Vincent Woo

Senior Vice President - Branch Director, Private Client Group

(310) 785-4516

vincent.woo@rbc.com

Vincent Woo currently serves as Senior Vice President of the Woo Group at RBC, as well as Branch Director – Private Client Group of RBC Wealth Management’s Century City office.  Additionally he serves as Relationship Manager of the RBC Wealth Management Institutional Middle Market Group.  Mr. Woo has over 30 years of experience working with high net worth individuals, foundations and businesses with asset management, structuring policies, and developing macro portfolio strategies.  Prior to joining RBC Wealth Management in 2011, he served as Managing Director of Corporate Cash Management at Oppenheimer & Co. for seven years, Director of the Corporate Client Group at Citigroup/Salomon Smith Barney for ten years and as Sr. Vice President at Kidder Peabody & Co. for thirteen years.  His tenure in the financial industry has given him the background and instinct required to help clients navigate through virtually every market environment.  Together with his team and home office specialists in different areas, Mr. Woo offers clients services such as portfolio development, retirement planning, education planning, estate planning services, tax minimization, debt restructuring, corporate cash management, banking, credit, insurance and long-term care needs.  Mr. Woo earned a Masters in Business Administration in finance from the University of Southern California, graduating in the top 5% of his class.  He received his bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University, graduating Cum Laude in 1979.  Raised in Boston, Massachusetts, Vinny currently lives in Palos Verdes Estates.  He enjoys golf, traveling and spending time with his wife Karen and their two sons.

Dana L. McDonald

Registered Client Associate

949-720-8908dana.mcdonald@rbc.com

Dana McDonald has served as a Registered Client Associate for the Woo Group since 1998.  Prior to that she served as a Sales Associate at UBS for two years, handling the research and trading of fixed income investments.  Dana’s role within the Woo Group is to provide clients with service solutions and strategies needed to help them create, preserve and transfer their wealth.  Dana believes in a disciplined approach to investing that is founded on the time-tested guidance of a solid wealth management plan, diversification and a long term strategy.  Dana received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, San Diego.  She currently lives in Orange County, California with her husband and their three daughters.  Her interests outside working and raising a family include running, cooking and yoga.

Roobina Yahya

Senior Registered Client Associate

(310) 785-4528

roobina.yahya@rbc.com

Roobina Yahya brings over thirteen years of financial services experience to the Woo Group. She began her career in 1999 at Morgan Stanley, where she served as an Associate Financial Advisor for five years, servicing accounts in the Wealth Advisory Group and handling compliance.  Roobina joined the Woo group in 2004 as a Senior Registered Client Associate, where she is responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of client accounts.  Roobina received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Darmstadt University in Darmstadt, Germany and immigrated to the United States in 1989 with her family.  She holds her Series 7 and 63 securities registrations.

·  Understanding Your Financial Objectives — We begin by asking questions to understand you and your financial objectives.

·  Determining Smart, Time-Tested Strategies — Next, we qualify and quantify your financial and personal information to match your objectives with sound strategies.

·  Implementing Thoughtful, Creative Solutions — Using these strategies, we develop customized solutions tailored to your objectives, drawing from a wide selection of world-class products and services.

·  Providing Timely, Ongoing Service — We periodically review your situation to help ensure your financial objectives are being met.

Wealth Management Professionals

The Wealth Management Professionals serve as a resource to RBC Wealth Management® financial advisors. They develop a stronger understanding of your personal financial objectives, gather valuable information and support complex financial and wealth strategies issues for the clients of RBC Wealth Management.

Christine Gehring, CIMA, CFP®

Vice President – Wealth Management Consultant

Before joining RBC Wealth Management in 2003, Christine spent 12 years in the financial services industry. She received her B.A. from the University of Southern California and holds the Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA) designation. As part of her responsibilities, Christine helps RBC Wealth Management Financial Advisors address the wealth management needs of individual clients. She provides her expertise to Financial Advisors who work with endowments, non-profits and foundations. Christine also assists Financial Advisors with the use of wealth management tools, including sophisticated software programs that help provide appropriate solutions for their clients’ needs.

Janelle Nelson

Vice President, Portfolio Analyst

Janelle Nelson has been a Portfolio Analyst with RBC Wealth Management’s Portfolio Advisory Group since 1993. An industry professional since 1984, she has been with the firm since 1991, and was previously affiliated with several Wall Street firms, including Citigroup (Smith Barney) and Morgan Stanley. She has been broadly quoted on the markets in local and national media, and is a popular speaker for individual investor events. Janelle is part of a team that actively manages two equity income strategies for the firm, the Guided Portfolio: Prime Income and Guided Portfolio: Dividend Growth. Within the team, she takes a strategic focus on non-traditional cash-flow securities and energy-related companies. Janelle holds a B.A. from the University of Minnesota in political science and economics.

