the services it provides, rather than Cummings having to pay and supervise a staff of his own. And he couldn’t have found a better partner. Black has been named “branch manager of the year” by IPC several times.

“I have never lived full-time where I practised. I have never been my own branch manager,” says Cummings, who has 200 client families near Southampton and another 35 in Toronto; his assets under management total $23 million.

The Cummings/Black partnership started several years ago, when both partners’ businesses were in transition. Black was growing his business while Cummings was trying to simplify his own.

“I caught Bill when he happened to be in a cycle in which he was overstaffed,” Cummings says.

Black was in a position to take on the administration of Cummings’ book in order to keep his staff busy and bring in revenue. Cummings still has a meeting space in Southampton but the proper office, the nerve centre, is his business partner’s Owen Sound office.

Cummings has been using the outsourcing model completely for three years. The freedom from administrative tasks has enabled him to devote all his time to client contact, justifying the cost of Black’s services.

As Cummings has clients in both Toronto and Bruce County (the region that includes Southampton and Owen Sound), the outsourcing of his administrative and compliance activities means that he is never tied to one place or the other.

While Cummings often meets clients in person, he relies heavily on technology to keep him connected to his clients. His laptop and an Internet connection link him to IPC’s Intranet, on which he can monitor his clients’ accounts. With his smartphone, Cummings is never more than a phone call away from his clients. Because Cummings and his clients focus on long-term growth in their finances, live contact with clients is more important to Cummings than controlling paperwork.

The outsourcing model has another — huge — benefit. Not only does it free Cummings to manage his relationships with his clients but it also enables him to focus on what is even more important to him — spending time with his family.

Cummings and his second wife, Joan, met when they both worked in the computer industry. Together they ran a technology consulting firm before moving into financial services in 1993. They built their book by running seminars.

“Joan and I were the firm,” Cummings says. The couple was in the process of moving the practice from Toronto to Southampton, where Joan had spent her summers since childhood, when Joan died suddenly in 1998. They had bought a farm, which Cummings calls “the Bruce County adventure,” and were in the process of selling their Toronto book of business of about 350 clients. Joan’s death brought Cummings’ priorities into acute focus.

“Joan dying was not in the game plan,” he says.

While a partner in Toronto took over the Toronto book after Joan’s death, Cummings went ahead with the plan to relocate to Southampton and put the plan he and Joan had developed back together according to his strengths.

Looking back, Cummings learned that the time he had spent with Joan was the most valuable, rewarding part of the practice. He decided to shape his practice around that most precious commodity — time — so he could spend as much time as possible with the people closest to him.

@page_break@He has since remarried and his wife, Denise, and three daughters from his first marriage, Jessica, Amy and Mattie, are the primary beneficiaries of his free time, along with siblings and life-long friends.

Denise, a Toronto judge, was one of Joan’s clients. Cummings first met Denise when she spoke at Joan’s memorial service. She was widowed herself and they “see eye to eye” about making time for loved ones a priority.

Cummings’ flexible schedule accommodates Denise’s demanding professional life. His schedule also helps Cummings keep in close contact with his daughters. When Jessica, 23, who had just completed her bachelor of arts degree in art history, set off for Europe this past year, Cummings was able to join her for part of the trip. With Black’s office looking after the day-to-day business, Cummings was accessible to clients through his smartphone and his laptop.

When Amy, 21, read a winter semester in Paris, Cummings was able to zip off to France to see how she was settling in, dealing with clients from a café with wi-fi on the Champs Élysées.

Next year, when Mattie, 19, who is studying international business at Carleton University in Ottawa, goes to Pamplona to study Spanish, Cummings will be able to visit her, and never be more than a phone call away from his clients. IE