Case Study 3 – Camille - waypointfamilyoffice.ca

Case Study 3 - Camille

Helping a young entrepreneur plan for an abundant future: Camille’s story

Good financial planning has positive ripple effects across generations. Over the years, we’ve been privileged to support numerous multi-generational families.

One such client is Camille*, a young dentist and entrepreneur who we met through her parents. Before working with us, Camille didn’t know much about financial concepts, but she was eager to learn and asked insightful questions.

Camille entrusted us with her finances because she had witnessed first-hand the estate planning we had done for her parents. She became our client the following year and, since then, we’ve been able to support numerous aspects of her financial planning.

*Names have been changed to protect confidentiality.

Getting to know Camille and her family

We met Camille’s family through a series of referrals. After connecting with a local pharmacist, two of his partners became clients. One of those partners was Gabriel, Camille’s father.

During that initial year, our team regularly met with Gabriel, his wife Debra, and their eldest daughter Jennifer for extended meetings about the family’s finances. These conversations uncovered important details and documents that informed their planning.

By the end, we had put together comprehensive wills and estate plans for Gabriel and Debra. Their daughters witnessed how close we had become and trusted us as their primary advisors. Jennifer, who had facilitated the conversations with her parents, became our client and, soon after, her younger sister Camille followed suit.

Although a bit green about financial matters, Camille is a quick study. She desires to make smart, educated decisions that will set her up for success going forward. This led her to engage us about buying into a dental practice, which we’ll discuss below.

Solution #1 – Buying into an existing dental practice

Camille is now the co-owner of a vibrant dental clinic. Before venturing into entrepreneurship, she was a practicing dentist at this clinic.

She’d consistently proved herself over the years—not only in terms of dentistry skills, but also in terms of longevity and the ability to participate in managerial conversations. When one of the senior partners was set to retire, she jumped at a chance to buy into the clinic.

We were engaged to support Camille in the process of financing the purchase. She didn’t have the capital needed up front, so we helped her understand her needs before recommending applying for a sizable loan from her bank, for which she was approved. We also assisted her in understanding and making the payments.

Properly structuring business buy-sells

While there are many facets to consider in business partnerships, one such facet was to support Camille in extricating the previous partner from the existing buy-sell insurance arrangement.

Why do you need buy-sell insurance? Let’s say that one of the partners passed away. How do the two other partners end up with the clinic without having to deal with the estate of the partner who’s passed on? Or, put differently—how do they retain control of the clinic with living partners, not a partner who can no longer contribute?

In the event of a partner passing away, the ideal scenario would be to receive a lump sum of money from a life insurance policy on that partner. The other two partners would receive this amount and use it to buy out his interest, from his family. This would enable them to easily fulfill the terms included in their buy-sell agreement.

Thus, the clinic’s insurance and agreements needed to be reconfigured since one of the partners was retiring and Camille would be joining the business in his place.

First, we worked with the clinic’s legal team to ensure the structure of the legal agreements was reflected in the buy-sell insurance funding going forward. Then, we helped engineer the changes to the clinic’s insurance and agreements as well as arranging for new insurance, making sure the buy-sell agreement and funding of the life insurance policies were structured exactly as they should be.

For Camille, the benefits of entrepreneurship over employment have been huge. She has a newfound sense of purpose and responsibility in her work, plus she loves contributing to and benefitting from the success of the growing clinic. There’s even talks of expanding to another location in the near future.

Solution #2 – Personal cash flow planning

Camille appreciated our support figuring out how to access large amounts of capital to fund the clinic purchase. More recently, she’s entrusting our team with cash flow planning for her real estate portfolio.

Camille owns five properties. Three of them are owned by herself personally, and two are minority interests in larger real estate partnerships. Over time we have engaged Camille in different conversations about mortgages, interest rates, and how much income she’ll need to pull from her company to support her property expenses.

Interest rates have been up and down over the past few years—mostly up. For many of our clients, this has raised questions about cash flow and how to plan for the extra expense without negatively impacting their overall financial health.

For Camille, we helped restructure her mortgages to bridge her cash flow shortfalls and also strategized with her accountant on how to tax efficiently and provide greater access to her corporate cash flows.

These discussions continue to have a positive impact on Camille’s personal life. She feels better equipped than ever to manage her money, no matter what life throws her way!

Heart and soul advisors

The best financial planning is situational and personalized to your needs—going much deeper than facts and figures, dollars and cents.

At Waypoint Family Office, the softer issues of life continue to inform our approach to managing your finances. Our team is honoured to serve those who are special in our clients’ lives, including generations of children and grandchildren, as well as valued peers and colleagues.

If you’d like to learn more about how our team might help you and your loved ones achieve your goals for generations to come, feel free to get in touch.

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