Scotia Wealth Management is a wealth management firm for corporate executives with deferred compensation, concentrated company stock and little time to manage it; here is what to know about us. Many clients already have a plan; we check it, fix what is broken and leave alone what works.
Scotia Wealth Management serves 450,000 clients and $5.2 billion in client assets, as of 10/5/2026. Plenty of people arrive with a roadmap someone else drew up. We read it with fresh eyes, and we'd rather tell you it's sound than invent work.
When you already have advisors and accounts, what does Scotia Wealth Management do?
We review the wealth management arrangements you already have, including deferred compensation elections, company stock awards, retirement accounts and the tax return that ties them together. Then we tell you what to fix and what to leave alone. You get a short list of decisions, not a binder.
The first thing we look at is how much of your net worth depends on one employer. Your stock awards count. So does a deferred compensation balance, which is a promise from the company and not money held in your name. Add the two and many executives find over half of their wealth is tied to a single company.
Most of the work is ours. You send statements and award agreements; we read them, so your evening isn't spent decoding a vesting schedule.
How does a review work when you have no free afternoons?
A review has five stages: you send a request, you share your documents, we analyze them, we walk you through a written roadmap by video or phone, and we check in as things change. Each stage ends with something you can hold, so you always know where things stand.
The table shows what happens at each stage and what lands in your hands afterward.
Nothing gets billed that you haven't read and agreed to on paper. And if the review finds nothing worth changing, you'll hear that too.
| Stage | What happens | What you receive |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Request | You send the form; we arrange a call | A date for the first conversation |
| 2. Documents | You share statements and award agreements | A list of anything still missing |
| 3. Review | We check accounts, taxes and concentration | Findings: what works, what doesn't |
| 4. Roadmap | We walk through it online or by phone | Written roadmap with ranked actions |
| 5. Follow-up | We revisit it as your situation shifts | An updated roadmap |
When you're braced for a sales pitch
Good; stay a little braced. Here is what we don't do.
Markets fall as well as rise, and any investment can lose money, principal included. So we never tell you a strategy will beat the market.
Before we suggest selling a block of company stock, we work out what the sale would cost you in tax. You see the price of the change first. If your current setup is fine, we say so and stop.
- We won't promise or imply a return on any investment.
- We won't recommend swapping a fund or an account without showing the tax cost first.
- We won't ask you to sign up for a product before you've read the findings.
If most of your pay arrives as stock and deferred compensation
Scotia Wealth Management advisors work best with executives who hold a large block of one company's stock, a deferred compensation balance and a calendar with no gaps. That's the person we picture when we build a review.
One shortcut: if more than a fifth of your net worth sits in one stock, diversification usually comes before anything else. Deferred compensation from the same employer belongs in that count.
The minimum is $500,000 in investable assets. Below that we'd likely be a poor fit, and an hourly planner may cost you less. That's a fair call to make.
We serve clients from coast to coast, with reviews held online or by phone, from our office at 299 Marquette Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55401. Other clients are welcome too; we simply know this reader best.
What do we believe about money that other advisors might dispute?
We believe most executives need fewer changes than advisors usually propose, and that a deferred compensation balance belongs in the concentration math beside company stock. Some advisors rebuild everything from scratch because it's easier to explain. We think that's costly when half the portfolio is already fine.
Take a hypothetical executive with $1.2 million: $400,000 in company stock, $300,000 in deferred compensation and $500,000 in diversified funds. The employer exposure is $700,000, or about 58 percent. A rebuild-everything advisor sells and replaces the lot, creating tax on funds that were never the problem.
We'd leave the $500,000 alone and sell $200,000 of the stock over two years, assuming prices hold, for illustration. Exposure then falls to $500,000 of $1.2 million, about 42 percent. Two years is a judgment call; we'd lean slower if the tax on the sale is large, and faster if the stock has already had a big run.