By David Kitai
Danielle Skipp is no stranger to leadership. The multi-decade industry veteran has led legal and compliance teams at major wealth and asset firms in Canada and has previously been named one of WP's 5-Star Leading Women in Wealth. Her latest venture is building on that leadership skills as she takes the role of CEO at Canada’s newest player in the Wealth Management space: Sonance Wealth Partners.
Sonance was announced in October as a new portfolio management partnership built under a legal fiduciary model. The initial partnership was launched from four advisory practices with a combined $2.3bn in AUM. Those practices, Skipp explains, are in key locations that Sonance sees as avenues for growth and client service: Lethbridge, Ottawa, Toronto, and Arizona. Skipp says that Sonance plans to focus on smaller centres and cross-border service in a bid to break into the high net worth wealth management market.
“Our end client is going to be the Canadian high net worth business owner or professional. We’re set up to be national and we really like the idea of local voices,” Skipp says. “The next four partner groups coming through the door, who we’re in active discussions with already, are in local places in Canada, not necessarily just Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver. We will have partners groups in those cities, but we want to focus on some of the other fantastic towns in Canada. We want to celebrate them.”
Private equity backing and the means to break in
Skipp acknowledges that Canadian wealth management is a difficult space for a new partnership to differentiate itself in. She says, though, that with backing from US private equity firm Trivest, Sonance has the capacity to compete with more established players. Trivest’s backing has allowed Sonance to invest in its technology stack, building something that Skipp believes matches firms of a much larger scale and outdoes the legacy technology found at many bank firms.
While Sonance is backed by Trivest, Skipp emphasizes that the partnership is meant to operate independently, allowing its advisors to become fiduciaries. She defines independence, a term that she says is often ill-defined in this industry, as “independent of the large producers of investment product.” The trouble with that kind of independence, she admits, is that few firms or partnerships independent of any fund management have the scale to really compete and offer comprehensive service. She believes that with Trivest’s backing Sonance can build a portfolio management operation registered directly with securities commissions rather than CIRO to deliver what she hopes will be an elevated form of service to high net worth Canadians.
That service will address the sheer volume of noise those Canadians are dealing with today, Skipp says. She wants to deliver a holistic model of wealth management that can help them make sense of all that information and connect individual investment decisions back to their broader financial plan, personal goals, and sense of self.
Attracting more advisor partners and cross-border support
To grow Sonance, Skipp wants to attract more advisors and portfolio management firms to the partnership. She noted that a number of potential partners are already in discussions with her team. The pitch, as she put it, was that those advisors will gain more control over how they serve their clients. Because Sonance is organized as a partnership, those new partners also gain an ownership stake, accessing the technology and scale provided by Trivest as a backer while retaining control over the way they serve clients.
Cross-border advice is another key value proposition that Skipp says Sonance is offering to clients and prospective partners. They explicitly decided to launch the partnership only after they had brought on Transition Financial, an Arizona-based cross-border tax accountancy firm. Skipp believes that the experience of many Canadian high net worth families includes a cross-border element and providing truly ‘holistic’ service means being able to manage cross-border tax, estate, and investment challenges. Skipp wants that cross border service, combined with financial planning, insurance, and portfolio management, to differentiate Sonance against its myriad competitors. In doing so, she hopes the new partnership models a form of independence that is built around collaboration and specialization outside the ecosystem of a large financial conglomerate.
“We want first and foremost for our clients to feel that we are a caring firm. We will have institutional and well-financed infrastructure, but we will not be a bland institutional firm that shows up at your door. It is still your local friend and advisor who you really wanted to help your family with financial well-being discussions,” Skipp says. “An empathetic firm, a caring firm, a client-first firm— we can do all of that without in any way sacrificing the rigor that we bring to the operational infrastructure that allows us to give really quality service.”