People Business

Our human interactions remain the most important component of successful wealth management. The early firms realized this reality and called the client advisors relationship managers. The underlying component of good relationships is trust. A relationship manager is someone we can trust. Ironically they started in the Trust Department. 

When I read my book out load it sounds like a disgruntled ex-employee. As I reach my 30 year anniversary I start to take an honest view of the solutions we offer clients. Most solutions have been proved erroneous. The managers and regulators have helped shine a light on the issues. The best solutions are mundane and essential. The solution we all need to adopt are planning or better defined budgeting.  We all know we can do a better job budgeting. Unfortunately we don’t want to budget and we need guidance. A good advisor will provide stern budgeting guidance. We will be better off if we follow her guidance. 

We default to our initial industry training. People who started on Wall Street default to the belief that they can follow the stock recommendations of their firm and accountants default to the perceived certainty of quantitative models. Both are erroneous and we need to identify and share the errors with our prospective clients and our current clients. Unfortunately the conclusion will call us out. The academic solutions are credible. The professors doesn’t have any skin in the game. Passive beats most active solutions. 

We outsource areas that we don’t have expertise or don’t want to have responsibility. The most common area is compliance. The next area is prospecting. Both are areas we are willing to pay for others to do our difficult job. Our experience is that the outsourced providers are not expert either. We need to ask good questions about their process. Unfortunately there is no silver bullet. Keep your money

Unfortunately there is no silver bullet solution in wealth advisory.  It all comes down to do we like and trust our advisors.  It remains a people business. We should work on our likability.