NADER TADROS, Senior Wealth Advisor, IG Wealth Management, Greater Toronto Area
NADER TADROS
“Do the right thing for the client every single time”
Being with his family is one of the favourite ways Nader Tadros likes to spend his downtime. For the busy Senior Wealth Advisor with IG Wealth Management, sometimes free time can be hard to come by, especially when you’re committed to growing a business and being the best, you can be for clients.
Fortunately for Nader, clients are like family, so spending time concentrating on his practice doesn’t really feel like work.
“I always say I’m the luckiest Advisor in the business,” says Nader. “And truly, it’s because of clients. They’re just good people. Our practice honestly feels like more of a family than a business. We know what’s happening in our clients’ personal lives. They keep us informed and we keep them informed.”
The “we” Nader refers to is himself and his right arm, Denina Sulejmanovic, who Nader calls “the cornerstone” of the practice. Denina, who joined Nader at IG once his practice had begun to really build, looks after everything from administrative assistance, compliance, event planning, and day-to-day communication with clients.
“I’ve always loved the investment world”
Nader has been with IG since last July. He entered the finance industry 12 years ago, but his love of the investment world goes back much further. “I’ve always been fascinated by it. In school, I studied International Business Administration. I applied for a job at TD and at that first interview they asked, ‘where do you see yourself?’ I already had investment in mind as my goal.”
He got the job. He stayed at TD for six years before moving to CIBC and then Scotia Bank. He went from telephone banking to helping clients with high-value trades to offering full financial advice. “Looking back, I was able to see what works well for every institution and see the opportunities every institution had,” says Nader. His early years exposed him to the many differences within the industry, like trading practices, methods of working with people, products being offered and access to different professionals and resources. “I was really able to bring that knowledge back to clients to give them better advice.”
Nader’s move to IG Wealth Management saw him join an organization of like-minded people. “I trusted them quite a lot,” he says. I saw such an alignment of our vision on how we operate a business, how we treat our clients – putting them first and always doing what’s right for clients every single time. It leads to the client’s success and ultimately our success as well.”
Today Nader is building strong relationships with clients – because he knows relationships are the foundation of his practice. He focuses on retirement planning, goal planning, estate planning, and business succession planning. His growing list of clients is quite diverse, with clients coming from different professional backgrounds including agriculture, health care, law, and self-employment. “We have different experts at IG,” informs Nader. “We work as a team. There’s nothing we can’t tackle and there’s no profession we can’t provide advice to.”
Keeping it in the family
As mentioned, Nader’s clients are like family and many of them have families. Working with multiple generations has led him to working with clients across all ages and different stages of life. “The youngest client is eight months old and the oldest is 95,” he laughs. “That family is a multi-generational family. It started off with one family, a husband, and wife and it quickly escalated to ‘hey, my mom has some assets, and my dad has some assets, and they need some advice too’.”
Soon he was working with their parents, then their children, sisters, and aunts…until his team was managing the family’s entire portfolio. “When I first started working with them, accounts were spread out everywhere, at different institutions. That was a red flag. What if something happens? What if there’s an unexpected passing? What does that look like?”
Nader concentrated on “householding” all the accounts to see how they could structure all the accounts to be more efficient for the clients. He looked closely at-risk tolerance and considered what everyone’s individual goals were and what was most important to them. “It took about four years to get everything where it needed to be and in a properly organized manner. Today I’m quite grateful for that. God forbid – if anything happens to anybody, it’s organized and easy.”
Taking away financial stress
Providing peace of mind to families, and to all his clients, is one of the most rewarding parts of Nader’s practice. It’s important that he gets to know clients, so he can help them through any of life’s challenges on the way to achieving their goals.
“We’re not the ‘we’ll sit down with you today just to gather assets and then we’ll talk to you in a year’. I talk to clients regularly. We like to do quarterly reviews for clients versus the industry standard of once a year,” says Nader. “For me, it’s just getting to know clients on a personal level, helping them out, and taking away that stress. I always tell them; life is stressful enough. Let’s take away the financial stress. Leave that up to us.”
That focus on communication provided extra peace of mind during the pandemic, when public health restrictions put an end to many in-person meetings. Some people were left in silence by their advisors because their firms weren’t prepared with the technology or the know-how to meet virtually.
Unsurprisingly, this was not the case for Nader and his team at IG Wealth Management. “Clients saw the value of working with a firm such as IG, where we have the technology and the tools to be able to operate business as usual. It provided greater availability and access to an advisor because we had the tools and resources to reach out to them in a quick manner. It gave them the confidence that, ‘during the tough times, my advisor is there for me.’”
Nader is there for clients in fun times as well. With Denina on his team, they’ve been able to throw some fun events for clients. “Denina is absolutely amazing in terms of her event planning skills,” says Nader. “We did a pizza event and a wine tasting event. We try to do fun activities as well as educational activities to bring everyone together. It’s a well-rounded practice, that’s for sure.”
Nader’s life away from the practice is well-rounded as well. He’s recently been enjoying the pitter-patter of little feet around the house – four of them to be exact – with the addition of an energetic cockapoo named Bruno. When he’s not trying to wear out a four-month-old puppy, he manages to devote a fair amount of time to giving back to his community. Nader actively volunteers at his church, and he works closely with Inspired to Dream, an organization that helps at-risk youth to get back on track. He has volunteered with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada, Meals on Wheels, the United Way, and the CN Tower Stair Climb. He also helps quite a bit with Canadian Hearts and Hands, which builds schools, learning centres and housing for abused women overseas.
Building the business organically
Growing the client list is on the agenda for the months ahead, and Nader has a goal in mind of how much they want to grow the practice each year. Even more important to him is how they grow it. He is adamant that expansion will not come at the cost of the personal and attentive service clients have come to expect. “We never want our clients to feel like the practice is growing too much, and that once it grows, we’re not there for them. That’s a very common theme in the industry.”
Instead, Nader plans to build the business in an organic method and expand as much as possible into families. “Once we establish trust with a client, we’re able to ask for referrals,” explains Nader. “We’ll continue dealing with like-minded individuals who want to focus on their relationship with an advisor they can trust.” Nader says that as the business reaches certain levels, they’ll expand the team to ensure they maintain their level of service and can continue to grow. “That’s our responsibility to clients who have been with us for years. We owe it to them to make sure of that.”
Denina has every confidence that Nader will continue to surpass clients’ expectations. “I've seen a number of practices: good practices, excellent practices. I've never seen a consultant run a practice like this, in terms of caring about the clients. When I see clients’ satisfaction in terms of what we're doing, it pushes me to do more for him,” says Denina.
“It’s the best team.”
Janice Tuff is a professional writer and communicator who got her start in radio copywriting.
Three decades later, she continues to draw upon the valuable lessons learned in her radio days: grab your audience’s attention quickly and always tell an engaging tale.
Nader Tadros, Senior Financial Consultant
IG Wealth Management Investors Group Financial Services Inc.
4950 Yonge Street Suite 2100
Toronto, ON, M2N 6K1
Nader.Tadros@ig.ca
416-262-3558