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CHASING THE DREAM OF INDEPENDENCE Over a multi-decade career, Charlie Spiring has worked tirelessly to promote innovative, client-first thinking in Canada’s wealth management industry – and he’s not done yet
CHARLIE SPIRING took an interest in finance at a young age. As a kid growing up “on the wrong side of the tracks,” he says he always thought the door into the financial industry only opened for people from silverspoon families. But shortly after earning a commerce degree from the University of Manitoba in 1979, Spiring got his start as a rookie broker. He describes the financial industry back then as a “run-and-gun business”: A research report would come down from the head office, and brokers would trade like mad as they pushed investment ideas hard on prospects and clients. Things have changed since then, which Spiring attributes to banks’ actions to raise the bar on professionalism. But even at the time, he felt let down. “I was expecting the research analysts and the people on the inside to be much more in the know,” he says. “But when you pulled the curtain back, there was clearly a lot of room for improvement. And I thought if someone ever focused on that, we could do a lot of good for the industry.”
Dreaming in Technicolour Spiring harboured those feelings for the better part of 10 years, all the while establishing himself as an upstanding investment
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advisor. Then, in 1993, he joined forces with a handful of other like-minded individuals and founded Wellington West, which would eventually turn out to be an industry-shaping firm – though he had no idea at the time. “Admittedly, I didn’t know what I didn’t know,” he says. “But I always dreamed in Technicolour, and I really believed that we could have something much better by taking away the bureaucracy and hot air that large
people the freedom to take chances and make the occasional mistake; anyone could sit at the table as long as they had good ideas. Through these and other practices, the organization managed to foster an innovative, client-first culture. Spiring says the original plan was to create a “Prairie powerhouse” firm in Western Canada. But the business took on a life of its own and expanded its footprint well into the
“If we didn’t treat each person like a number, and we let them be creative and add value and be client-focused, I thought it could be a home run. And it turned out I was right” firms were spewing at the time. And I knew a lot of leaders in the financial industry came from Winnipeg, so I thought, ‘Well, why couldn’t that be me?’” It wasn’t long before other advisors joined the Wellington West movement. Calling on his common sense and a work ethic that he credits to his parents, Spiring was able to attract people and help them raise their upper barriers. Wellington West gave
east. As the outsourcing model became more available and it became easier to reliably hand off back-office work, Wellington West was able to achieve a scalable model that let advisors run practices that were more focused on planning and client service. “If we didn’t treat each person like a number, and we let them be creative and add value and be client-focused, I thought it could be a home run,” Spiring says. “And it
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