Goals-Based Wealth Management: An Integrated and Practical Approach to Changing the Structure of Wealth Advisory Practices

Preface

I have spent the last thirty-eight years in the world of investment management and the last twenty-three dealing with the people we all call “the affluent.” Although I do not want to cast aspersions on anyone, I feel that we—as an industry—have not done the best job serving them, in part because we have not sufficiently adapted our processes to their specific needs and in part because the affluent have not always taken the time to discern what they really needed. My point in this Preface is to take our readers through the evolution of our industry and its market over the last forty odd years, to describe the way our industry is currently structured and operating, and to identify the mission I feel it needs to fulfill. I also want to discuss the three areas of focus that should help me achieve my goal of contributing to the further growth of the industry: (1) recognize the need for humility, (2) promote a sharper focus on the definition of the goals of our clients, and (3) discuss the potential for a restructuration of the typical advisory firm so that it can better serve its target market. But, first, we must define what we mean by “the affluent.”

There are about as many definitions of that group of people as there are people trying to serve them. They can be described by the financial assets they possess, but this can be misleading, as assets can be income-producing or not; they can be owned or in some form of generational wealth transfer structure; they can be liquid ...