Our Philosophy

When families are introduced to us we are asked to provide a fresh set of eyes and a thoughtful analysis on their current investment and overall wealth (tax, estate, insurance, business succession, retirement, charitable, etc.) strategy. It is common that we find that their investment strategy is over-diversified and under-strategized. Your portfolio does not need to be over-complicated to be extremely successful. Even the largest pools of capital have realized and attained the fine balance of sophistication and simplicity in their portfolio construction. What is needed is to be focused and strategic in weaving together the different elements of your wealth plan.

Sophistication Laced with Simplicity

Sample portfolio asset allocation for illustration purposes only.

If investing like some of the world's biggest and best pension and endowment funds has forever seemed out of reach, wait no longer. The realm of possibility for you has now arrived. At The Schmidt Investment Group® we have long understood that we can enrich our clients lives by attaining exclusive access to the uncompromising solutions that have in the past been the purview of only the elite few. We have made this our mission for over 30 years.

Our investment strategy is evaluated, implemented, and monitored based on a best in class approach. We conduct a global manager search and bring the leading managers together for each component of a client’s portfolio. Our clients gain access to world leading money managers, in all six asset classes identified above. We understand that being entrusted with your assets is both our greatest honour and our greatest responsibility and we live this belief in all that we do.

Downside protection is at the heart of our process. Before we move forward with our recommendations for a client, we stress test and back test the proposed portfolio to confirm that even during the most difficult investment and economic times, our clients can be confident in regards to the preservation of their capital.

We focus on real (after inflation), after tax, and after fee rates of return as we understand that what matters is not what you make, but rather what you keep.

Decisions are managed based on strict investment policy guidelines which have been mutually agreed upon and developed collaboratively between each of our clients and ourselves. These guidelines are well documented, continuously monitored, and outlined within our clients' Investment Policy Statements and are regularly reviewed with our clients.

Risk Management

Rule number 1: Never lose money.
Rule number 2: Don’t forget rule number 1.

- Warren Buffet

Our philosophy relating to portfolio risk and return is that downside risk protection is even more important than upside returns. The evidence is clear that participating fully in the downside will always hurt a portfolio more than not fully capturing upside returns. Therefore, clients have been able to outperform their stated benchmarks overtime by capturing only a fraction of the downside during crisis periods, while participating well in the upside through all other periods.

As an organization we put risk management at the forefront of all that we do – and that begins with protecting the wealth of our clients.

Real life example: During the 2007-2009 time period the public equity markets fell by 55% from the peak in 2007 to the bottom in March 2009. Returning to your pre-crisis portfolio value would require a return of 122%.

Graph showing a 50% decline requires a 100% return to get to the pre-decline value

As shown above, the greater the downside experience, the exponentially more difficult it is to recover those losses. Therefore, our number one goal is to insulate and protect the downside from day one onwards. The result - far better risk adjusted returns and a positive experience for our clients.

White Glove Service

1:7 Advisor to client ratio

The Schmidt Investment Group has one of the highest professional to client ratios in the investment management industry in Canada. Therefore, we can confidently say that we are proactively managing all the complexities of our clients' wealth rather than just holding the assets of our clients. We choose to serve an exclusive client base because with fewer clients and more skilled professionals we are able to deliver an industry leading white glove wealth management experience for our select family clients.

Our Fees

In the early stages of communication with our clients we are very explicit and transparent as to what fees exist. This ensures that clients are aware of all fees before they commit to proceed. At The Schmidt Investment Group we are and always have been very competitive in regards to pricing.

We recognize the importance of transparency and predictability of costs. We also believe that a client should pay only for what they are utilizing; therefore, different fees are applied for different asset classes, ensuring that a more conservative client does not subsidize the fees of a more aggressive or complex client mandate.