BULLWEALTH’s Randy Gunn: ‘If you do it right, you become an extension of your client’s family’

Working in wealth management “can make a difference in people’s lives.” It’s a message industry veteran Randy Gunn wants to amplify. 

The CFA charterholder and longstanding member of the CFA Society Toronto has done exactly that throughout a career working with Canada’s ultra-high-net-worth families. “Our industry is very opaque. Most people don’t understand their investments,” says Gunn, vice-president and portfolio manager at BULLWEALTH, an integrated wealth advisory and consulting firm. “We try to bring transparency to it. Part of that is understanding performance, but it’s also about understanding risk-return metrics.”

Making investing make sense  

Gunn has been focused on helping people understand investing since he was a kid. The oldest of three boys, he grew up in Nobleton, Ontario, a town he describes as “50 per cent farmers and 50 per cent executives.” It’s also a place he credits with keeping him grounded in what matters. His parents stressed the importance of higher education–an opportunity they never had. His late father, a truck driver, left school and started working after completing Grade 8. His mother went to work as a real estate agent when Gunn was 13  to be able to support her children’s further education. 

By that time, Gunn had already read The Wealthy Barber and had a seat at the table at his parents’ first meeting with an investment advisor. “I challenged a lot of what he was saying,” Gunn recalls.  

His parents took their son’s advice and moved on. By the time he was 15, Gunn was helping his parents with their investments and started investing the money he was earning from his part-time job. 

He went on to earn an undergraduate degree in international business and an MBA in finance, both of which provided him with a solid foundation in understanding how business works and an in-depth knowledge on how to read financial statements. “I saw my parents struggle with investing, and I thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to have that training.’”  

He shaped his career guided by a key belief, one he came to as a teenager while working with his mother, who built her real-estate business helping first-time home buyers: “If you genuinely help people, everything else looks after itself.”  

Pivotal career moments 

Gunn credits three key work experiences for setting the course of his career:  

Trial by fire 

In 2004, after he’d already been working at Canada Life for about five years, Gunn left Toronto for London, England. He landed a data entry job at CitiGroup Private Bank, and within three months was tasked with supporting the roll-out of its Law Firm Group. “It was the first time I had any concern that I may not be able to do this. It was also my first real get-out-and-pound-the-pavement sales job,” he recalls. 

In addition to testing his resilience, the job got him thinking about the power of having a global footprint in your career–one of the key reasons he went on to achieve the CFA designation in 2007 at the age of 33.  

“It is a truly global designation. I can land in Singapore, India, the U.S., and the standard is the same. It proves you understand the body of knowledge required to do the job, and that you will do the work to stay current. No other professional designation in the world of finance is remotely close to it.” 

Lessons in leadership 

Gunn learned the ins and outs of investments and portfolio construction during a stint leading Scotiabank’s product specialist team before being tapped to manage a branch. “I learned how much I liked helping people, not only clients but also staff, and that I was good at painting a vision and helping people obtain that vision.”  

The importance of being yourself 

As a client strategist at BNY Mellon Wealth Management, Gunn refined his business development skills under the stewardship of then-president Marg Franklin, who would go on to serve as president and CEO of the CFA Institute.  

“I spent the first six months trying to mimic her because she was so good at sales and managing people. That’s when I came to understand that sales is not about trying to find new clients. It’s about trying to find people you can help,” says Gunn. Another key lesson: “You really need to be yourself. Too many people spend a lot of time trying to be someone they’re not. It usually doesn’t work.” 

Today, Gunn brings all of these lessons to BULLWEALTH. “As a consulting firm, our independence gives us the ability to have an open architecture and to use the most appropriate resources to plan and build portfolios that are in the best interest of clients. I think it’s the best model to serve our clients. And I want to do what’s best for them.”  

Doing what’s best for clients is the driver to expand BULLWEALTH nationally. “For me, building the business is also a way of helping make the industry more transparent.”  

Gunn is also working to make the profession better through his longstanding commitment as a CFA Society Toronto volunteer, which he says helps him “stay sharp, understand what the competition is doing, and build and maintain his network.” 

As a member of the Private Wealth committee, he helps organize the Society’s annual wealth conference. “We ask the heads of banks, independent investment managers and consulting firms, ‘What’s keeping your clients and employees up at night?’ We then distill that to five topics and find high-quality speakers to address them.”  

Nearly 30 years in, Gunn remains just as passionate about helping people as when he started. “If you do it right, you become an extension of your client’s family.” 

This story was created by Canadian Family Offices’ commercial content division on behalf of CFA Toronto, which is a partner and content provider of this publication. 

Mary Teresa Bitti is an award-winning journalist, content creator and entrepreneur who works with media, corporate and not-for-profit organizations to tell their stories.

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