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Cision Canada
7 days ago
- Business
- Cision Canada
IG Wealth Management Announces Risk Rating Change to IG U.S. Taxpayer Portfolio - Global Fixed Income Balanced Fund Français
WINNIPEG, MB, June 26, 2025 /CNW/ - IG Wealth Management ("IG") today announced a change to the risk rating of the IG U.S. Taxpayer Portfolio – Global Fixed Income Balanced Fund, effective June 25, 2025. IG reviews and adjusts risk ratings at least annually in accordance with the risk classification methodology mandated by Canadian securities regulators. Effective June 25, 2025, the risk rating of the following fund has changed as outlined below. There are no changes to the investment objective, strategy or management of this fund. About IG Wealth Management Founded in 1926, IG Wealth Management ("IG") is a Canadian leader in delivering financial planning with approximately $143.7 billion in assets under advisement as of May 31, 2025. For more than 95 years, IG has been focused on improving the financial well-being of Canadians so they can confidently embrace all of life's possibilities. Through a network of advisors located across the country, IG provides approximately one million clients with personalized advice, comprehensive financial planning, insurance and mortgage services and professionally managed investment solutions. IG is a member of IGM Financial Inc. (TSX: IGM), part of the Power Corporation group of companies and one of Canada's leading diversified wealth and asset management organizations with approximately $278.8 billion in total assets under management and advisement as of May 31, 2025. For more information, visit
Hamilton Spectator
19-06-2025
- Business
- Hamilton Spectator
Thorough estate planning ‘one of the most loving things': financial planner
What does it matter if I'm going to be dead anyway? It's a comment sometimes heard by Julia Chung, an advice-only financial planner at Spring Planning in Vancouver. Her retort: 'It isn't about you. It's about the people that you leave behind.' Having a well-thought-out estate plan is 'one of the most loving things you can do for your friends and family,' Chung says. And it goes far beyond drawing up a will laying out who gets what when you're six feet under. Indeed, Chung says there's planning that must be done for when you're still among the living, but may have lost the ability to make your own decisions due to dementia or other conditions. People are living longer thanks to advances in science, 'but not all of us are going to live really well,' Chung says. A power of attorney is set out in a document entirely separate from a will, and doesn't automatically default to a spouse or adult child. There are also financial assets that fall outside of a person's will that need to be sorted out, like beneficiary designations for life insurance, RRSPs and TFSAs. The last thing a bereaved loved one wants to do is go on a wild-goose chase for the information they need to tie up financial loose ends, so some of Chung's clients have a binder put together with key information. 'What information do they need? Just having a will isn't going to tell them where you bank or how to access your mail or who your investment adviser is,' says Chung. 'So how do we get that information to them?' Another aspect to think through is how and when any minor children left behind can access their inheritance. Chung recommends structuring a trust so a young person gets the funds in staggered amounts, not in one big lump sum. 'As I always say to my clients when I see this, 'Think back to when you were 18 or 19. Were you making really smart financial decisions? Because I wasn't,'' she says. Last month, IG Wealth Management released its annual estate planning study, which suggested 54 per cent of Canadians lack a plan. Twenty-nine per cent of respondents said their reason for not having an estate plan was their perceived lack of wealth. 'Ironically, I think that in many cases, it's the people who don't have sufficient wealth yet that need to think about estate planning the most, especially if they have dependents,' said Christine Van Cauwenberghe, IG's head of financial planning in Winnipeg. Forty per cent of respondents reported having legal documents in place to safeguard their finances should they be diagnosed with cognitive decline. The survey was conducted online by Pollara Strategic Insights, and polled 1,017 adult Canadians between April 10 and 21. The polling industry's professional body, the Canadian Research Insights Council, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population. Van Cauwenberghe says estate planning can be made more complicated in blended families. For instance, it could be all well and good for someone to designate a partner a direct beneficiary for a life insurance policy. But if that partner passes away, children from a previous relationship may be 'completely disinherited,' she says. 'It's usually inadvertent, but it's just due to a lack of planning.' Another item to check off the to-do list is to choose who can serve as executor of your estate, power of attorney and guardian to minor children. It's not necessarily best to have the same person do each job, and it may not make sense to tab someone close to you. 'I think sometimes people choose their executor because they think that person will be offended if you don't choose them. That person would probably be relieved not to be chosen,' says Van Cauwenberghe, adding corporate trustees are an option when there's no one willing or able to take on the tasks. 'It's a big job and understand that most people don't have any experience in it. They don't know what to do, they delay, they make mistakes, they don't reach out to the right experts and it can be very stressful.' Van Cauwenberghe says it can be tough to put these difficult decisions at the top of the priority list. 'If you never set aside the time, it's never gonna happen,' she says. 'But you're not going to be the one to pay the price. It will be your loved ones who will pay the price for your lack of planning.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 19, 2025.
