When it comes to dealing with high net-worth clients, bro-kers are the advisors to whom clients turn. With an average book size of $80.1 million, brokers beat out advisors from other channels with the highest percentage — 13% — of clients who have assets of more than $2 million.

By comparison, only 1% of the clients of account managers and financial planners had more than $2 million in assets and 3% had assets between $1 million and $2 million.

Winnipeg-based Richardson Partners Financial Ltd. earned the highest score across all channels for support of HNW clients — with a 9.7. With 78% of the firm’s client accounts holding assets of more than $500,000 and 24% with assets of more than $2 million, it was the top performer in terms of HNW clients — and for good reason.

“It’s our niche, and the firm is built for high net-worth individuals,” says a Richardson Partners advisor in Central Canada.

“We’re a leader in the high net-worth field, that’s who Richardson clients are,” says another advisor in Manitoba.

Richardson Partners president Sue Dabarno says the firm’s whole vision is focused on providing solutions for HNW clients. The firm has 150 seasoned advisors who believe that constantly meeting with clients is the best way to discover solutions to meet their specific needs.

“Not only do we have the solutions, but we move quickly in terms of meeting high net-worth clients’ needs,” says Dabarno. “Our service structure is set up so everything is made to ensure that clients with wealth get the attention that they need.”

RBC Dominion Securities Inc. also ranked high (8.5) when it came to support for HNW clients. David Agnew, managing director at DS in Toronto, says that HNW clients represent the bank-owned investment dealer’s fastest-growing client segment. Since 2001, DS has doubled the number of its clients who have more than $1 million in investible assets.

“Part of this success is our ability to leverage our scale as Canada’s leading full-service investment and wealth-management firm to support high net-worth initiatives that are valuable to our clients,” Agnew says.

Jim Burton, chairman and CEO of Toronto-based PPI Financial Group Inc. , says his firm’s MGA business model aims to serve the independent insurance advisor who is dealing with the “sophisticated wealthy and ultra-wealthy client” in Canada.

“I’m talking the estate planning and insurance liquidity needs of wealthy individuals and families,” says Burton. “As a rough ballpark number, ‘sophisticated wealthy’ would be $1 million and over, and ‘ultra-wealthy’ would be $5 million to $10 million and up.”

Burton doesn’t define the HNW advisor only according to education or income, but according to interest and willingness to be involved in these more sophisticated markets.

“High net-worth is my market,” says a PPI advisor in Alberta. “PPI is the strongest in the industry for this niche.”

It seems serving HNW clients is not the preserve of older advisors. Many younger advisors are handling the same number of HNW clients as advisors in their 40s, 50s and even 60s.

Yet rookie advisors under the age of 30 do more than half of their business serving clients with smaller portfolios. About 66% of these advisors’ clients have assets of less than $250,000. Only 4% of these advisors are serving clients with assets of $1 million-$2 million, and only 3% are working with clients with assets of more than $2 million. But once an advisor reaches the age of 30, the numbers tend to shift, with smaller clientele decreasing to 47% and clients in the top category increasing to 6%. IE