SCOTT STARRATT, CFP®, CIM®, FEA, Senior Portfolio Manager, Starratt Wealth Management of Canaccord Genuity, Calgary, Alberta
Updated: 12 minutes ago
SCOTT STARRATT
My approach to portfolio management is deliberately unglamorous. The goal is to participate in market growth while helping reduce the volatility clients experience along the way.
My lessons in finance began early in life, says Scott Starratt, Senior Portfolio Manager with Starratt Wealth Management of Canaccord Genuity. “When I was a boy, my dad would come home from his job at the bank and I’d always want to know, ‘Who did you talk to today?’” It was an early lesson on the subject of money: it’s mostly about the people who earn it, save it, and lie awake worrying about it.
Scott set out to study dentistry in the beginning, until a benign tremor made that impractical. Pharmacy was the backup, until he realized the only part that appealed to him was owning the drugstore. “I recall thinking, ‘It’s the financial side that keeps calling me.’”
After working in the banking industry during university, Scott took the RBC Dominion Securities' rookie training program after he graduated and began his career as a Portfolio Advisor. The defining move came in 1994, when his father locked in his own bank pension and the two of them set out to build a practice together in Calgary. It was a unique arrangement. "Traditionally in our business, the parent builds a successful practice and the next generation takes over the book,” Scott says. "In this case, we were building the business together. I was twenty-three and, by luck, already balding, which lent me a credibility my age didn't,” he laughs. His brother joined the team from Scotia Bank in 1998, and for a stretch the three Starratts ran the business as a team, until their father retired in 2002.
“I never wanted to be in a situation where I had to explain to someone why I'm doing something I feel is right for my client,” says Scott. That instinct is what eventually pulled Scott and his brother out of the bank channel—first to the independent GMP in 2006, then through its merger into Richardson GMP, and finally, in February 2020, to Canaccord Genuity. The timing was almost comically bad: the team finished its last transition meeting on March 23, the day the pandemic sent markets into free fall.
Scott says his team’s primary focus is helping families navigate important life transitions. A new child, a marriage, a divorce, retirement, an inheritance or the sale of a business are often the moments when financial decisions become most personal and complex. “The conversation may eventually involve investments,” he says, “but it begins with understanding what is happening in the client’s life.” During these periods, families may be balancing several priorities at once. Scott helps them organize those priorities and understand how one decision may affect another. Investment, tax, estate and retirement considerations often overlap, so his role is to help bring the pieces together and ensure each decision supports the family’s broader plan.
His clients, he is quick to point out, have already created much of their own success. “Our role is to help protect what they have built and, at times, help them avoid emotional decisions that could undermine their plans,” he says.
He knows the psychology of investing is half the battle, and he takes it personally when a client admits to a sleepless night. “Usually what they’re worried about is very small to me, because we’ve seen it all before. But for them, it’s the first time. A reply that lets someone sleep is a win.”
Portfolio management is built on three pillars: yield, market, and defense. Rather than trade securities, he hires and monitors specialist managers, including those who use alternative strategies such as hedge funds, private equity and, interestingly, music royalties, an asset that keeps paying as long as people are listening to music.
On the investment side, the objective is deliberately unglamorous: to participate in market growth while helping reduce volatility and limit the depth of losses where possible. Choosing the right money managers is a large part of Scott’s work. “Strong numbers are the price of admission,” he says, “but what I’m really looking for is character and repeatability.” He has no interest in the relative-performance game much of the industry plays. “Just because the market’s down twenty and you’re down fifteen, we don’t all get to high-five each other,” he says. For Scott, the point is to dig a smaller hole, leaving clients with less ground to recover when markets improve.
The service philosophy that wraps around all of it comes, improbably, from a hotel chain. Years ago, Scott and his brother became students of the Four Seasons model, reading founder Isadore Sharp's memoir, speaking with roughly seventeen of the chain's general managers, and even sending staff to shadow the company's HR and concierge teams. Two ideas stuck. The first is a hiring rule: "You can teach anyone to serve a plate of great food. You can't teach them to care about how they serve it." The second is to do right by each client. “It’s a refusal to judge anyone by appearance,” says Scott. "Some of our best clients," he says, "from a personal standpoint and a money standpoint, aren't driving the Porsches."
It all circles back to that childhood question at the foot of the bed. Now in what he calls his thirty-fourth year in the business, Scott is advising families across multiple generations, parents, children and grandchildren, and enjoying the long view that it gives him in his work.
Scott Starratt
Senior Portfolio Manager
Canaccord Genuity Corp.
520 3rd Avenue SW, Suite 2400
Calgary, AB. T2P 0R3
403 - 508 - 3844
Carmen Morgan is a skilled business writer and storyteller, collaborating with business owners and executives to tell their stories and share perspectives on growth and success, as well as perseverance and adversity. Over two decades she has refined her interview, writing and editing skills to capture the nuggets and captivating details that engage readers and make a story memorable.