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Account Administration by MRS Inc.
Frequently Asked Questions
Preamble
As Financial Planners, our primary function is to
provide our clients with advice in the areas of
financial planning, investment and risk management.
For years we have also been performing all the
back-office duties of a mutual fund dealer,
including processing trades, tracking accounts and
printing and sending out quarterly client
statements. These back-office administrative
functions are not our core business, nor our core
competency.
We have decided to out-source these particular
administrative duties to MRS Inc. - a company that
focuses on back-office administration for
independent mutual fund dealers. This will likely
raise some questions from our clients. We have
attempted to anticipate and address some of those
questions in the section below. If there are any
questions we have not adequately answered here,
please contact our office either by phone or email
and we’ll be happy to answer them.
Why are you
making this change?
We decided
to make this change primarily because we recognize
that our greatest value to our clients is to provide
financial planning and advice rather than account
administration. By out-sourcing the detailed
back office administration to MRS we're better
positioned to do what we do best - helping our
clients plan for and achieve their financial goals.
We want to have the very best reporting for our
clients. For several years now we have wanted
to provide our clients with online access to their
accounts and statements. MRS has a good,
user-friendly, very secure website where you can
view your account details when you want to.
With more and more regulation and more strict reporting
requirements, it has made it difficult for smaller
mutual fund dealers to comply while providing
clients with relevant and easy to understand account
statements. MRS helps us to do that efficiently
and effectively.
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MRS is a "carrying dealer". What does that
mean and what are the carrying
dealer’s responsibilities?
A carrying dealer does not provide investment advice
but assists your advisor and your introducing dealer
(MacIntosh Financial Group) by executing the trades
that you and your advisor decide upon, by clearing
and settling the trades, by providing custody
services over the assets in your account and by
sending various communications to you including
confirmations, statements, and tax slips for your
returns when applicable. These services are
referred to as “carrying dealer” services
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Who is MRS?
MRS has been providing carrying dealer services to
independent mutual fund dealers since 1981. It was
a pioneer serving the needs of dealers, advisors and
investors in Canada and is the largest organization
of its kind.
MRS Inc. is owned by Mackenzie Financial
Corporation, which is a subsidiary of IGM Financial
Inc., a Canadian publicly-listed company with an
enviable history in financial service provision. IGM’s
major shareholder is Power Financial Corporation,
another Canadian publicly-listed company.
In addition, MRS Inc. is affiliated with a federally
regulated trust company, MRS Trust Company. MRS
Trust is a deposit taking institution and is a
member institution of the Canada Deposit Insurance
Corporation (CDIC). MRS Trust provides trustee
services for all MRS Inc. accounts as well as offers
RRSP and investment loans, mortgages, GICs, the MRS
High Yield Plus Account and the MRS Money Maximizer.
MRS
Trust Company administers over one billion dollars
in mortgage and consumer loans.
Each of the MRS companies is highly regulated to
help protect you and your interests and MRS prides
itself on the high compliance standards it meets.
Each MRS company has considerable capital
resources, state of the art systems, capable and
experienced staff and strong checks and balances to
ensure that your hard earned assets are safe and
secure.
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What benefits are there to me?
Online access to all your accounts. You have
the opportunity with MRS, to sign up for Investor
Access. You can view your account online when
you want to.
One quarterly or monthly portfolio statement rather
than multiple statements from MacIntosh Financial
Group and each individual fund company.
A common complaint is the massive amount of paper
that comes in the mail from financial companies.
Up till now, we have been providing quarterly
statements with the same information as you get on
your MRS statement and on your semi-annual fund
company statements.
You will
now just receive one statement from MRS.
A simplified process of making changes to your
portfolio when necessary. An investment with one
financial institution can be sold one day and a new
product with another company can be purchased the
very next day without the money ever needing to go
into your bank account.
Simple ‘one-cheque’ process to make new investments
with several different investment companies. Rather
than needing to write several cheques to various
companies, you are able to write one cheque to MRS.
The ability to contribute to your RRSP or
non-registered accounts directly through your online
banking account.
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How do I make a contribution through my online
banking?
Simply go to your online banking account and make a
bill payment to M.R.S. Inc.. Specify the account
number of your MRS account to which you are
contributing and the money will be transferred
electronically.
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Are there additional costs involved?
If you currently only have MRS accounts with us,
there will be no change in costs.
If your accounts elsewhere are being transferred to
MRS and the relinquishing company charges a transfer out
fee, that fee will be reimbursed into your account
up to $150 + GST so there should be no cost to you for the
transfer itself.
All of your investments of similar account
type (RRSP, spousal RRSP, RRIF, OPEN, etc.), will be
held together in one account. For instance, if
you currently have RRSP accounts at three different
mutual fund companies, those investments would be
all transferred into one MRS RRSP account.
Each MRS account has an annual fee of $135 + GST.
Normally the fee is
taken from your registered account first which means
the fee is being paid with pre-tax dollars. There
are discounts for additional accounts as well as for
opting to receive your statements electronically
rather than by mail. For details, please click
here.
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If I have a problem or question, who do I contact?
As always, if you have any problem or question to do
with your financial plan or products - or your
account statement, please contact
our office at 604-737-8886.
We are your contact.
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Is MacIntosh Financial Group becoming part of MRS
Trust?
No, we are a completely independent mutual fund
dealer and financial planning firm. We are
regulated by the Mutual Fund Dealers Association,
the Financial Planners Standards Council and the
Insurance Council of BC. We are simply hiring MRS
to perform some of the administrative services to do
with our clients’ accounts.
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Will all my accounts now be held with MRS?
All mutual funds and most GICs whether RRSP, RRIF or
OPEN investments will now be held within MRS
accounts. The exceptions will be Registered
Education Savings Plans (RESPs) and some GIC-only
Registered Retirement Income Funds.
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How will my RESP accounts be handled?
Because MRS is not able at this time to administer
Registered Education Savings Plans, your
RESP
account will be reported by the mutual fund
companies directly. In the future, MRS may offer
RESP accounts and if so, we will notify you and
initiate the transfer to MRS.
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My account is relatively small. What are my options
if I don’t wish to open an MRS account and pay the
fees?
In order to hold a mutual fund account with
MacIntosh Financial Group, you will need to open an
MRS Account. We recognize though, that for
a small number of our clients who currently have
smaller account sizes, the fees payable would represent
an unreasonably large percentage of the overall
account value. In these cases the options are
somewhat limited.
If you have money invested elsewhere, this may be an
opportune time to consider consolidating your
accounts and moving that money over to MacIntosh
Financial Group. In that way, the larger
account and the advantages of the
MRS account may justify paying the fees and make
them less of an issue.
You may decide to aggressively build your account to
the point where the fees would be nominal in
relation to your account size.
If you don’t have other accounts which you would
like to consolidate with us, your mutual funds could
be sold and the proceeds could be used to purchase
GICs. Depending on how long you have owned your
mutual funds, there may be early redemption
charges. More importantly, the GICs may not be the most appropriate
investment for you to achieve your financial goals.
If none of these options seem to work for you,
please call us to discuss this further. We realize
that with a smaller account, the costs may be
prohibitive but we believe that
the benefits will far outweigh the costs and that
over the long term, this will be the best thing for the majority of our
clients.
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Where can I find out more about MRS and its products
and services?
For more information about MRS, please visit their
website at
www.mrs.com
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