Liz Jacovino, CFP®, CTFA

Vice President – Wealth Strategies Consultant/Estate and High Net Worth

Liz has spent the past decade working with advisors and clients, showing them how to preserve wealth and value in their estates for future generations. Liz is a graduate of Johnson and Wales College. She holds the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ certification and the Certified Trust Financial Advisor (CTFA) designation. Liz is also Adjunct Professor at Pace University’s College for Professional Education, where she teaches estate planning. As part of her responsibilities, Liz works with RBC Wealth Management Financial Advisors to develop appropriate wealth management solutions for clients in the areas of estate and business succession planning. Liz places special emphasis on helping clients control estate and gift taxes. She specializes in reviewing clients’ existing estate and business succession plans, and making recommendations for changes, when appropriate.

Brian Cap

Senior Corporate Credit Strategist, PAG – Fixed Income Strategies Group, RBC Wealth Management

Brian joined the Fixed Income Strategies Group as a Senior Credit Strategist in September 2008. As a corporate strategist, he focuses on various domestic and foreign investment grade and high yield bonds and preferred stocks. Individual credits covered include a variety of industries such as the financials, metals, cable/media, telecommunications, energy and homebuilders. His career in the financial services industry spans over 28 years. Brian uses his knowledge and expertise to provide timely analysis, information, and recommendations on the many issues in these sectors for Financial Advisors and trading.

That’s the question I often ask people when they want my opinion about some financial advice they’ve heard. Here are some of the things “they” say:

● Getting student loans is a good thing because it’s an investment in your future.

● Now’s the time to get a home because interest rates are low.

● Never pay off your mortgage, or you should keep a mortgage for the tax break.

● It’s better to pay off the debt by borrowing from your 401(k) retirement savings account because you will be paying yourself back.

My question about who “they” are often solicits chuckles because people realize that in their effort to help themselves, they’ve picked up pieces of advice from biased individuals or without doing the work to figure out if it’s prudent.

Millions of consumers have been duped by people — many once touted as icons — who turn out to be charlatans or who gave advice that they themselves didn’t follow, says Zac Bissonnette, a personal finance writer.

Time and again, we learn that self-help authors have become wealthy not by following their own advice but by selling the concept of a certain life or financial enriching strategy. We’re reminded that politicians, corporate and religious leaders, entrepreneurs, sports figures and relationship experts are not practicing what they preach.

It’s these folks that Bissonnette criticizes in “Good Advice From Bad People: Selected Wisdom from Murderers, Stock Swindlers, and Lance Armstrong” (Portfolio/Penguin, $15). It’s my pick for this month’s Color of Money Book Club. The murderers include cult leader Jim Jones and Gary Shawkey, who was given a life sentence for killing a 71-year-old investor he bilked out of $1.2 million. Shawkey’s self-published book was titled “If I Can . . . Anybody Can . . . ”

I couldn’t stop shaking my head as Bissonnette took me down memory lane, starting with the financial arena.

Remember the Beardstown Ladies?

They were part of an investment group from Beardstown, Ill., who wrote the bestselling “The Beardstown Ladies’ Common-Sense Investment Guide: How We Beat the Stock Market and How You Can Too.”

Along with some recipes for stew and chicken, we were told that from 1984 to 1993, the ladies had an average annual investment return of 23.4 percent. Their book sold almost 800,000 copies.

But some number-crunching from journalists and an eventual audit found the ladies hadn’t beaten the market or most money professionals. Their actual return during the time period had been 9.1 percent, compared with the 15.7 percent average annual return on the Dow Jones industrial average.

The women said it was a miscalculation. Their publishing company was sued. There was a settlement and now we have a good lesson about the importance of vetting people’s investment claims. While you can learn a lot in an investment club, “the ladies would probably be better off if they’d just put their money in time-proven mutual funds,” Bissonnette writes.

In the not-so-distant past, we had the falling of another “they” in Bernie Madoff. The once-prominent member of the securities industry and former chairman of Nasdaq is serving a 150-year prison term for bilking investors out of billions.

