'It's difficult to replicate the way our firm accesses alternatives'

“The way we do it is we manage it in-house, we get our hands dirty, we do the due diligence on these assets,” Haik says. “Also, we provide it in liquid form, which is very difficult for other types of advisors to access and that’s really because of the scale we have.”

Built firmly on this philosophy, Haik foresees no big changes to strategy heading into 2023 — “It’s worked for 28 years, I think we’ve got a good thing going here,” he notes. “We’re very committed to our approach.” — but he adds that staying the course involves continuous monitoring and adjustments. Currently, the firm is still comfortable being underweight public equities and certainly underweight relative to the 60/40 model.

Nicola also boasts two other enviable statistics: a 99.4% client retention rate and 80% of new business stemming from client referrals. The firm tracks those metrics and Haik says the results are a great testament to the work they do with clients. When someone does occasionally leave, they seek to understand why. It’s a process of continuous improvement underpinned by the belief that if you serve clients well, you’ll develop lifelong relationships and become a natural referral. That’s been the key to the growth in terms of pursuing prospective clients, and in this hyper-competitive environment Haik urges advisors, regardless of what firm they’re at or what solutions they have in front of them, to constantly evaluate what you’re doing today to provide value beyond traditional asset allocation.

“Our planning-first philosophy with our clients is a significant aspect to the value proposition at Nicola, and in volatile markets, you have to work harder to demonstrate it,” Haik says, adding that at Nicola, clients have 24-hour line of sight to their investments through a secure client portal and are also supplied with comprehensive reporting. This gives them peace of mind and allows advisors to focus the client on what can be managed: not the outcome of the market, but good tax and estate planning, solid mitigation strategies, and other areas to add value over and above investment value.

“You need to be able to demonstrate value beyond what the markets are doing, because the client could just go buy an ETF direct themselves if you’re not providing any value beyond that,” Haik says.