"I've gotten to the point in my life where I'm pretty clear how I want to spend my time, with my family, my friends, my business, and with my own evolution as a person. I don't want to spend time worrying about anything else. And that's what my circle of support is for."

--Richard Rossi, education entrepreneur

The Need

According to the U.S. Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances 2001 and 2004 surveys, high net worth households are among the fastest growing segments in America. Between 2001 and 2010, families with a net worth of more than $5 million are projected to grow by more than 27% percent--a total of 2 million households. Today, the average net worth of these families is more than $14 million and their combined net worth make them a market worth nearly $25 trillion.

Along with this increase in wealth has come a huge increase in the complexity of managing such wealth. Most high net worth families remain actively engaged in accumulating wealth even as their net worth surpasses eight figures. In addition to their increased wealth, high net worth households have expensive lifestyles, leading to fragility in their financial affairs--both real and perceived. They are the "working rich." According to a Prince & Associates, Inc. survey, nearly nine out of ten high net worth households report they are "very concerned about losing their wealth" and consider addressing this concern as one of the most important in choosing an advisor.

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The Opportunity

Increasingly, high net worth households are looking for someone to help solve their financial problems across many domains of expertise. For a financial advisor, this means becoming a high-net-worth client's "problem-solver" and addressing their client's specific needs by leveraging expertise in advanced planning--wealth enhancement, wealth transfer, asset protection, charitable planning, estate planning, insurance, tax planning and cash and credit management--by consulting experts who have more experience and up-to-date knowledge on those topics than the primary advisor does. The payoff for the advisor is that this role could yield significant new revenue streams by sharing fees and commissions with these other experts.

Indeed, becoming a client's problem-solver may be more than just a great opportunity to increase revenues. It may be all that prevents an advisor from losing their client completely. According to Prince and Associates, 73.3% of affluent clients are either receptive to other advisors or will switch their advisor soon. Of those, 87% say it's because of a "poor service relationship" while only a minority (13%) say it's because of poor investment performance. The good news is 90% of affluent clients want to work with an advisor.

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The Solution

An advisor in a thriving practice is constantly pulled in different directions. Optimizing revenues, controlling costs, developing a strong staff, marketing the firm and serving their existing clients all demand constant attention. Advisors report that, even though they think or know that they have several high net worth clients, they are unable to fully serve those clients in the holistic manner they know those clients would benefit from. Instead, they might ask for additional assets during client meetings or occasionally sell them another product. In the meantime, advisors keep reading and hearing about other firms who have built wealth management or multi-family offices.

There's another way to serve these high net worth clients with excellence while increasing revenues and profits for the firm without increasing costs. By working closely with an advanced planning team made up of private wealth specialists, an advisor can have complete support to:

• Reposition himself to the firm's affluent clients as a "problem-solver".
• Lead a more comprehensive discovery process than usual to uncover the totality of an affluent client's financial picture.
• Coordinate, track and report all aspects of a "problem-solving" relationship with their high-net-worth clients that could stretch over years.
• Leverage a network of proven practitioners who specialize in working with the high net worth in the fields of tax, estate and charitable planning, insurance and credit.
• Take advantage of a compensation arrangement with all these experts that satisfies all parties and safely navigates regulatory issues with regards to compensation.

For an advisor to develop all of these resources internally for just a select few of their high net worth clients would take a significant investment in time and effort. Learning how to incorporate advanced planning into their practice would require extensive trial-and-error. Working with a private wealth specialist, an advisor can create a revenue-positive relationship with their high net worth clients right away.

Advanced Planning Group is a leading private wealth specialty firm. Through coaching and training, we show advisors how to develop their own advanced planning practices. We deliver practical solutions that allow your firm to fully realize the potential of your firm's high-net-worth clients.

To discover how catering to your high net worth clients can help you increase your firm's revenues substantially at no cost, click here.

To contact a private wealth specialist, click here.