“And yet, when he actually took a moment to give personal finance advice after his fall from grace, he provided wisdom that everyone should follow: low-cost index mutual funds are the best option for most investors,” Bissonnette writes.

Bissonnette also introduces Angelo Mozilo, the former chief executive of Countrywide Financial. Although the company was approving risky home mortgages, in an e-mail that Bissonnette points out, Mozilo wrote that the no-money-down subprime loan is “the most dangerous product in existence and there can be nothing more toxic.”

But many borrowers listened to the “they” who said homes would increase in value exponentially so that they could refinance out of the risky loans Mozilo and others were peddling.

Then there is the story of Jesse L. Jackson Jr., the former Democratic congressman from Illinois who is serving prison time for using $750,000 in campaign funds for personal use, including buying Michael Jackson memorabilia.

Bissonnette pulls out this quote from a book Jackson wrote with his father, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson: “Living above your means is financial sin.” Their book was titled “It’s About the Money! How You Can Get Out of Debt, Build Wealth, and Achieve Your Financial Dreams.”

Says Bissonnette, “All too often, America’s smiling, inspirational prophets turn out to be comically — and sometimes darkly — horrible at following their own leads.”

I’m sure plenty of people might take issue with some of Bissonnette’s selections of “bad people.” But his book will at least make you pause before you start a sentence with, “They say.”

I’ll be hosting a live online discussion about “Good Advice From Bad People” at noon Eastern on May 29 at washingtonpost.com/discussions. Bissonnette will join me. Let’s talk about the advice you took that turned out to be bad.

HOME insurance prices can vary widely depending where and even when you buy it, so it makes sense to take the time to shop around to ensure you get the best deal and the right cover.

Comparison sites are a great place to start, but the cheapest deal might not give you the right cover and leave you high and dry when it comes to making a claim.

My insurance survival guide should give you some great tips and tricks which you should always consider when buying your insurance cover. 

1. Don’t make assumptions. You might think some features of home insurance are standard but you should always ask the right questions and even read the small print, for example:

•  accidental damage – fewer than one in five home insurance policies automatically cover you for damage you cause yourself, by accident

•  home emergency cover – fewer than one in five home insurance policies automatically provide help for home emergencies, and more than half don’t offer this as an option at all

•  Items over £1500 aren't always covered automatically, anything costing over this amount is usually classed as a valuable item and needs to be listed separately, so not just jewellery,  you will need to list that expensive new TV and possibly that designer handbag too.

2. Comparison sites. Around eight out of ten people use these to search the market for the cheapest home insurance quote. If you use at least two sites you’ll see many of the best options, but each site has pros and cons so make sure that you look at the details, don’t buy insurance just because a Meer Cat in a smoking jacket told you it was a good deal.

3. Increase Home security. You might get a reduction for joining your local Neighbourhood Watch scheme with some providers. Some insurers will only insure you if you have BSI approved locks on all outside doors and windows, and a good quality alarm system always makes good sense.

4. Build your no-claims discount. If you don’t claim for a few years you might get a discount, It’s not just car insurance that offers this so it’s always looking to see where you can do this, not everywhere does so check before you buy.

5. Do you have kids at university? If you do its worth checking to see if they are covered too in their accommodation, if they are this can work out much cheaper than buying a separate policy, but watch that no claims bonus if you have a clumsy teenager.

6. You can cancel your home insurance any time within the first 14 days, this is the cooling off period that all insurance companies must give, according to the rules of the Financial Conduct Authority. But there might be a penalty. A lot of people don’t realise this when they buy, but many insurers charge a fee for cancelling within the 14 days. However, this fee should only reflect the cost of the service that you've received. They also deduct the days of cover you’ve already had before giving you a refund.

If you cancel after the 14-day cooling off period you may not get the full amount of money back for the days of cover you haven’t used yet.

Cancellation terms and conditions vary by policy – always read the terms before you buy.

By: Richard Fenton, The Debt Buster

ARTICLE SOURCE

Key Facts

§Chartered in 1869

§Approximately 80,000 employees speaking over 100 languages serve more than 15 million clients worldwide

§Stock trades as RY on New York (NYSE) and Toronto (TSX) exchanges

Among the World’s Best

§Top 5 of largest banks in North America1 and Top 15 of largest banks globally1

§Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands (BrandZTM 8th annual global brands ranking)

§Global strength in wealth management and capital markets

Canada’s Leading Financial Institution

§Largest bank in Canada, with over US$826 billion2 in total assets and a Common Equity Tier 1 capital ratio of 9.2% (Basel III)2

