Invested Professionals: Six People. No Layers. No Runaround.
We are a deliberately small firm. Every client works directly with the people on this page — no relationship managers screening calls, no junior analysts running the real analysis. When Naveen says he'll review your model, Naveen reviews your model. That's not a growth strategy. It's a conviction. It's also the reason our average client relationship lasts 5.8 years and our five-year retention rate sits at 93%. People don't stay because of a contract. They stay because they know exactly who's working on their portfolio — and that person knows their business.
The People Behind $127M in Client Capital
Every person below is someone you'll actually interact with. We don't have a front office and a back office. We have one office — at 14410 Chartwell Drive in Surrey — and six people who each bring a distinct capability to the work we do for owner-operated businesses across British Columbia.
Former greenhouse operator who built algorithmic commodity pricing models at his kitchen table. B.Sc. Agricultural Sciences, UBC (2003). CFA charter (2016) earned through three years of self-study while running the firm. Sold his 22-acre Fraser Valley operation in 2013 and incorporated IA Investments because he believed the AI tools reserved for institutional investors should belong to the owner-operators who grow food, haul freight, and build communities. Coaches daughter's field hockey in South Surrey. Still grows Scotch bonnet peppers in a backyard greenhouse he refuses to dismantle.
Ph.D. in Statistical Learning, Simon Fraser University (2014). Dissertation on ensemble methods for time-series financial data. Four years at TELUS analytics building churn prediction models before joining IA Investments in 2017. Her arrival marked the beginning of the firm's proprietary model pipeline — the infrastructure behind every service we offer. Maintains a whiteboard of equations that are perpetually "almost finished." Known for blunt vendor assessments: "Most vendor AI products are a logistic regression wearing a trench coat." When Elaine says a model is ready, it's ready. When she says it isn't, nobody argues.
Chartered Investment Manager, 14 years in Canadian equity markets. Raymond James Vancouver (2010–2018) covering small-cap industrials. Marcus is the person who translates Dr. Cheung's AI model outputs into actionable portfolio construction advice that business owners actually understand. He reviews sector signals weekly alongside Dr. Cheung for our market intelligence and constructs every blended portfolio recommendation that reaches a client. Commutes 38 km from New Westminster to Surrey by bike — rain, snow, or otherwise.
MBA, Beedie School of Business at SFU (2015). Five years in commercial banking at Coast Capital Savings managing lending relationships with family enterprises across the Lower Mainland. Joined IA Investments in 2020 — frustrated by how little technology her employer made available to small business clients. That frustration became fuel. Priya is often the first person a prospective client speaks with and the person who facilitates the most difficult family conversations around capital allocation — including the Monte Carlo scenario planning sessions that resolved a 14-month deadlock for the Fraser Valley Brewing Collective. Fluent in Punjabi, Hindi, English. Organizes the firm's annual Vaisakhi client appreciation lunch.
M.Sc. Computational Mathematics, University of Waterloo (2016). Built backtesting infrastructure at a Toronto hedge fund before relocating to BC in 2019. Tomasz maintains IA Investments' entire proprietary model pipeline — data ingestion, feature engineering, deployment architecture, and the custom real-time dashboards that give clients like Harpreet Gill a consolidated view of every account for the first time. He also built the NLP due diligence engine that parses offering memoranda against a database of 2,400+ Canadian alternative offerings. Competitive chess player at BC Open level. Applies game theory to risk modeling — and occasionally to office lunch negotiations.
The Person Who Keeps Us Honest — Operations & Compliance
Angela Forsythe
Operations & Compliance Manager
PDO compliance designation through the Canadian Securities Institute. Fifteen years in operations at Richardson Wealth and Canaccord Genuity before joining IA Investments in 2021. Angela manages our regulatory filings, vendor due diligence, and internal audit processes. Her job, as she puts it: "Making sure the smart people don't accidentally break securities law." She administers role-based access controls for all client data, conducts quarterly access audits, and coordinates our annual independent cybersecurity penetration test — details outlined in our privacy policy.
She oversees IA Investments' registration with the British Columbia Securities Commission (PM-2013-07842 and EMD-2013-07843), maintains our compliance program under Licence No. BC-FIN-2013-4417, and ensures every client relationship disclosure requirement is met — on time, without exception. She also manages our membership with the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada (Membership No. 91562). When she's not reviewing regulatory filings, she raises miniature schnauzers. She has opinions about that, too.
Angela joined because she saw how many small firms cut corners on compliance infrastructure. She refuses to let IA Investments become one of them. That stubbornness protects every client on our roster — and it's why the five people on the other side of her compliance checklists respect her enormously, even when she makes them redo a filing at 4:45 PM on a Friday.
How Six People Serve You Better Than Sixty
A large firm divides work into silos. The person who builds your model doesn't talk to the person who explains it. The compliance team doesn't know your name. We work differently. Here's how our team structure translates into a better experience for every client:
Discovery & Onboarding
Priya leads the initial conversation. She maps your stakeholder dynamics, family governance, and financial context. Marcus reviews your existing holdings. Naveen joins the first meeting personally — not to sell, but to listen. This discovery phase typically takes two weeks, and by the end, we understand your business at a depth most advisors never reach.
Model Building & Analysis
Dr. Cheung designs the analytical framework — whether that's a cash-flow-aware allocation model, a Monte Carlo simulation, or an NLP due diligence scan. Tomasz engineers the data pipeline: ingestion, feature engineering, backtesting, and deployment. Every model is stress-tested daily against scenario shocks before it touches a client portfolio.
