Top 15 post: Jill Huls

Wealth Management Strategy

In my CUES Management Profile I outlined my vision and belief on what Wealth Management means to me. For anyone who did not see it, I believe that Wealth Management is about being in a real conversation to help you arrange your finances to meet your goals. It isn't a suite of products or services. It's about a savings plan to buy your first home, an investment plan to get you to retirement or your kids to school, a risk management plan to protect your assets. It's about partnering with you to understand your goals, discussing options, and putting in place a plan to get there. I believe Wealth Management provides members the benefit of education about their options to reach their goals and helps create understanding of how financial decisions are related.

Through teams of experts, the Conexus Wealth Strategy strives to deliver on three key components of Financial Planning for members:

Estate Planning

We help members answer questions they have about passing assets to family, friends, and/or organizations they care about. This often results in partnering with law firms to help members have Wills prepared, in reviewing beneficiary designations on assets, and in involving team members to discuss options to help members achieve their legacy goals. We also provide advice and guidance on the importance of Power of Attorney documents, Health Care Directives and Executor choices. 

Investment Planning

We work with members to help them achieve savings goals like helping a child attend University, purchasing a family cottage, and of course being able to retire. We also help structure portfolios that provide income during retirement. We deliver investment planning through Wealth Professionals who are either MFDA or IIROC licensed and can discuss and provide many different investment choices.

Risk Management Planning

Through our partnership with Credential Financial Strategies Inc., we help members understand their options to protect their assets and their income. Members spend time and effort to build assets; we feel we owe it to them to help them know their options for protecting them. We also provide options for creating inheritances, structuring charitable giving, and funding farm and business succession plans. 

Our teams have worked hard to deliver on providing these key components of a Financial Plan to members. Because of their hard work and advice, we are helping members build their futures and in turn delivering financial results for Conexus.

An enhancement for Conexus Wealth Management is our commitment to continue to improve the Member Experience for our delivery of Investment, Risk Management and Estate Planning. For example, we see value for our members and teams in using common software to provide plans and projections, and in using common questions to help ensure we consistently align our recommendations to member goals. We are bringing our Wealth Team together in September to have an open discussion on what tools Conexus can provide to better help them provide consistent and qualified advice to members.

Numbers show that when our Wealth teams are in conversations with members we earn their business. YTD to end of July, when referred from Business or Retail banking, members have moved over $10 from our competitors for every $1 they had on deposit with Conexus. That’s amazing. As I was writing this, a member of our team came in to tell me about another great appointment he had in helping a member explore options for farm succession funding. We know we are scratching the surface of the number of conversations we can be in. I feel spending time continuing to build integration between Wealth, Retail and Business Banking is a huge win for members and our Credit Union. I believe when working well together to reach member goals, this integration and consistent delivery is what will continue to build Credit Union trust and loyalty and will have members view us as partners in their success. 

Thanks for taking the time to learn more about how we deliver Wealth Management at Conexus and for giving me the opportunity to share some thoughts on how Wealth Management can be key in developing and maintaining relationships with members.

Jill Huis, Conexus Credit Union