§#1 or #2 market share across all major financial products and services in Canada

§Ranked fourth strongest bank in the world by Bloomberg Markets (June 2013 World’s Strongest Banks report)

Stable…Safe…Sustainable

§Consistently high credit ratings — Moody’s Aa3, Standard & Poor’s AA- and Fitch Ratings AA

§Consistently strong and stable with a high-quality balance sheet, proactive risk management and a strong liquidity position

§Named to the Global 100: Most Sustainable Corporations in the World in 2013 for the ninth consecutive year (Corporate Knights, World Economic Forum)

§Recognized among the world’s financial, social and environmental corporate leaders for the 13th consecutive year on the 2013 Dow Jones Sustainability World Index

§Committed to environmental and watershed protection in communities worldwide through the 10-year, C$50 million RBC Blue Water Project

About RBC Wealth Management

Who We Are

RBC Wealth Management is a premier provider of global financial solutions serving high net worth clients in select markets around the world.

What We Do

At RBC Wealth Management, we’ll help you unlock the full potential of your wealth. Through our local knowledge and global expertise, we provide customized solutions that integrate every aspect of your financial life.

What You Can Expect

You will enjoy a remarkably different client experience. Add to that the assurance that comes from having a secure, stable and reputable organization with global resources on your side.

Key Facts

§Recognized as one of the world’s Top 10 largest wealth managers

§Ranked Best Private Banking Services Overall for Canada and the Caribbean (2013 Euromoney Private

§Banking and Wealth Management Survey)

§In the U.S., earned 100% rating on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index (2013)

§More than US$598 billion in assets under administration and more than US$362 billion in assets under management worldwide

§Approximately 4,300 financial advisors, private bankers and trust officers worldwide, with approximately 2,000 financial advisors in the U.S.

§Offers some of the very best of thousands of investment products, including many local, regional and international investment opportunities that may not be available from other firms

RBC’s commitment to water conservation on display as it marks five year anniversary at prestigious flower show

Garden designer Matthew Wilson grew up with a love for the countryside, wildlife and the outdoors and realized at an early age the importance that fresh water had in preserving the natural world. Now, as Managing Director and principal designer at Clifton Nurseries in London, he combines these early interests when creating urban gardens underpinned by a commitment to conserving water. Using his breadth of experience in sustainable garden design, Mr. Wilson is partnering with Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), to design the “Royal Bank of Canada Garden” at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show next year (19 – 23 May 2015), the fifth year in a row RBC has presented a garden at this, the most prestigious event in the horticultural calendar.

“I want the garden’s visitors to explore a simple truism, that water equals life, in a way that resonates and empowers them to make small changes in their own gardens,” said Mr. Wilson. “The Royal Bank of Canada Garden will profile sustainable plants and landscape materials that work simultaneously to improve water efficiency throughout the garden. My hope is visitors leave with the impression that sustainable design can be easily maintained, while emphasising the timely message of water conservation and protection.”

The sustainable garden will highlight practical urban water management, including water saving and harvesting solutions for home gardeners. This is in keeping with the goals of the RBC Blue Water Project - a wide-ranging, 10-year global commitment to help protect the world’s fresh water resources.

Drawing inspiration from Mediterranean gardens, the design is divided into three main parts: a zero irrigation ‘dry garden’, a central water harvesting and storage zone, and an edible garden. The garden is designed to be easy to live with and demonstrate that plants do not require artificial irrigation if chosen and placed correctly.

“Throughout the garden, I’ve chosen plants for their ability to withstand drought conditions, reducing the need for irrigation. I am especially excited for the garden to showcase a ‘macro bonsai’ olive tree, a first for the show,” continued Mr. Wilson. “Drawing on the growing trend of urban farming, there will be also be a range of fruits, vegetables and herbs that are edible and sustainable.”

At the heart of the design, visitors can explore the space on a sustainable wood ‘floating’ terrace, which conceals a large storm water storage tank that helps maintain water levels in the garden’s water features and flood basin. At full capacity, this flood basin creates a simple water feature. However, as water levels drop, a beautiful carved stone feature symbolising the fragility of river ecosystems is revealed and eventually fades to a dry riverbed.

“Matthew’s design embodies the goals and principles of the RBC Blue Water Project,” said Stuart Rutledge, CEO of RBC Wealth Management – International. “We are thrilled to be partnering with him for the 2015 Chelsea Flower show and believe his ability to express sustainability through design and bring it to life in a stunning water-wise garden is laudable.”