What Most Financial Advisors Won't Tell You About Your Own Portfolio
You are paying more than you realize. Your portfolio carries hidden trailer commissions, overlapping fund holdings, and fee structures that erode 30–40% of your long-term returns. Since 2017, Suncentral has converted every cost into a dollar figure, stress-tested every recommendation against three alternatives, and delivered documentation detailed enough to withstand an audit — for business owners and families across Alberta and British Columbia who demand analytical depth their current advisors have never provided.
What Advisors Charge You — And What We Uncover
Suncentral offers ten independent consulting services, each defined by a written scope, timeline, and deliverables before any work begins. Below are the four services most frequently requested by new clients — typically business owners who suspect their current arrangements are costing them more than they've been told.
Investment Fee Audit & Cost Disclosure
Identify every layer of cost in your portfolio — MERs, trailer commissions, platform fees, trading costs — converted from percentages into annual dollar amounts and projected over your investment horizon. The average engagement uncovers $34,200 per year in fees clients did not know they were paying. A standalone audit takes 2–3 weeks from document collection to final report.
Learn More →Investment Policy Statement Development
Establish the foundational governance document for your investment program: objectives, risk tolerance quantified through drawdown bands, target allocation, rebalancing triggers, fee ceilings, and performance benchmarks. For business owners in cyclical industries like energy and construction, the IPS accounts for correlation between your operating income and your portfolio holdings — a critical analysis most advisors skip entirely.
Learn More →Portfolio Construction Review & Optimization
Evaluate your holdings for allocation drift, sector concentration, duplicate positions, style overlap, and liquidity constraints. Receive a diagnostic report with at least three reallocation scenarios — each with projected outcomes, risk metrics, and cost comparisons in dollar terms. One recent client held 14 mutual funds with four showing over 60% overlap in underlying equities. Read the full case study.
Learn More →Retirement Drawdown & Decumulation Planning
Build a tax-optimized withdrawal sequence across registered and non-registered accounts, incorporating CPP timing, OAS clawback thresholds, and Monte Carlo stress-testing through ages 85, 90, and 95. Our tax and drawdown analyst, Priya Venkatesh, CPA, builds models with four different retirement scenarios and runs 1,000 simulations on each — replacing vague reassurances with specific probabilities.
Learn More →These four services represent our most common starting points. We also offer Advisor Selection & Due Diligence, Group Retirement Plan Reviews, Corporate Surplus & Holding Company Strategy, Family Investment Governance, Performance Attribution & Benchmark Reporting, and ESG & Responsible Investment Screening.
What the Industry Prefers You Never Discover About Advisory Fees
You might be questioning whether an independent consulting firm can deliver the analytical depth of a major institution. Here is the direct answer: Suncentral was founded in 2017 by Nadia Okafor, CFA, CFP® — a former Big Five bank portfolio strategist who managed over $400 million in assets — precisely because that institution routinely underserved clients below $1 million. Those clients were assigned to cookie-cutter portfolio models, given quarterly check-ins lasting eight minutes on average, and charged fee schedules that quietly eroded 30–40% of their long-term returns through layered MERs and trailer fees. The rigor is identical. The conflicts are eliminated.
Fees Disclosed in Dollars, Not Percentages
Every competitor in the advisory space quotes costs as percentages. We convert every MER, trailer commission, platform charge, and trading cost into annual and projected dollar amounts. You see $18,400 per year — not 1.84%. Over a 15-year investment horizon, that difference compounds into six figures of lost retirement capital. This single practice has changed more client decisions than any other service we offer. Our published research documents how trailer commissions alone cost one business owner $267,000 over a decade.
No Asset Custody, No Product Sales, No Commissions
Suncentral never touches client money, never sells a fund or insurance product, and never receives compensation from a third party. Your money stays with your chosen custodian — bank, brokerage, or dealer. If you do not currently have an advisor, our Advisor Selection & Due Diligence service evaluates candidates against 28 criteria and presents a shortlist without referral fees. Revenue comes exclusively from consulting fees paid by clients, quoted in advance, in writing, in dollars.
Every Recommendation Accompanied by Three Alternatives
We do not present a single recommendation and request approval. Every engagement delivers a primary recommendation alongside a minimum of three modeled alternatives — each with projected outcomes, costs, risk metrics, and tradeoffs. You choose from a range with comprehensive information. When we reviewed a $4.8 million holding company portfolio for an oilfield services company, we modeled five alternative allocation scenarios before presenting the final report. Read the case study.
What Clients Discovered After an Independent Review
Every testimonial below references a documented engagement. The dollar figures are real, the timelines are verifiable, and the clients agreed to be named. For the full analytical details behind each story, visit our case studies page.
Start a Conversation With the Suncentral Team
Whether you manage $200,000 in registered accounts or $8 million through a family holding company, the analytical approach is identical. Our team of six — led by Nadia Okafor, CFA, CFP® — includes specialists in fee auditing, group retirement plan design, tax-optimized drawdown strategy, and portfolio construction analysis. Reach out, describe what you are working with, and we will outline a specific scope and fee — in writing, before any engagement begins. No assets under management. No product sales. No trailing commissions. Every fee quoted in dollars.
Not sure which service applies? Browse our published research to see the kind of analysis we deliver, or review documented case studies from actual engagements to find a scenario that mirrors your own.
Phone: (825) 298-2910
Email: contact@sncntrl.com
Address: 715 Prospect Avenue SW, Calgary, Alberta T2T 0W4
Office Hours: Monday–Friday, 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM MST