About Advisor's Edge

Advisor's Edge

Advisor's Edge is a Canadian business-to-business magazine serving client-facing financial advisors. Published bi-monthly by Newcom Media Inc. of Toronto, it covers investments, tax, estate planning, and financial-services practice for Canada's investment and financial advisory industry. Its companion website, Advisor.ca, is updated each business day.

Overview

Advisor's Edge is written for the professionals who advise Canadian investors: investment advisors, financial planners, and related practitioners. Its subject matter spans portfolio management, tax and estate planning, regulation, practice management, and industry trends. The magazine's readership includes more than 33,500 client-facing investment and financial advisors, according to its Wikipedia entry, and it carries the ISSN 1490-814X.

The publication's digital arm, Advisor.ca, publishes news and analysis each business day, giving the brand a daily presence alongside its bi-monthly print rhythm. A French-language sister magazine, Conseiller, serves francophone financial advisors in Quebec; Conseiller was started in 2000.

History

Advisor's Edge was founded in June 1998 by Maclean Hunter Publishing, which was part of Rogers Media, a subsidiary of Rogers Communications Inc. It entered a crowded field of trade publishing for financial services, but established itself as a leading Canadian title for the advisor channel.

Ownership changed twice in the 2010s. In September 2016, Rogers Media announced it was divesting all of its business-to-business publications; on December 1, 2016, Advisor's Edge was acquired by Montreal-based Transcontinental Media. Then, on September 19, 2019, Advisor's Edge and two other Transcontinental magazines were acquired by Toronto-based Newcom Media (rendered "Newcome Media" in some sources; the company's name is Newcom Media Inc.), which remains its publisher.

Content

The magazine's content is organized around the working needs of financial advisors: investment strategy and portfolio construction, tax and estate planning, retirement planning, regulatory and compliance developments, practice management, and profiles of industry figures. Its journalism has been recognized within the industry: Advisor's Edge has won the CFA Society Toronto Publication of the Year award (2017), the CFA Society Toronto Spirit of the Future of Finance Award (2017), the Portfolio Management Association of Canada Award for Excellence in Investment Journalism (2017), and Canadian Business Media Awards including Gold for Best In-House Cover and Silver for Best Professional Article (2016).

The daily-updated Advisor.ca extends the brand's coverage to breaking industry news, market commentary, and advisor-focused analysis between print issues.

Coverage & Audience

Advisor's Edge reaches more than 33,500 client-facing investment and financial advisors across Canada, a business-to-business audience of licensed professionals. Its French-language counterpart Conseiller extends the franchise to Quebec's francophone advisor community. The brand's combined print and digital presence gives it national reach within the financial-advice profession.

Ownership

Advisor's Edge is published by Newcom Media Inc., a Toronto-based business-to-business media company that acquired the title from Transcontinental Media in September 2019. Earlier owners were Maclean Hunter Publishing / Rogers Media (1998–2016) and Transcontinental Media (2016–2019).

Inside the Masthead

The magazine's masthead reads like a specialist newsroom built around the advisor's working week. Recent issues name Melissa Shin as Editorial Director, Mark Burgess as Managing Editor, Gil Martinez as Art Director, Michelle Schriver as Assistant Editor and Katie Keir as Research and Special Projects Editor. The contributor roster is a roll call of the Canadian advisor industry's go-to technical writers: tax specialist Jamie Golombek, the forensic accountants Al Rosen and Mark Rosen, retirement researcher Jim Otar, practice columnist Susan Goldberg, estate specialist Suzanne Yar Khan and fee analyst Mark Yamada, among others. A single issue's table of contents shows the formula at work — an editor's note, client-conversation columns, tax-and-estate briefings (executors, salary-versus-dividends, life-interest trusts and the CRA), investment features and cover stories on the forces reshaping financial planning.

Oversight comes from an editorial advisory board drawn from practicing advisors and portfolio managers — names from firms including Raymond James, Mawer Investment Management, CI Investments and Scotia Wealth Management — a structure that keeps the journalism answerable to the profession it serves rather than to advertisers alone.

The Advisor Group Ecosystem

Advisor's Edge does not stand alone; it is the print anchor of the Advisor Group / Groupe Conseiller, which comprises Advisor's Edge, the daily-updated Advisor.ca, the mobile-oriented Advisor ToGo, the French-language Conseiller and Conseiller.ca, and Conseillers en Direct. The 2019 Newcom acquisition that brought the title to Toronto also added its sister financial titles — Finance et Investissement and Investment Executive — making Newcom the dominant Canadian publisher for the advisor channel in both languages.

The ecosystem extends into professional education. CE Corner, Newcom's continuing-education platform, offers accredited courses that let advisors earn their compliance credits — working, in the company's telling, alongside its sister publications Advisor's Edge and Investment Executive — covering IIROC compliance and professional development, with courses accredited by bodies including the Institute for Advanced Financial Education, FP Canada and the Registered Insurance Brokers of Ontario. For a trade magazine, owning the continuing-education relationship with its readers is a powerful moat: the same advisor who reads the tax column earns credits on the sister site.

The Business of the Magazine

The economics are those of a controlled-circulation B2B title. A one-year subscription includes up to six issues at $72 per year in Canada (US$148 outside the country), with single copies at $15 — pricing aimed at professionals who expense it, not newsstand browsers. The publisher's offices sit at 5353 Dundas Street West, Suite 400, Toronto, under Chairman and Founder Jim Glionna and President Joe Glionna.

Newcom itself is one of Canada's largest B2B publishers, active in trucking, insurance, dental, supply chain, meetings travel and waste management as well as finance — a portfolio that includes Truck News, Canadian Underwriter, Oral Health and Today's Trucking, plus trade shows such as Truck World and ExpoCam. The company's stated motto — "We serve our customers best, by putting our readers first" — is the classic controlled-circulation creed: the reader is the product sold to advertisers, so editorial trust is the business model.

Why the Awards Matter

The industry awards the draft lists — the CFA Society Toronto Publication of the Year and Spirit of the Future of Finance awards (2017), the Portfolio Management Association of Canada's excellence-in-investment-journalism prize (2017), and Canadian Business Media gold and silver (2016) — carry weight precisely because they come from the buy side. CFA Society Toronto represents the charterholder community; PMAC represents the portfolio managers. A trade magazine can buy circulation, but it cannot buy those juries. In a field where advisors are bombarded with sponsored content from product manufacturers, third-party recognition from the profession's own institutions is the credential that separates journalism from marketing.

Digital Presence

Advisor.ca, the publication's website, is updated each business day with news and analysis for financial advisors. The magazine maintains a digital edition and email newsletters serving its professional readership, alongside its bi-monthly print issues. Its history and profile are documented in its Wikipedia entry, which draws on Rogers, Transcontinental, and Newcom Media announcements and industry award records.

Subscription management runs through advisor.ca/subscribe, with subscriber service by email and a toll-free line — the standard plumbing of a controlled-circulation title whose readers are professionals and whose renewal rates are the metric that matters. Between the daily site, the bi-monthly print edition and the CE Corner education platform, the brand now touches its advisor audience in the three modes the modern B2B publisher needs: news, depth and credentials.