Advisor Success Story–Alan Cranfield

Alan Cranfield of Stonegate Private Counsel focuses on the needs of Canada’s most successful families.

Alan Cranfield uses wealth management to help deliver integrated solutions to a select group of affluent clients.

Advisor Alan Cranfield tries to anticipate what’s around the corner for the financial industry and posi­tion himself accordingly. That approach led him to wealth management as the logical end result of a 30-year journey toward independence and
personal-finance synthesis—and enabled him to generate tremendous success along the way. “It helps my business that I am here already,” says Cranfield, principal of Stonegate Private Counsel LP, a multifamily office and integrated wealth management firm in Toronto, Canada. “I’d like to think my clients recognize that and are reaping the benefits of keeping up with the industry’s evolution.”

Cranfield entered the financial services industry in the early 1980s and quickly saw the appeal of the financial planning business model— an industry approach that was just beginning to catch on in Canada and America. His analysis of the industry’s development led him first to use mutual funds and later to take an asset-based approach to fees—both “ahead of the curve” decisions in the Canadian investment marketplace. Cranfield also was an early adopter of providing investment advice based on modern portfolio theory (MPT), which blends various asset classes in an attempt to maximize a portfolio’s return for a given level of risk.

In the mid-1990s, he partnered with a small, boutique money manager that offered MPT-based portfolio allocation. The partnership resulted in the creation of Assante Corporation, one of Canada’s largest independent financial advisory firms. Today, Assante has more than 800 advisors and approximately $25 billion in assets under administration.

In 2005, Stonegate Private Counsel was created to specifically focus on the needs of Canada’s most successful families, and Cranfield joined as a partner. Today, he has about $80 million under management while serving fewer than 50 clients (mostly successful senior business executives and entrepreneurs).

While he may not need to work, he says he would never stop. “It’s not really about the income so much as getting up in the morning and having something to do that is beneficial to people you enjoy working with,” he says. His continued involvement also ensures that he keeps abreast of the industry’s best practices and further evolution. “I have to give my clients the best possible service and advice,” he explains. “There is no way you can do this in a half-baked way. You have to be fully involved and on top of it all.”
These days, providing the best service and advice means using a wealth management approach with his clients—an industry best practice that he defines as the “last frontier” for independent reps like him. Wealth management is a cohesive discipline that allows the advisor to act as a kind of chief financial officer—organizing all the various facets of a client’s financial life (including retirement, estate, tax and investment planning) and aligning a client’s wealth with his broader values and goals.

Cranfield is careful to work with clients with whom he has much in common. His interests are varied and include biking and antique boating. He divides his time between Toronto, Florida and Canada’s Lake Muskoka, and many of his clients do the same. Cranfield is emphatic about working with clients he finds enjoyable and whose values he himself identifies with. As a wealth manager, he wants to bring values into alignment with wealth, and he believes he can best do this if he understands and relates to his clients. Life is too short, he says, to be intimately involved with individuals for whom he does not have an innate sympathy. Self-starters—those who enjoy a balanced and athletic lifestyle in locales that he finds attractive—are the kinds of clients he seeks. “Once we sit down and begin discussing a client’s values, I can tell quickly if there is an understanding between us,” he says.

For Cranfield, that understanding is most important, as it allows the wealth management process to proceed in an empathetic and efficient manner. “If I am in tune with the client’s aspirations in an innate way, the client-advisor relationship is immeasurably enhanced,” he says. “That’s why wealth management is as much an art form as it is a financial process.”

Cranfield says his understanding of the importance of wealth management was dramatically heightened by his participation in a coaching program offered by California-based CEG Worldwide, a leading provider of wealth management coaching for advisors and the firms that work with them. For Cranfield, wealth management as defined by CEG Worldwide focuses the knowledge he has gathered throughout his career and makes it increasingly applicable. “I always sought to be a leader on behalf of my clients,” he says simply. “And it is gratifying to have been gifted with the insight and discipline to continue to be able to provide what I believe is service that fulfills that high standard. It starts with trust and then expands into an all-encompassing relationship that is both personal and professional. When performed correctly, it is a way of doing business that is both fulfilling and productive. It’s not always easy, but the rewards are more than proportionate to the effort.”

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