Victoria Company Offers Financial Planning & Employee Benefits For Clients
From left: Deneen Cunningham and Nicole Ardiel
VICTORIA – Planning is at the forefront of the services the McVagh Cunningham Group offers their clients.
With Deneen Cunningham focusing on financial planning and Nicole Ardiel handling employee benefits, the principals of the Victoria-based firm carefully charted this course when they created their partnership in 2005.
“Nicole and I are very planning oriented,” says Deneen. “With financial planning, it’s important for me to understand our clients’ wants and their relationships with money. Our process is all about getting to know them in order to put together a tax efficient income flow in retirement. I build their financial plan, and our portfolio managers manage their money.”
Nicole’s expertise is in creating employee benefit programs, liaising with numerous insurance providers—including the Chambers of Commerce Group Insurance Plan—in her role as a fully independent insurance broker. Nicole’s goal is to support meaningful and sustainable plans for small business owners and their employees.
Deneen and Nicole had plenty of experience in their areas of expertise prior to becoming owners, and both have acquired existing books of business from other advisors over the years. The company has grown steadily under their leadership.
“We are both very relationship-based, which gives us the juice to make the right cocktail for our clients,” notes Deneen. “We also have solid technical proficiency, and we’re able to explain complicated financial issues in terminology that everybody can understand. We give them the information so they can make the best decisions for their situation today.”
Nicole points out that the needs of every business owner are different.
“We choose the right plan for each setting,” she says, adding they offer plans for extended healthcare, dental care, income replacement and critical illness insurance, employee and family assistance programs, life insurance and group RRSPs.
“We offer employee meetings to our clients, to explain the plans and how they work, which makes handling the plan easier for the plan administrator. Whether we are able to conduct a meeting or not, we also send detailed and customized communication to explain everything included on the plan.”
Referring to both financial planning and employee benefit programs, Deneen says, “Everyone wants to know what time it is, and some want to know how the clock actually works.”
Deneen and Nicole believe the combination of their personalities, business experience and their specialized support staff is the key to the thriving relationships they have with their clients.
“Because we’ve been in business so long and we’re proficient in what we do, we have the ability to translate any information clearly to our clients,” Deneen adds.
