Why estate and legacy planning are a vital part of your financial plan

Leanne Kaufman: 

Life unfolds in moments, some are filled with joy, others are marked by challenge, but each shapes the legacy that we leave behind. These moments require more than expertise; they call for understanding, empathy, and clarity. Helping families navigate life’s transitions means bringing a human touch to the technical, preserving what matters most, and leading at all times with care.

Hello, I’m Leanne Kaufman, and welcome to RBC Wealth Management Canada’s Matters Beyond Wealth. If you’ve been following this podcast, thank you for joining us once again. If you’re new, we’re thrilled to have you here. Today, we are changing things up, quite a bit. The usual interviewer, that’s me, is stepping into the role of interviewee. And taking my place as host is, I’m delighted to say, one of Canada’s most sought-after keynote speakers, a marketing expert, the host of Chatter That Matters podcast, and now the founder of a new adventure, Chatter AI, my friend, Tony Chapman. Hi, Tony.

Tony Chapman:

Leanne, it’s such an honour to be with you and to grab the rudder of one of my favourite podcasts, Matters Beyond Wealth.

Leanne Kaufman:

Well, thanks for doing this with us. Well, we’re going to switch things up a little bit today.

Tony Chapman:

Well, I have a question for you that really focuses on the concept of matters, and I want to know why you got into the field of wealth.

Leanne Kaufman:

I actually went into the field of estates, and estate planning, and estate administration, and in the bank environment, the trust company environment, bank-owned trust company, that lands in wealth. And so, it’s been an evolution of my world into wealth that really started as an interest in the legal side of estate planning and estate administration.

Tony Chapman:

What I’ve always loved about you, and you even said it in your opening, talking about matters of the heart and caring, is you don’t see it as independent silos. This is wealth and this is estate planning. What I’ve always been impressed with about you is that you focused on the client and trying to do what’s right for them, help them with their journey through life. And is that hard to do in an organization as large as RBC, where you have so many different areas of the business, or is that something that just, because it comes natural to you, you find a way to make it natural for RBC?

Leanne Kaufman: 

Well, I think RBC as a whole tries to really pride itself on doing that holistically, finding the right services internally and externally for the client, but it is challenging. It’s challenging to try to navigate an organization of this size, as you say, and it’s challenging to navigate all the services and expertise that a particular client does need. Sometimes that means reaching outside, of course, of the organization, and there’s lawyers involved, and accountants involved, and this kind of planning really is holistic. You can’t do any one part of it in a silo.

We use the analogy in the estate administration side of estates being a spider web, and planning being a spider web. And so, there’s all sorts of points around the outside of the web, and if you touch one of them, it has a ripple effect across everything else that you’re doing, and you really can’t do any one of them in isolation. It doesn’t turn out well.

Tony Chapman:

So that leads me to another question, which I was surprised about, that there’s so many Canadians that are walking around this country without a Will.

Is it because of the complexity of this spider web, or is it something that I know it’s important, but it’s not as urgent as all the other things on my desk? Because to me, it’s material in terms of your legacy, it’s material in terms of how your family exists as a culture after you’re gone, is the way that you transfer what you have to them in the most tax efficient and effortless manner. So, I’m curious, what’s the barrier that’s preventing everybody to be pounding down your door saying, “I need to build a spider web”?

Leanne Kaufman:

Yeah, well, a number of factors, probably. People, when they’re younger, think they have tons of time to do it. Nobody wants to assume that they’re going to need to access the services of anything to do with estates when they’re of a certain age or under a certain age, let’s put it. So, I think we see a much higher percentage of Canadians under the age of 35, even 55, who don’t yet have a Will. You think about the common triggers, like people getting married, people having kids. That tends to be when they get serious about, “okay, I think I do need to have a contingency plan in place now.”

You know, with the older Canadians, I think it’s a little bit of denial. You know, there’s—”if I don’t talk about it, maybe it won’t happen.” And then there’s the lack of awareness of the consequences. I think if people better understood the consequences of not having this planning in place and the mess that they’re potentially leaving behind for their loved ones, then maybe it would become a little more urgent for them. But that’s where the education and awareness has to come in.

Tony Chapman:

So we really have to personify it for people to take it personally?

Leanne Kaufman:

Yeah, and often it does start with a story. You know, a horror story often of either something someone’s read or a friend of a friend where something went really sideways. And that can often also be the catalyst or the trigger for someone to actually take some action.

Tony Chapman:

So one of my mantras in life is always being head, heart and hands. It’s how people think, how people feel and how people act. And one of the things that I read about you in an interview you did, is you talked about the heart of what you do, there’s a lot of, it’s not just a technical expertise that weaves this web, it’s having an ability to provide emotional support.

Talk to me a little bit more about that, because that to me suggests you need people on the other side of the table that also value the heart of the matter versus just making sure all the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed.

Leanne Kaufman:

Yeah, you’re not going to have a really robust conversation, really get to the heart of what people are hoping to achieve, what their goals are, what their aspirations are for their legacy, if you can’t connect with them on an emotional level that makes them trust you enough to talk about these things.

You know, there’s two sides of this. There’s the person who’s planning their own legacy, their own estate, their own Will. Those are very emotional conversations because you’re talking about the ‘what happens when.’

