Message from our CEO | PWL is right here with you

During this public health crisis, PWL has put a number of measures in place to ensure the health and safety of you, our clients, our employees and our partners. We are focused on social distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19.  We have implemented a full Work from Home (WFH) environment, while ensuring the continuity of our normal daily business operations and continued service for you. The investments that we have made in our technology infrastructure, as well as the time we dedicated to our Business Continuity Plan (BCP) means that we were ready for this moment. We can continue to conduct our business fully, and continue to serve you, from 65 remote locations. We feel very fortunate for this, as many Canadian companies do not have this ability, and face an uncertain future.

Working from home, here for you

PWL is following the recommendations of public health officials both at the federal and provincial levels and our management committee is meeting twice daily to ensure operations are running smoothly.

Our Business Continuity Plan has been implemented, including the following measures:

• All employees are required to work remotely from home on company provided IT equipment and have secure access to our network though our private VPN. Everyone has been trained on security and confidentiality procedures for working remotely.
• All employees have complete, secure access to all our software and business applications to continue to perform their daily tasks, including the management and monitoring of client portfolios.
• All of our communications infrastructure, videoconferencing, phones, mobile phones, emails, instant messaging have been configured to provide seamless service to our clients, and to maintain heightened connectivity between our employees who are working in their respective homes
• All clients have been advised that all in-person meetings will now occur online, via videoconferencing, or by phone, in accordance with public health officials’ recommendations.
• We have eliminated business travel and postponed client events to ensure the safety of all.
• All partners have been advised of our current work from home procedures.

Managing Your Investments

The current public health crisis has led to heightened market volatility. Combined with additional pressures coming from an oil price war, the capital markets are handling this uncertainty by including new information and future expectations into prices rapidly, as they always have. These days, this amounts to rough seas for every investor, but we are confident that our approach of investing in broadly diversified portfolios and maintaining our exposure to broad asset classes will lead to better outcomes. Remember, your financial plan and portfolio were designed and tested against corrections like this one.

Throughout this situation we have taken specific actions to manage your investments:

• We maintain your target asset allocation, rebalancing as necessary. Remember, as stock prices go down, expected returns go up.
• For taxable accounts, we look for opportunities to defer taxes through tax loss selling.
• We check if withdrawals from the portfolio have to be adjusted to be sustainable.
• Your financial plans take into account that bad times will occur. We regularly check that your long- term goals are not at risk from short-term bad times.

Throughout our 24 years since our founding in 1996, we have been through many market downturns.

We have always been there for you and this time is no different.

We are monitoring the situation as it evolves and we are keeping our Advisor Teams informed.

Thank you for your ongoing trust and loyalty in PWL.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact your Advisor and service teams.

Brenda Bartlett

President and CEO, CCO