Bob Owens remembers being courted and having to pick from among many attractive choices. His decision to work for London Life Insurance Co. marked the start of a long career.
As a graduate of Acadia University of Wolfville, N.S., in the mid-1970s, Owens found himself approached by companies eager for young talent. London Life was one of the 200 firms that made their way to the Annapolis Valley to recruit among the latest crop of graduates.
“It was one of the few entrepreneurial opportunities available back then,” says Owens, CEO of Owens MacFadyen Group in Saint John, N.B.
Owens began his career in Lon-don Life’s Moncton office, for which he was a sales rep for more than five years, and where he met fellow Acadia grad Dave MacFadyen. Owens left that office and headed over to Saint John, where he opened a local agency for the national financial services firm. By the early 1990s, says Owens, “We had the largest agency in Canada in my division — general sales.”
Although MacFadyen remained in Moncton, he and Owens worked closely together. It was an entrepreneur’s dream team, says Owens: “I was having fun; he was working. We’ve kept up the tradition.”
The tradition became more firmly entrenched in 1995, when the two launched Owens MacFadyen Group. “We had become very committed to one market — the high net-worth market,” says Owens. “We wanted the flexibility to build an organization around this market. That can be difficult to do in a really large organization.”
Creating the firm Owens and MacFadyen envisioned meant investing in expertise. “For one organization to do it all, you need a lot of people with special skills,” says Owens.
Tax accountants, financial analysts, lawyers and insurance experts were hired to provide a comprehensive range of services. Today the firm, with offices in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, has a staff of 40.
The targeted approach to building a business has proven successful — albeit quietly so. Owens MacFadyen Group does virtually no advertising and marketing, has no large signs announcing its presence and won’t discuss the amount of its assets under management. “We’re the quiet company. We try to stay under the radar,” says Owens.
Part of the reason for that silence is understanding that clients want privacy. “Our clients are highly private,” Owens notes. “We never disclose who they are, and all our staff has signed confidentiality agreements. What’s said in the room, stays in the room.”
The niche Owens and Mac-Fadyen have carved is the result of smart thinking and market savvy. Ninety per cent of their clients have been referred, many of them via the legal and accounting services that operate within the firm. The comprehensive nature of the services provided means that Owens MacFadyen Group can be a one-stop shop for many clients.
In the past few years, the firm has added an employee benefits practice to its service mix. “This was not part of the vision in 1995,” says Owens. “But many clients are small-business owners, so we added this service.”
Now the firm has expanded its services even further. Last year, Owens MacFadyen Group added subsidiary OMG Wealth Management Inc., an investment dealer — the only independent securities dealer with headquarters in New Brunswick. “We will probably add additional expertise on this side,” Owens says.
One of the reasons for the success of Owens MacFadyen Group is the clear vision of the founding partners and their determination to stay true to that vision. “We have a single-market approach, and have built the expertise to do this,” says Owens.“We need to be diligent about working only with people to whom we can offer value.”
That diligence has led the company to offer new services and find new ways of delivering value to clients. “To be successful in the future, we will have to find ways to distinguish ourselves with our clients,” says Owens. “That will be a challenge.”
One way the company is meeting that challenge is to anticipate what clients will need, and have the services ready and available for them. For example, Owens and his team are currently building income-payout strategies for clients. “That will be a differentiator,” he says.
Geography is another differentiator. Owens MacFadyen Group is an East Coast firm — and it plans to stay that way for now. “We have had many opportunities to expand outside Atlantic Canada, but I’ll leave that to the next generation,” says Owens.
@page_break@The next generation includes his elder son, Jeff, a graduate of Mount Allison University of Sackville, N.B., and now part of Owens MacFadyen Group. Younger son Jonathan and daughter Natalie are following their brother’s footsteps and earning business degrees — Jonathan at St. Mary’s University in Halifax and Natalie at Mount Allison.
Owens and MacFadyen would like to share one critical value with the next generation: give as good as you get. “We have a requirement to give something back,” says Owens, who contributes to the industry as chairman of the Conference for Advanced Life Underwriting.
It’s a collaborative role that will not be shaped by one voice or vision, stresses Owens: “CALU is truly collegial. No single individual has significant impact.”
For Owens, the tradition began 15 years ago with the formation of CALU. At the time, the top financial advisors in Canada were asked to bring their insight and expertise to the table to explore advanced planning issues.
In the past year, CALU has concerned itself with issues such as critical illness and long-term care insurance, a review of the exempt test, tax-assisted savings plans and privacy legislation.
This range of issues reflects the shifting and expanding landscape of wealth-management services in Canada. The playing field will probably become more crowded, but Owens does not feel threatened, saying that while many financial services companies offer some of the same services as Owens MacFadyen Group, few offer such a full range.
Still, he acknowledges, “wealth management” is the latest buzzphrase. “Most of what has taken place is a function of demographics,” he says. “The boomers have aged.”
Meeting the needs of those boomers will drive business — and business will be good, he says: “This is a green-light time.”
Of course, life isn’t all work and no play. Owens spends part of the winter in Florida with his wife, Carol. It’s not the weather that draws him there, but the golf. And as he has with business, Owens has aced the game — his handicap: two. IE
Entrepreneurial spirit drives New Brunswick firm
CALU chairman Bob Owens believes in having a clear vision and giving back to the financial services industry
- By: donalee Moulton
- April 3, 2007 April 3, 2007
- 10:35