In his new role as CEO, Anthony Maiorino sees RBC WM broadening its service
Solving for acute client challenges
Maiorino stresses that his new combined role builds on an existing foundation of collaboration between himself and his predecessor in the RBC Wealth Management Financial Services role, John Hamilton. Because family office services often focus on tax and estate planning, collaboration with the insurance side of the business has been essential. Maiorino wants to continue that work to tackle some of the key challenges he sees clients and advisors facing.
Estate liability is among the first challenges Maiorino wants to address. As the great intergenerational wealth transfer continues, families with significant net worth are accruing massive tax liabilities that will have to be paid by the inheritor generation. Business owners, in particular, need structures that can manage those tax liabilities on the dispersal of their businesses.
Maiorino wants to use the institutional knowledge accrued on both the family office and insurance sides of RBC Wealth Management to show clients the range of options available to them. He emphasizes the power of storytelling and example and wants to equip RBC Wealth Management advisors with those stories that can demonstrate how to manage these moments. Those stories and examples, he says, can give clients clear choices about what they want to do, allowing them informed independence in their decision making.
Making RBC advisors stand out
In his experience on the family office side of wealth management, Maiorino has seen how specific and technical the problems facing client families can be. The solution, he says, is to offer a wide range of specialist services that can support advisors at the firm. He likens this model to healthcare, with the advisor functioning as the general practitioner who refers out to specialists as needed. In his dual role, Maiorino wants to continue building out a bench of in-house specialists in areas like tax, estate, charitable giving, and financial literacy education. He also wants to build a rolodex of external specialists, in areas like physical health or cybersecurity, who can help in matters where RBC doesn’t have direct expertise.
When asked about his role in the competitive landscape for client assets, Maiorino focused on those service offerings as a route to greater client satisfaction. He says that he and his team don’t view these decisions with a view to capturing more business from competitors, instead they want clients to know that they’re doing things the right way.
