Feature: Part 1 - Family Harmony

We talked with Frank Gasper, owner and financial advisor at CSR Wealth Management, with decades of experience helping people. Frank is an enthusiastic early adopter of new technologies, but he also understands how some folks may feel intimidated by those systems.

In our conversation with Frank, he breaks down for us how he helps his clients realize that technological solutions can benefit them the most.

"At the core, when it comes to “the financial services business and working with individual clients, what we're doing is estate planning right from day one. When we take on a client, we talk to them about their education plan for their child, and then, at some point, will be talking about their estate plan and then transitioning those assets to their family,” says Frank.

To him, the beauty of the collaboration is that advisors can set levels of connection with family members and encourage families to have this level of transparency, so that down the line, there aren't problems within family units.

Family Harmony

What Frank likes about a collaborative platform like SideDrawer, is that he can promote it both as a security tool for document keeping, but at the same time, as a family harmony tool to keep the peace and ensure that the data that goes in is shared amongst the people that it's supposed to be shared with. This helps everybody stay aware of what's going on, and avoids that family members feel like they are kept out of the loop.

“When it comes to introducing a new technology to my clients, because it's a little bit abstract, it is easier for most people to understand the tool by using the tool. What I find is when they see it, they understand it better,” adds Frank. “This kind of ‘live demo’ allows us to take our clients through what happens when they allow or remove access to family members or other professionals, the various levels of access they can grant, etc.”

“With SideDrawer, it is easy to understand how the platform benefits everybody, because everybody's in the loop, and more importantly, the right people are in the loop. For example, if you don't want a certain beneficiary to see the Will, then you can make it so that they know there's a Will, but they can't see it and they can't read it.”

“There's a number of ways to manage privacy, but ultimately, this platform is about the security of all important documents and making sure everything is in one place. This is key because executors are overwhelmed quite often.”

“I recently onboarded a spouse of an existing client who had been with me for a number of years. I reached out because the client had maxed out their TFSA and didn't have any anywhere else to shelter money, which is why we considered looking at their spouse’s TFSA. Turns out the spouse had virtually no money in their TFSA, so I sent the SideDrawer connection and asked for them to fill out the required information. It was done in a few minutes and we were able to transfer the client’s money.”

“Another example is when clients set up RESPs for grandchildren. We need to gather a lot of information, and because they're a grandparent, we actually need to get connected to the custodial parent, so that we can get a sign off for that. In the past, it was a really big challenge to chase all of these signatures and permissions. We’d have to drive all over Ontario to find these people and get a signature. But with e-signature, that problem is solved. And the connection with SideDrawer also helps because we can give them access right at that level only.”

“Ultimately, what we do is we walk people through their own financial journey, we're holding their hands and taking them on that journey and staying on the path with them as they go through. And tools like SideDrawer help smooth things out to make things easier in the difficult moments when clients get terminally ill or pass away.

This blog continues here, in Feature: Part 2: Father to Family.

According to Frank…

Having a secured digital vault where we can collaborate for your sensitive data, your driver's license, your social insurance numbers, any of the applications that we fill out, that no one wants to send through email, gives clients that level of confidence that you have a really reputable firm who's caring deeply about how we manage your data.
Working within independent channels as advisors do, and competing directly with the banks and their secure mailboxes, it is key to understand that all the emails that go back and forth to gather client information are not only very cumbersome and hard to manage, but also can be a risk for the protection of the client’s data.
Sidedrawer provides that level of facilitation without the downsides of email. It also makes life easier for everybody involved, especially when it comes to lawyers, accountants, bankers, and other professionals working with the client.
This is a tool that helps with engagement, but at the same time, not every client is welcoming of a new password. I advise that you use this platform for everything and it'll slowly make life way easier as opposed to being more difficult.
When you see stories in media about law offices getting hacked and emails getting hacked, and when you see the proliferation of emails that are either phishing scam or a pure and outright attempt to get into my system, it is very concerning. If you have a large organization where you have multiple endpoints where anybody can access the wrong the wrong link and bring the whole system down, it is such a huge risk for client information.