Wealth Management

For those clients with more comprehensive wealth management needs, we offer our True ClaritySM Solution. The purpose of True ClaritySM is to help a select group of clients make smart wealth decisions. 

Comprehensive wealth management is a process, not a product. It’s an ongoing need, not a one-time event. However, most firms, even those that claim to provide wealth management services, simply provide investment consulting. While it is true that investment consulting is an important piece of wealth management, investments are simply the engines that drive you towards the goals you have for your future and your family’s future.
 
At The Pinnacle Group, we feel true comprehensive wealth management is vital, particularly for high net worth clients. Our wealth management process includes not only investment consulting, but also advanced planning and professional team relationship management.
 
 
 
 
About True ClaritySM Solution
 
We define wealth management as a formula:
 
WM = IC + AP + RM
 
Investment consulting (IC) is the astute management of investments over time to help achieve financial goals. It requires advisors to deeply understand their clients’ most important challenges and then design an investment plan that takes their clients’ time horizons and tolerance for risk into account and that describes an approach that will help maximize clients’ probability of achieving their goals. It also requires advisors to monitor both their clients’ portfolios and their financial lives over time so that they can make adjustments to the investment plan as needed.
 
Advanced planning (AP) goes beyond investments to look at all the other aspects that are important to your financial life. We break it down into four parts: wealth enhancement, wealth transfer, wealth protection and charitable giving. In our experience, very few financial advisors offer these services.
 
Relationship management (RM) is the final element. True wealth managers are focused on building relationships within three groups. The first and most obvious group is their clients. To address their clients’ needs effectively, they must foster solid, trusted relationships with them. Second, wealth managers must manage a network of financial professionals—experts they can call in to address specific client needs. Finally, wealth managers must be able to work effectively with their clients’ other professional advisors, such as their attorneys and accountants.
 
 
The True ClaritySM Experience
 
Taking a comprehensive approach to achieving all your financial dreams may require a wealth management approach. This means more than just taking care of your investments. It also means addressing your advanced planning needs, including wealth enhancement, wealth transfer, wealth protection and charitable giving.
 
Such a wide range of financial needs requires a wide range of financial expertise. Because no one person can be an expert in all these subjects, the best wealth managers work with networks of experts—financial professionals with deep experience and knowledge in specific areas.
 
Effective wealth managers, then, are experts at relationship management—first building relationships with their clients in order to fully understand their unique needs and challenges and then coordinating the efforts of their expert teams in order to meet those needs and challenges. Wealth managers must also work with their clients’ other advisors—such as attorneys and accountants—in order to ensure optimal outcomes.
 
Many in the financial services industry today call themselves wealth managers but may offer little more than investment management. How then will you know whether you are dealing with a true wealth manager?
 
First, the advisor should offer a full range of financial services, including the four areas of advanced planning that we mentioned above. As we’ve said, the wealth manager should be backed up by a network of experts to provide these services. 
 
Second, the wealth manager should work with you on a consultative basis. This allows the wealth manager to uncover your true financial needs and goals, to craft a long-range wealth management plan that is designed to help meet those needs and goals, and to build an ongoing relationship with you that ensures that your needs continue to be met as they change over time.
 
This consultative process usually unfolds over a series of meetings:
 
§ At the Discovery, the wealth manager determines your current financial situation, where you want to go and the obstacles you face in achieving what is important to you.
 
§ At the Strategic Overview, the wealth manager, using the information he or she gathered at your first meeting, presents a complete diagnostic of your current financial situation and a plan for achieving your investment-related goals.
 
§ At the Mutual Commitment, assuming that the wealth manager can truly add value, both you and the wealth manager decide to work together. You now officially become a client.
 
§ At the Vision Checkpoint, the wealth manager helps you to organize your new account paperwork and answers any questions that may have arisen. 
  
§ At Clear Progress Reviews, which are typically held quarterly, the wealth manager reports to you on the progress you’re making towards achieving your goals and checks in with you on any important changes in your life that might call for an adjustment to your investment plan. In addition, at the first Clear Progress Review, the wealth manager presents to you a wealth management plan—a comprehensive blueprint for addressing your advanced planning needs that has been developed in coordination with the wealth manager’s network of experts. At subsequent progress reviews, you and the wealth manager decide how to proceed on specific elements of the wealth management plan. In this way, over time, every aspect of your complete financial picture is effectively managed.
 
  
 
 
In addition, you should always expect outstanding service from any financial advisor you choose. Your phone calls should be returned on the same day, you should receive quick and complete responses to all your questions, you should be able to meet with your advisor as often as you wish, and your advisor should always take your unique needs and preferences into account. In short, you should expect to be treated like who you are—a very important client.
 
To learn more about Pinnacle's True ClaritySM Solution, please read Intelligent Investing: Five Key Concepts for Financial Success, written by J. Scott Sims, President of The Pinnacle Group.
 
 
If you have any questions about the True ClaritySM Solution, please contact us and we will be happy to discuss with you further.
 
For clients who may not require the breadth and depth of the True ClaritySM Solution, Pinnacle’s Portfolio Management service may be more appropriate. 

 

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