Then you’ve got the other side, which my team deals with, the Royal Trust team deals with directly daily, which is settling the estates of clients who have passed. And then in that case, the clients, our new clients become the family and the friends that are left behind. And of course, I mean, that’s extremely sensitive and you’re dealing with people who are at the height of grieving, they’ve experienced tragic loss. And you can’t have those kinds of relationships and conversations without leading with empathy and emotional support. So, our trust officers are certainly strong technicians. I mean, they can’t get their foot in the door if they don’t know how to do their job, but it’s the how you do your job as well that matters every bit as much.

Tony Chapman:

And I want to just shift to my final two questions to you. One was this fountain of health and fountain of wealth. The two things that matter most to people as they age is, “will I have enough money and will I be in good health?” And you’ve found a way to put these two together by forging partnerships with the MIT AgeLab, Cleveland Clinics, National Institute of Ageing, Women’s Brain Health Initiative, and Elder Care. On the surface, I might look, well, I thought you were in the wealth business, not the health business, but you see those two intertwined. How do you make sure your client sees it through the same lens?

Leanne Kaufman:

I do believe they are inexorably linked. And when you start talking to clients about goals, and goals for their financial future and goals for their family, how do you not have conversations about the health that goes along with that and how they’re going to live? And then you start talking about where they’re going to live. Canadians live so much longer now, the last few years of their life are potentially going to look quite a bit different than what their parents or their grandparents did. So the finances tie into that in a very practical way, meaning you’ve got to make sure that you know what your expenses are going to be based on where you want to live. Is that a retirement home? Is that bringing care into the home? We have to financially plan for that these days. We can no longer do just early retirement planning, like how many trips a year am I going to take? Or am I going to buy a condo in the south somewhere?

We have to think forward to the very end of life as well as part of the financial planning. But then, how do you want to live your best life? Well, that involves making sure you’re healthy for as long as possible and active and mobile. So we want to bring that. We talked earlier about everything being holistic; how do you not have conversations about your health at the same time as your wealth in 2025?

Tony Chapman:

I just think it’s fascinating and it’s the client’s appetite to accept both. I think if they do, I think you’re putting them on a better path because those tracks are very connected.

My last question, and a lot of what you talk about is the future and future planning. I’m curious, in 2025, what goals have you set for your organization? And then you personally, what goals have you set for yourself?

Leanne Kaufman:

Well, for the organization, I won’t bore you with the way we run our business, but let me say this, I do believe that there’s an increasing need for services that support people in Canada who are acting as either power of attorney for someone who’s a substitute decision maker for someone else, or they’re acting as executor.

People don’t know what they don’t know. And they find themselves in this role, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes without any—certainly no experience, and maybe without the knowledge that they were going to have to do this.

So, one of the mantras we’ve had for this business is a solution for every estate. Where we really think that every Canadian executor should have some level of support, and we believe RBC can provide that. We’ve got digital tools that we’ve built and we’re enhancing. We’ve got our services that can be provided direct to the client, and there’s something in there for everyone, whether it’s a simple, just an article of education or full service. So, something for every executor to help them on their journey, because this is often something people are only ever going to do once or twice in a lifetime. So, we know that people need assistance.

On the personal side, as much as I just talked about technology and goals, I think, and this is not necessarily so work-related, but I’ve been reading a lot and thinking a lot about disconnecting and trying to spend some personal time not attached to something technological. So, as much as I think technology is going to help in our business goals and we need to use it, and there’s lots of positives that come along with it, I want to go back to reading paper books and I want to find ways to spend time where I’m not obsessively scrolling through something. And so, that’s my 2025. We’ll see. We’re how many days into it now? Not too far in, and it’s still front of mind, so that’s a good thing. At least I’m still thinking about it.

Tony Chapman:

Well, I’m going send you a great book and I’m going insist that you read it. Listen, I really enjoyed sitting in the host chair, and I am such a fan of what you’re doing. I’ve seen you in meetings, you are positivity, you are possibility, you’re everything that I admire in an executive. And most importantly, what came roaring through this podcast, and I know every time you’re in front of an audience, is you deeply care about the client. And I don’t think any client can ask for more than when somebody’s there to help them get to where they need, want, and deserve to go. So, for all of that and more, thank you for letting me be part of Matters Beyond Wealth.

Leanne Kaufman:

Thank you so much, Tony. What a pleasure it was to be in the other chair for today and I look forward to chatting with you again soon.

Tony Chapman:

So, Leanne, now that you’ve put me in the power position as host, I know that you always ask the guest at the end, their one takeaway, but I got to tell you what I’m walking away from this episode. And this image of the spider web, and this idea that our estate, there’s a lot of moving pieces to it. And if you work with the right organization and weave the web properly, even if you have to adjust one thing and it reverberates elsewhere, at least you’re in control. So that’s my takeaway.

For anyone out there that doesn’t have a Will or hasn’t refreshed a Will in quite a long time, it’s time to build that spider web.

Outro speaker:

Whether you are planning for your own estate, the needs of your family or business, or you are an executor for a loved one’s estate, we can help guide you, simplify the complex, and support your life’s vision. Partner with RBC Royal Trust and ensure your legacy will thrive for generations to come. Leave a legacy, not a burden™. Visit rbc.com/royaltrust.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Matters Beyond Wealth. If you would like more information about RBC Royal Trust, please visit our website at rbc.com/royaltrust.