A five step process for setting goals, understanding your finances, making recommendations, and keeping the plan up to date.
We define the outcomes you are trying to achieve, the timing of each goal, and which goals should take priority when tradeoffs are required.
We gather the information needed to understand your assets, liabilities, income, spending, tax situation, insurance coverage, estate plan, and other relevant circumstances.
We use the information gathered to determine whether your current approach is likely to achieve those goals and identify where changes may be needed.
We determine the changes we believe would improve the client’s chances of achieving their stated goals and explain the rationale behind each recommendation.
We put the agreed changes in place and continue refining the plan as markets move and the client’s circumstances or goals change.
These four questions are often enough to place a client into a model portfolio and avoid a wildly inappropriate recommendation. They are not enough to deliver comprehensive advice or optimize for the best client outcome.
J.D. Power’s 2023 U.S. Full-Service Investor Satisfaction Study found 11% of advisors delivering comprehensive advice, against 42% transactional and 47% goals based.
We seek to understand how those changes affect the rest of your finances before making a recommendation.
Far too often, clients only hear from their advisor after they raise an issue themselves. We believe the advisor should be reviewing the client’s situation continuously, looking for new opportunities and potential problems, and reaching out when there is something that requires the client’s attention or a decision.
We will review your current portfolio, explain what we would keep or change, and show you how we would manage it going forward.