Winnipeg Free Press
19-06-2025
- Business
- Winnipeg Free Press
Thorough estate planning ‘one of the most loving things': financial planner
What does it matter if I'm going to be dead anyway? It's a comment sometimes heard by Julia Chung, an advice-only financial planner at Spring Planning in Vancouver. Her retort: 'It isn't about you. It's about the people that you leave behind.' Having a well-thought-out estate plan is 'one of the most loving things you can do for your friends and family,' Chung says. And it goes far beyond drawing up a will laying out who gets what when you're six feet under. Indeed, Chung says there's planning that must be done for when you're still among the living, but may have lost the ability to make your own decisions due to dementia or other conditions. People are living longer thanks to advances in science, 'but not all of us are going to live really well,' Chung says. A power of attorney is set out in a document entirely separate from a will, and doesn't automatically default to a spouse or adult child. There are also financial assets that fall outside of a person's will that need to be sorted out, like beneficiary designations for life insurance, RRSPs and TFSAs. The last thing a bereaved loved one wants to do is go on a wild-goose chase for the information they need to tie up financial loose ends, so some of Chung's clients have a binder put together with key information. 'What information do they need? Just having a will isn't going to tell them where you bank or how to access your mail or who your investment adviser is,' says Chung. 'So how do we get that information to them?' Another aspect to think through is how and when any minor children left behind can access their inheritance. Chung recommends structuring a trust so a young person gets the funds in staggered amounts, not in one big lump sum. 'As I always say to my clients when I see this, 'Think back to when you were 18 or 19. Were you making really smart financial decisions? Because I wasn't,'' she says. Last month, IG Wealth Management released its annual estate planning study, which suggested 54 per cent of Canadians lack a plan. Twenty-nine per cent of respondents said their reason for not having an estate plan was their perceived lack of wealth. 'Ironically, I think that in many cases, it's the people who don't have sufficient wealth yet that need to think about estate planning the most, especially if they have dependents,' said Christine Van Cauwenberghe, IG's head of financial planning in Winnipeg. Forty per cent of respondents reported having legal documents in place to safeguard their finances should they be diagnosed with cognitive decline. The survey was conducted online by Pollara Strategic Insights, and polled 1,017 adult Canadians between April 10 and 21. The polling industry's professional body, the Canadian Research Insights Council, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population. Van Cauwenberghe says estate planning can be made more complicated in blended families. For instance, it could be all well and good for someone to designate a partner a direct beneficiary for a life insurance policy. But if that partner passes away, children from a previous relationship may be 'completely disinherited,' she says. 'It's usually inadvertent, but it's just due to a lack of planning.' Another item to check off the to-do list is to choose who can serve as executor of your estate, power of attorney and guardian to minor children. It's not necessarily best to have the same person do each job, and it may not make sense to tab someone close to you. 'I think sometimes people choose their executor because they think that person will be offended if you don't choose them. That person would probably be relieved not to be chosen,' says Van Cauwenberghe, adding corporate trustees are an option when there's no one willing or able to take on the tasks. Monday Mornings The latest local business news and a lookahead to the coming week. 'It's a big job and understand that most people don't have any experience in it. They don't know what to do, they delay, they make mistakes, they don't reach out to the right experts and it can be very stressful.' Van Cauwenberghe says it can be tough to put these difficult decisions at the top of the priority list. 'If you never set aside the time, it's never gonna happen,' she says. 'But you're not going to be the one to pay the price. It will be your loved ones who will pay the price for your lack of planning.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 19, 2025.
