Family Enterprise Specialist – Isaacson Financial Inc.
Financial Advisor – Manulife Securities Incorporated
Most family businesses – 70% of them – fail to successfully pass to the second generation. By the third generation, the failure rate has become a staggering 92%.
In the eyes of Alan Isaacson, this is a tragedy. It is also something he believes is eminently avoidable. And so his ambitious vision: For Canadian family businesses to be successfully passed on to the next generation 100% of the time.
Ambitious, yet attainable if family businesses have access to someone who, like Alan, specializes in solving their unique challenges. Someone who is not only a wealth manager, but who also has decades of experience with succession and estate planning for high net worth family businesses. And someone whose family has been running its own businesses for generations, going back to 1940s Ireland.
The hallmark of Alan’s 25-year-plus career has been his ability to build understanding and trust. He started out with Sun Life Financial as an independent advisor and took on management roles of increasing responsibility over the next 15 years, including advanced case consultation for the Manitoba-Saskatchewan region. When he left the firm to start his own company in 2004, he was co-managing 120 advisors with over $1-billion in assets under management. Over the next ten years, Alan developed an integrated partnership within Canada’s Credit Union system.
He now partners with Commercial Account Managers, Investment Advisors and client advisors such as accountants and lawyers. Together they develop planning solutions for private corporations and the families that own them. These solutions encompass personal and corporate investment portfolios, tax planning, cash and risk management – and of course succession planning.
Alan has earned the highly specialized designation of Family Enterprise Advisor (FEA) from UBC’s Sauder School of Business, in conjunction with the Institute of Family Enterprise Advisors. He also holds a BA from the University of Manitoba, as well as the CFP (Certified Financial Planner) and CLU (Certified Life Underwriter) designations. He is an active member of the exclusive Conference for Advanced Life Underwriting (CALU), Canada’s top study and lobby group for the life insurance and investment industry.
Alan Isaacson lives in Winnipeg with his wife Treena and his daughter Sarah. Together they enjoy traveling, downhill skiing, boating, cottaging, music and movies. As hinted at by his vision, and as any long-time fan of the Blue Bombers and Jets must be, Alan is an eternal optimist. |
