Our Culture

Our mission is to embrace the dreams and aspirations of our clients by providing superior wealth management through independent, unbiased advice.

A Leading Source of Unbiased Financial Advice

Years ago, it was very common to find financial advisors that worked for brokerage firms and affiliates of insurance companies that could offer a limited variety of products and services. Today, investors are seeking long-term relationships that are not product driven. We embrace this direction and offer a consultative approach that is not based on prearranged dealer agreements. We are independent and unbiased in that fact that we have access to the largest and deepest variety of strategies offered in the industry.

Thorough Understanding of Your Situation

We take pride in spending the extra time to get to know our clients situations. We don’t rush between phone calls in order to fill production goals. We realize the importance of understanding the subtle details that often shape good solid financial plans. These discussions can originate from complex tax challenges, family heath issues, legacy continuation, business succession, and many other concerns. Offering comprehensive financial planning services will often expose these issues and provides a foundation for our strategies.

Wealth Management

Over the years the term wealth management has grown in popularity, but what does it mean?
Wealth Managers offer a highly consultative and comprehensive approach to build integrated strategies to client needs, rather than engaging in conversations associated with individual transactions. Our clients prefer having one point of contact that provides access to multiple financial services and understand the way these different strategies interact to our client’s benefit.

Additionally, a transactional product driven advisor, will often offer strategies that are largely tied to the whims of the market, as opposed to wealth management offerings that are usually more diversified through strategies that can include hard assets, private REIT’s, private asset managers, and “institutional only” managers. Over time, this greater integration of asset diversification tends to reduce volatility generated from typical market swings and can often reduce risk.

Communication

We understand that our client’s confidence is largely tied to our leadership as communicators. We take their trust very seriously and work hard to earn it. We understand the importance of keeping in touch with our clients, promptly returning phone calls, responding to inquiries and making adjustments to asset allocations when needed.

Clients receive quarterly reports detailing their investment portfolio including a consolidated report of their portfolio’s performance. For those who travel or want more frequent portfolio reporting, we offer 24/7 online access to their accounts through LPL’s Account View. In addition to consolidated 1099 reports, we also offer quarterly face to face reviews, quarterly newsletters, tax updates, and more.

Compensation

Our compensation is designed to be flexible, with our client needs in the forefront. As the industry moves farther away from compensation structures that are triggered upon a transactional event, we prefer to be compensated on a percentage of the assets being managed. This “fee-based” arrangement is becoming the new standard, as our wealth managers are duly rewarded when our clients prosper, but also suffer if our client’s accounts balance decline. Therefore our wealth managers sit on the same side of the table as our clients, as transactional costs are minimized.

Management fees are charged quarterly in arrears, based on a percent of assets managed. Our fees are usually between 1-2%, and decline as the portfolio size reaches pre-established targets. (Please contact us for a current fee schedule).

We also have the flexibility to charge hourly fees should a special situation warrant such a structure. Our typical hourly rate is $295., but this may vary depending on the nature of the project.

Lastly, there are certain types of investments that are held outside of a fee-based account, such as an annuity, 529 plan, alternative investment, life insurance with cash values, etc. that are excluded from a fee-based calculation.

For those who prefer the older format of a traditional brokerage account, we can usually accommodate them, depending on the size of the account. (Please contact us for our current minimum account size.)