Globe and Mail
17-06-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
The Montreal fintech trying to take on Canada's mortgage giants
Nesto wants to rewire the way Canadians get mortgages, starting with the software. The Montreal-based fintech lender is part of a cohort of online lenders and brokerages such as Pine and Homewise that are taking a digital-first approach to streamline the mortgage experience, promising faster approvals, lower rates and less red tape. Founded in 2018 as a mortgage broker, Nesto shifted to full-scale lending in 2021. Since then, it's been building a platform designed to simplify one of the most complex financial decisions Canadians face: cutting out paperwork, compressing timelines and offering what it calls 'unbiased' digital guidance. After moving into lending, the company quickly recognized that its platform could be an asset for more traditional lenders such as the Big Six financial institutions, says Malik Yacoubi, Nesto's co-founder and chief executive officer. 'We realized that our technology is really powerful and unique in the Canadian market,' Mr. Yacoubi says. 'We [saw] an opportunity to diversify and launch a B2B [business-to-business] line of business.' Alongside its online lending vertical, the Nesto Mortgage Cloud solution supports every step of the mortgage process, from online borrowing applications to supporting financial institutions as they underwrite the loans. Since 2022, Nesto has onboarded financial institutions such as IG Wealth Management, Canada Life and Equitable Bank. Nesto is currently in discussions with most major financial institutions, but it has yet to convince one of the Big Six to adopt its Mortgage Cloud solution. 'For us, it's about creating efficiencies,' Mr. Yacoubi says. The mortgage application process can be tedious, involving uploading, securing and verifying documents such as employment records and taxes, collecting data on applicant credit ratings and evaluating property prices. It can also be emotionally charged. According to a recent TD Bank survey, nearly half (45 per cent) of Canadians feel stress, and 38 per cent feel anxiety surrounding the homebuying journey. That anxiety is further compounded by record levels of household debt and interest rate uncertainty as policymakers take a wait-and-see approach to the tariff impact. For some, shopping for low rates online helps relieve that pressure. According to a CMHC survey, half of Canadians are comfortable doing the entire homebuying process online. 'Banks are recognizing this and have significantly embraced online lending, whether it be consumer lending or up the chain through to business and commercial lending,' says Stephanie Owen, a partner in KPMG's management consulting practice, who's been supporting the financial services sector with digital transformation for 13 years. However, she says there are barriers for the Big Six when adopting a digital-first approach to mortgages. 'They primarily still use homegrown legacy systems, many of which don't have that scalable architecture to really support the additional digital capabilities they're looking to build out,' Ms. Owen says. 'It limits their internal agility.' With Bank of Canada data showing 60 per cent of all outstanding mortgages in Canada are coming up for renewal this year or next, Nesto is positioning itself as both an online alternative to the Big Six banks and a partner for these institutions to capture online mortgage seekers. Andrew Hamer, a partner and co-lead of Deloitte's Digital Lending group, says that while online lenders may face some demographic challenges with older generations more predisposed to non-digital challenges, the adoption hurdles are mostly embedded in how the mortgage process currently works. He says many Canadians choose their mortgage based on a recommendation from a realtor, friend, family member or financial advisor. 'These tend to be human-to-human referral relationships vs. institutional or platform relationships,' Mr. Hamer says. 'So, there is power in incumbency and many prospective borrowers who, perhaps, would be comfortable dealing with a digital lender, build trust with capable brokers and advisors.' Then there's the challenge of shadow labour, Mr. Hamer adds. 