Our Approach

PLAN → POLICY → PORTFOLIO → PERFORMANCE

PLAN

Whether it be a simple statement of spending intent or a forecast of cash flows across multiple generations, understanding what objectives are important to our clients is the starting point to any engagement.

Clients may be saving to fund their retirement or to send their children to college. Others might be interested in creating an estate for their heirs or may have philanthropic intents. Whatever goals our client may have is evaluated relative to the resources available to achieve them.

Identifying gaps and opportunities leads to plan refinement.

Policy

Drawn from the planning exercise, a “statement of work” for the financial assets under our management is memorialized via a document referred to as an Investment Policy Statement (IPS). In order to create the IPS, the client is engaged in a highly-interactive process where we help our client help us to understand what they are trying to achieve with their wealth, how much risk they are comfortable taking and what preferences they might have as to how their wealth is managed.

Clients will have multiple opportunities during the creation of the IPS to confirm that we are addressing their objectives. Clients are then asked to formally sign off on the completed document once they are satisfied that it addresses their needs, concerns and preferences.

Policy should evolve over time to capture our ongoing dialogue with you as well as changes to your financial circumstances. We will formally review the policy with you at least annually.

Portfolio

Construction. Portfolios are constructed with a keen sensitivity to your starting points and guided by the articulated Policy. We work to improve the portfolio with the objective of increasing the likelihood of achieving the objectives of the Plan.

Asset Location. We work to create value in intelligently locating your assets for the optimal after-tax (income and/or transfer) impact.

Trading and Turnover. We work to protect value by avoiding unnecessary turnover in our recommendations.

Client Preferences. We are highly skilled at being able to integrate our client’s preferences into the investment strategies that we manage for them.

Costs. We seek to lower the cost of implementation whenever possible including any investment product fees, taxes or trading costs.

Performance

We will regularly review with you the Performance of the Portfolio. Performance primarily focuses on progress toward achieving client objectives.

We will also report on the performance of the Portfolio overall and different components of it relative to relevant market benchmarks.

An important part of the review exercise is confirming, evolving or deepening the Plan and Policy – improving our understanding of you.