Translation & Recommendation
Marcus translates model outputs into plain-language recommendations — the "So What?" section that every client report includes. He constructs blended portfolios and presents allocation changes. If you leave a meeting confused, Marcus considers it a personal failure. He and Priya co-facilitate family sessions where multiple stakeholders review projected outcomes in real time.
Ongoing Monitoring & Compliance
Naveen oversees every active client relationship. Angela ensures every trade, disclosure, and regulatory filing is executed correctly and on time. Tomasz's dashboards provide real-time portfolio views, and Dr. Cheung's regime-detection algorithms trigger alerts when market conditions shift structurally. You always know who's watching — because it's the same six people.
What Clients Say About Working With This Team
We could describe ourselves all day. Here's what matters more — how the people on the other side of the table experience working with us. These are real clients with real businesses across British Columbia.
"Marcus could explain everything the model recommended in terms I understood. No jargon, no hand-waving. When the market dropped in 2022, our drawdown stayed below 8% while friends of mine in similar portfolios were down 15–20%. That's when I stopped being skeptical."
Director, NorKai Holdings, Richmond, BC
"Priya sat with us through three sessions, and by the end, we'd reached unanimous agreement. I didn't think that was possible. Four families, four opinions, fourteen months of deadlock — resolved in six weeks."
Managing Partner, Fraser Valley Brewing Collective, Langley, BC
"Naveen flew out to White Rock, sat with our family for three hours, and never once tried to sell us anything. He asked questions. Real questions. By the time we signed, we felt like he understood our business better than our previous advisor had after five years."
Co-owner, Oceanview Senior Living Inc., White Rock, BC
"I sent IA Investments an offering memorandum for a syndicated mortgage product my old advisor was pushing. Their AI flagged three fee provisions buried in the fine print that I — and apparently my advisor — had completely missed. One of them would have cost me $86,000 in exit penalties."
Co-owner, Sidhu & Sons Transport Ltd., Abbotsford, BC
Small by Design. Not by Accident.
Every year, someone suggests we should hire more people. Every year, we decline. Here's why staying at six isn't a limitation — it's our most important strategic decision.
Direct Access to Decision-Makers
You call Naveen. Naveen answers. No intake coordinators, no account executives, no voicemail purgatory. The person who builds your model is the person who explains it to you. The person who manages your compliance is the person who signs the regulatory filings. That's a structural choice — not a phase we're going through. At larger firms, you're routed through layers. Here, you reach the person who can actually answer your question on the first call.
Unambiguous Accountability
Six people means no finger-pointing. When a model underperforms, we know who built it. When a client relationship thrives, we know who nurtured it. When a compliance filing is late — which hasn't happened, because Angela won't allow it — there's one name on the line. Small teams can't hide behind process. We don't want to. Our 93% five-year client retention rate isn't built on marketing. It's built on the fact that every person on this team feels personally responsible for every outcome.
Family Stakes — Real Skin in the Game
This is a family-run operation. Naveen's reputation, his children's future, his co-founders' livelihoods — all tied to how we serve clients. That personal investment drives a standard of care that corporate structures dilute. When we advise on a $5.8M portfolio for Pacific Prairie Grain Corp., the stakes feel personal because they are personal. We treat your capital the way we treat our own, because our name is literally on the door at 14410 Chartwell Drive.
Collective Credentials That Back Every Recommendation
Small doesn't mean shallow. Between six people, we hold three chartered designations, two graduate-level AI degrees, and 62+ years of combined experience across investment management, artificial intelligence research, commercial banking, quantitative development, and securities compliance. Here's the breakdown:
Designations & Credentials
- CFA Charter — Naveen Kaur (2016). The gold standard in global investment management. Earned through three years of self-study while simultaneously running the firm — proof that stubbornness scales.
- CIM Designation — Marcus Redfield. Chartered Investment Manager, Canadian Securities Institute. Fourteen years covering Canadian equity markets, including eight years at Raymond James Vancouver on small-cap industrials.
- Ph.D. Statistical Learning — Dr. Elaine Cheung (SFU, 2014). Ensemble methods for time-series financial data. The academic foundation behind every AI model and research publication we produce.
- M.Sc. Computational Mathematics — Tomasz Wójcik (Waterloo, 2016). Backtesting infrastructure and model deployment. The engineering backbone that turns Dr. Cheung's research into production-grade tools.
- MBA — Priya Dhaliwal (Beedie School, SFU, 2015). Commercial banking and family enterprise advisory. Five years of lending relationships at Coast Capital Savings before bringing that client-facing expertise to IA Investments.
- PDO Compliance — Angela Forsythe (CSI). Partner, Director and Officer compliance designation. Fifteen years of operations experience at Richardson Wealth and Canaccord Genuity — the reason our regulatory infrastructure exceeds the standard for firms our size.
Languages Served
Our team communicates fluently in English, Punjabi, Hindi, and French. For family businesses across the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley where multiple generations may be most comfortable in different languages, this isn't a marketing bullet point — it's the difference between a client who understands their portfolio and one who nods politely and leaves confused.
Skeptics Welcome — We'd Rather Earn Your Trust
Most of our best client relationships started with a healthy dose of doubt. If you're an owner-operator or family business with $500K+ in investable assets, we'd like to hear about it. No pressure, no 47-slide deck — a real conversation with a real person from this page. Call (672) 895-8776 or send a question through our contact form. Every inquiry gets a human response within one business day.