'Some digital mortgage experiences effectively - and certainly inadvertently - transfer the labour of the lender and broker or admin to the client,' he says. Mr. Hamer says digital lenders such as Nesto need to balance the borrower's desire to self-serve while still guiding them through the process. In 2024, Nesto acquired CMLS Group, one of Canada's largest mortgage financing companies, growing its combined team to more than 1,000 with offices in 10 cities across the country. With the purchase, Nesto currently manages around $70-billion in residential and commercial mortgages, up from $10-billion in mortgages in 2022. The next challenge is to woo one of the Big Six banks to use its platform. Francois Lafortune, CEO and co-founder of Diagram Ventures, which has invested in and helped develop the idea for Nesto since the beginning, believes it's just a matter of time. 'All the banks are looking at better mortgage systems… there's no off-the-shelf solution,' Mr. Lafortune says, adding that their options are to rebuild their system or invest in a solution such as Nesto Mortgage Cloud. 'The issue with rebuilding it [for large] financial institutions is it's always more costly and takes longer… by that time, the world keeps shifting," Mr. Lafortune says. Mr. Yacoubi says Nesto went from becoming the digital mortgage disruptor to looking to build a new mortgage ecosystem for the Canadian market. 'There's still a lot of work to be done,' he says, 'but we see the opportunity.'
Winnipeg Free Press
06-06-2025
- Business
- Winnipeg Free Press
Sponsored Content Preparing for the future: The importance of estate planning
Canada is currently undergoing the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in history, but more than half of us aren't ready. A recent study by IG Wealth Management (IG) uncovered that 54 per cent of Canadians don't have an estate plan, leaving them and their loved ones unprepared for carrying out final wishes. A well-crafted estate plan offers peace of mind by preparing for potential incapacity later in life and ensuring that your assets are distributed according to your wishes. It can also help reduce any tax burden on your beneficiaries. Key components to include in an estate plan include a will, healthcare directive, naming beneficiaries, purchasing life insurance and designating a power of attorney. 'It's understandable that Canadians want to avoid thinking and speaking about death, but having these difficult conversations now and ensuring that a comprehensive plan is in place will make it easier in the future, both for yourself and your loved ones,' said Christine Van Cauwenberghe, Head of Financial Planning at IG Wealth Management. Understanding an estate plan Canadians have noted that the main reason why they haven't prepared an estate plan is because they don't think they have enough wealth to make having one worthwhile. They're also unfamiliar with key aspects related to estate planning, with approximately half saying they're not knowledgeable about the tax considerations associated with passing along an estate, the benefits of having life insurance and the consequences of not having a will or power of attorney. 'It's concerning that so many Canadians are unfamiliar with key components that make up an estate plan,' said Ms. Van Cauwenberghe. 'Take, for instance, the lack of knowledge around taxation. The reality is that passing down assets can often result in a significant tax burden and Canadians should be well-versed on the strategies to help offset these costs.' Preparing for cognitive decline An estate plan is also needed in case of cognitive decline. Conditions like Alzheimer's disease can impact one's ability to make decisions around their wealth and assets. There can also often be significant costs related to living with cognitive decline. Just one quarter have planned for any possible expenses related to cognitive decline. In addition, only one-third per cent have made plans for what will happen to their assets and just under 40 per cent have made plans for who will manage their finances. 'Cognitive decline can happen to anyone at any time, so it's a good idea for Canadians to seek out the assistance of a financial advisor who can help them build a thoughtfully crafted estate plan that takes this into account,' reinforced Ms. Van Cauwenberghe. Start with a plan For more on how to build an estate plan that meets your needs, listen to a special edition of IG Wealth Management's The Living Market podcast hosted by Aurèle Courcelles, Vice-President, Tax & Estate Planning at IG Wealth Management with Dan Britton, Assistant Vice-President, Tax & Estate Planning at IG Wealth Management: The Living Market Podcast | IG Wealth Management
