Two leaders now split every decision at a firm managing more than $8 billion for Canadian households
Benjamin Felix added the title of president at PWL Capital giving the chief investment officer joint charge of an independent firm managing more than $8bn for Canadian households.
The president role is newly created, PWL Capital said, and Felix keeps the chief investment officer post while taking on strategic growth, client experience, and service expansion.
Felix, who is based in Ottawa, Ontario, joined the firm in 2013 and has held nearly every role on its investment side, from investment advisor to associate portfolio manager, portfolio manager, head of research, and chief investment officer.
Felix said the evidence on how to invest well “has been clear for a long time.”
The harder part, he said, is “everything around it,” naming retirement planning, taxes, spending, and sticking with a plan when markets get uncomfortable.
Cameron Passmore continues as chief executive officer, and the two will take decisions jointly rather than splitting responsibilities, Felix told Advisor.ca.
“We’re going to work very closely together in terms of leadership and decision making and reporting. That’s kind of the idea for now,” he said.
Passmore, who turned 60 this year, told the publication he has no imminent plans to leave but treats succession as a standing priority.
Atlanta-based OneDigital bought PWL Capital in early 2025 and runs it as an independent subsidiary, which reported the firm held $5.5bn in assets under management at the time.
It has since grown to about 154 people and more than $8bn, helped by its purchases of TCM Financial Studio in Regina and EB Wealth in Halifax.
Asked whether he would pull back on podcast and YouTube work, Felix said, “The answer is emphatically no.” He has hired a writer and now hands the main topic of some Rational Reminder episodes to PWL advisors who have done the underlying research.
A large share of internal work has gone into enabling advisors with better technology tools, many of which PWL builds itself, Felix told Advisor.ca.
The firm named Braden Warwick its first chief product officer in September.
One client experience tool, released internally the week before that interview, pulls from a data lake of financial planning, investment management, and trading records and, in Felix’s words, “aggregates all of the pieces of information that are relevant for an advisor to have about a client in one place.”
“Where it gets really interesting is the way that we’re using AI tools to scrape through past meeting notes and current meeting transcripts to create insights and financial planning deliverables for clients,” Felix said.
He attributed the approach to PWL having “one team with one philosophy [and] one set of clients,” unlike dealers where advisors run individual businesses.
Felix won the IFSE Institute Award for Financial Literacy Champion at the 2024 Wealth Professional Awards.
