Yesterday was a big day for the team at Steadyhand. We filed our final prospectus and turned on our website. While our funds won’t be available to investors until April 10th, these are still big milestones for us.

Also yesterday there were write-ups in the papers about CI Financial’s purchase of Rockwater. In Keith Damsell’s article in the Globe there was a quote from Bill Holland, CEO of CI - “To compete with the banks we have to set up a business that looks more and more like the banks.”

This statement is in stark contrast to what we’re trying to do at Steadyhand. We will never threaten the banks in scale or distribution, but Steadyhand has been created to provide an alternative to the banks and mega-distributors like CI Funds and Investors Group/Mackenzie.

Steadyhand is all about investing, whether it be the design of our fund mandates or the managers we’ve chosen. Our fees are low. We are going to be as transparent as possible and give clients an open window into our company. Our products are simple, understandable and efficient. And we’re not afraid to tell it like it is.

CI’s strategy makes sense in the context of their size and ambition, but at Steadyhand we’re happy to go in the opposite direction. We want to be the ‘anti-bank’.