Growing up poor in Northern Ontario, Chantal Murphy, an investment advisor and vice president of BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. in Ottawa, learned early that work was not a matter of choice. Murphy was 17 years old when she reluctantly dropped out of high school, leaving Kirkland Lake to work with her mother in a small family restaurant in Ottawa.

“We were just trying to survive day to day. Really, all we did was work,” says Murphy, who is now in her early 50s. “But that experience sure taught me how to get along with just about anybody.”

After a few years, the restaurant changed hands. But instead of heading back to school as she had planned, Murphy landed an administrative job with a local firm specializing in pension fund management.
She hasn’t looked back.

“I was lucky enough to be able to work with someone who looked past my lack of formal education,” she says. “And I made sure he never regretted it.”

Although she was not initially involved in the investment side of the business, the additional knowledge she absorbed — in asset allocation, manager search and selection, crafting an investment policy and performance measurement — provided a springboard into investment management and later helped her differentiate herself from the pack as a broker.

In the mid-1980s, she joined what was then Burns Fry Ltd., inheriting the shrinking book of an advisor who had fallen ill. She rebuilt it, one referral at a time, through the
subsequent bear market. Patience, hand-holding and a heavy bet on recovering bank stocks ultimately convinced both existing and prospective clients that her conservative, pension-like approach had merit.

“People work hard for their money, so you have to make sure you look after it,” Murphy says. “You just have to keep doing what you’re doing and, over a period of time, trust is built.”

Her book grew, as did her stock with BMO
Nesbitt Burns. But her busy career and growing book led to a divorce in 1988. “Too many conflicting priorities, too little time,” she says with a rueful smile.

By 1994, she was managing a busy start-up branch and found herself processing a huge amount of information daily. And with reams of new products, turbulent market conditions and staffing issues, she says, it became increasingly difficult for her to provide a satisfactory level of service to her clients.

“You’re spread too thin or you work too
much. You can’t grow your business and pay attention to day-to-day branch affairs, as well,” she says. “Or, at least, I couldn’t. I had to make some choices, and I realized that the more time I spent working with clients, the happier I was.”

To prevent burnout, in 1996 she teamed up with then-26-year-old Sylvain Brisebois, who had joined the branch in 1995. She stepped down as branch manager in 1997 and the team moved its practice to a smaller branch.
“I’d been approached by several younger
IAs, but he was the first with whom I really connected. Despite the gap in our ages, we meshed. I quickly realized he had skills that could complement mine.”

Finding the right chemistry in a business partner is key, Murphy maintains. She says looking at a potential partner’s ability to build a business should be secondary to the ability to work with that person, day in and day out.

For Murphy, whose older clients place a heavy emphasis on wealth preservation, Brisebois’s degree in finance from the University of Ottawa and his certified financial planner and, later, his financial management advisor designations helped fill in some chinks in her practice. Together, the bilingual pair now manage more than $155 million in assets for about 300 families, primarily in and around Ottawa’s largely francophone East End.

In contrast with most advisors of her
generation, Murphy steers clear of mutual funds, preferring individual securities and, more recently, separately managed accounts through BMO Nesbitt Burns’ proprietary Advance program.

Unlike mutual funds, which are prepackaged and standardized, she says, SMAs allow her to customize clients’ money management to meet their objectives and constraints. The result is more opportunities for Murphy to provide value-added services, such as estate planning.

Managed programs also offer advisors the opportunity to attain economies of scale, Brisebois notes, adding that he and Murphy now only take on families whose investible net worth is $500,000 or more. “If you have a client with a $500,000 account, you can provide a much more comprehensive service than if you are dealing with five clients with $100,000 each,” he says. “You can focus your efforts on one individual and get to know that person and his or her family that much better.”