Dave Wiitala
EverNorth Wealth Advisory
Dave entered financial services in 1993, and has spent the three decades since on both sides of it.
He began in retail advice — mutual funds, insurance, retirement planning, no particular specialty. He then spent a substantial part of his career inside the institutions that build and distribute financial products: Regional Sales Director at CIBC Renaissance Investments, roles at RBC Dominion Securities, and Vice President of Western Canada business development at Manulife Securities. Later came private wealth advisory at Raintree Financial Solutions, and founding Investing Beyond, an investor education company.
That middle stretch matters more than it looks. Knowing how a financial product is designed, priced and distributed — and what the people selling it are actually compensated to do — is close to impossible to learn from the client’s side of the desk. It is the reason EverNorth is built the way it is: planning engaged in writing and paid for on its own terms, with implementation kept separate and secondary.
EverNorth is the practice that came out of that. It works with incorporated professionals and business owners, almost entirely by referral.
- In financial services since 1993
- Practising across Canada
- CANi Financial Planning Syndicate
“Some of these clients I have known for the better part of a decade. I know their families. I have watched their practices grow and their children get older. That changes what is possible in a planning conversation, because we are never starting from scratch.”
The method does not change with the situation.
The distinguishing habit is preparation. Every meeting is built specifically for the client it belongs to — their file reviewed, the right questions identified, the issues worth raising at that particular moment surfaced in advance. Clients tend to describe the result the same way: they feel understood before they have finished explaining.
The situations range from the expected — a physician structuring retirement out of a professional corporation, an owner preparing a business for sale — to the specific and difficult: a career ending unexpectedly, a marriage ending, a sudden liquidity event nobody had planned for.
Understand it completely, build around it, and stay with it.