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Six disciplines. One coordinated plan.

Most advisors do one thing well. We coordinate six — because tax, estate, and investment decisions made in isolation cost families more than fees ever will.

Services6 disciplines
Fee model0.85–1.15% AUM
Minimum$300K
EngagementsAccepting
What We Do

All six services, every client.

01
Financial Planning
02
Portfolio Management
03
Retirement Planning
04
Tax Optimization
05
Estate Planning
06
Business Owner
— 01 / Core service

Comprehensive financial planning

An integrated plan that connects every financial decision — investment, tax, estate, insurance, and retirement — into a single, coordinated framework updated quarterly.

Most plans get built once, filed, and forgotten. Ours are living documents. We model your cash flows across a 30-year horizon, stress-test your assumptions against market downturns and longevity risk, and revisit the numbers every quarter so that your plan reflects your life, not the version of it that existed when we first met.

The financial plan is the foundation for every other recommendation we make. Before we build a portfolio, we know exactly what rate of return you need — and what risk you can actually afford to take.

What's included
  • Comprehensive net-worth and cash-flow modelling
  • Goal architecture across education, retirement, estate, and discretionary
  • 30+ year projection with sensitivity analysis
  • Quarterly review and plan update
  • Insurance gap analysis and coverage recommendations
  • Unlimited advisory access between reviews
— 02 / Core service

Discretionary portfolio management

Globally diversified portfolios built for your risk profile, not a generic model. We manage your investments on a discretionary basis — acting in your interest without requiring approval for every trade.

We construct portfolios using low-cost index ETFs for broad market exposure and select active mandates where the evidence for a return premium is strong — factor investing in equities, active duration management in fixed income. We do not use proprietary products, high-MER funds, or structured notes.

Portfolios are rebalanced on rule-based drift thresholds, not market predictions. This eliminates emotional decision-making, reduces transaction costs, and keeps your allocation aligned with your plan through every market cycle.

What's included
  • Custom risk profile and investment policy statement
  • Globally diversified ETF and fixed income portfolio
  • Discretionary trading authority — no approval delays
  • Rule-based rebalancing on drift thresholds
  • Quarterly performance reporting with benchmark attribution
  • Tax-loss harvesting and asset location optimization
— 03 / Specialist service

Retirement & decumulation planning

Accumulating assets is the easy part. Turning them into a reliable, tax-efficient income stream for 30 years is where most plans fall short. We specialize in the hard part.

Most retirement plans answer one question: do you have enough? Ours answers the harder questions: which account do you draw from first, and when? When should you take CPP — and how does that interact with OAS clawback thresholds? How do you sequence income from RRSP, RRIF, TFSA, and non-registered accounts to minimize lifetime tax?

Catherine Beaumont, our specialist in retirement income planning, works with pre- and post-retirement clients to build drawdown sequences that keep income consistent, preserve capital, and minimize the tax paid on every dollar withdrawn over the course of a lifetime.

What's included
  • CPP and OAS timing optimization (break-even analysis)
  • RRIF minimum drawdown sequencing and meltdown strategy
  • Account decumulation order — registered, TFSA, non-registered
  • Pension income splitting and spousal income optimization
  • OAS clawback threshold management
  • Longevity stress-testing to age 95
— 04 / Integrated service

Tax planning & optimization

Tax planning done once a year in April is not tax planning — it is tax filing. We work on your tax position year-round, integrating it with your investment, retirement, and estate decisions.

For most high-net-worth families, the largest inefficiency in their financial plan is not the return on their investments — it is the amount of their investment return that leaves the portfolio as tax. TFSA contribution room that goes unused. RRSP deductions taken in low-income years. Capital gains realized in the wrong account.

We coordinate with your accountant on tax return preparation and provide year-round tax strategy including TFSA and RRSP maximization, capital gains harvesting, spousal loan strategies, and corporate-class tax planning for incorporated professionals and business owners.

What's included
  • Annual TFSA and RRSP contribution room optimization
  • Capital gains harvesting and tax-loss selling
  • Asset location across registered and non-registered accounts
  • Spousal RRSP contribution strategy
  • Prescribed-rate loan strategy for income splitting
  • Corporate-class tax planning for incorporated clients
— 05 / Integrated service

Estate & legacy planning

The most expensive financial plan is one that transfers wealth poorly. We coordinate with your estate lawyer to ensure that what you've built passes the way you intend — with minimal tax, minimal friction, and maximum clarity for your family.

Estate planning is often treated as a legal exercise — get the will done, and call it a plan. At Northern Shield, we treat it as a financial exercise: ensuring that the right assets flow to the right beneficiaries through the right vehicles, minimizing the probate and tax cost of the transfer and ensuring your family is not managing a financial maze while they are grieving.

We review beneficiary designations, coordinate RRSP and TFSA successor holders, model the capital gains and tax liability at death, and work with your lawyer on structures that preserve value across generations — trusts, alter ego plans, inter vivos gifts, and charitable strategies.

What's included
  • Beneficiary designation audit and update recommendations
  • RRSP/RRIF successor annuitant and beneficiary planning
  • Probate minimization strategy by province
  • Capital gains and deemed disposition tax modelling at death
  • Coordination with estate lawyer on will and POA provisions
  • Charitable giving and donor-advised fund structuring
— 06 / Specialist service

Business owner advisory

For incorporated professionals and owner-operators, personal and corporate financial planning cannot be done independently. We integrate both into a single strategy that minimizes tax and maximizes long-term wealth.

Daniel Marchetti, our business owner specialist, works with incorporated physicians, lawyers, accountants, and owner-operators on the financial decisions that are unique to running a business through a corporation: how much salary to pay versus dividends, how to deploy retained earnings inside the holdco, whether an IPP makes sense versus maximizing RRSP, and how to plan a succession or sale.

We do not prepare corporate tax returns — that is your accountant's role. Our role is to sit at the intersection of your personal plan and your corporate structure and ensure that every dollar extracted from the business is done at the lowest possible cost, and every dollar retained inside the corporation is deployed optimally for long-term wealth.

What's included
  • Salary-versus-dividend optimization modelling
  • Holdco investment strategy and passive income planning
  • Individual Pension Plan (IPP) feasibility and setup
  • Corporate retained earnings deployment
  • Succession planning and business sale readiness
  • Integration of corporate and personal financial plan
Ready to start

One plan. Six disciplines.

Every Northern Shield client receives all six services under one advisory fee. The disciplines compound together — that is the point.

Book a discovery call → View our fee structure