As we're now into May, I'd like to thank everyone for getting their Tax Declarations into us over the last few months. It has been a very busy start to the year for us with RRSP Season, Income Tax and rounding up these declarations. Thank you for either booking meetings or mailing those back to us in a timely fashion!
By now, everyone with a Canadian Western Trust account will be aware that they are exiting the Intermediary Account Business. I have worked with CWT for almost a decade and we were quite shocked to hear that they were making this move. CWT's original plan was to move all accounts with Traditional Assets (Mutual Funds, GICs, Cash Savings) to B2B Bank and all accounts with Exempt Securities to Computershare. Many of you will already have had assets move over to Computershare.
The good news for almost all of our clients, is that their Canadian Western Trust accounts will roll into Portfolio Strategies Corporation Nominee Plans. These Nominee Plans give us even more flexibility and come at a lower cost than working with Computershare or B2B. Natalie and I were very happy to hear that most accounts would automatically go into Nominee Plans. We have dealt with a few speedbumps with this process though as some Exempt Securities aren't able to just roll over. I've been in touch with clients about this but if we haven't been able to get together on this yet, please get in touch with me right away!
We hope you've been enjoying the recent sunshine that we've been getting and wish you all the best going into the summer!
Bryce A. Borden