Independent Wealth Management
As an ultra-high net worth investor with $10 million in investable liquid assets, you need much more financial services than simple funds management.
You have big and ongoing decisions to make with regard to financial planning and other aspects of your financial life, and independent wealth management offers the best array of services to facilitate your success. That’s why we’ve put together this detailed book about independent wealth management services on this page. It’s yours free if you qualify.
We Are Different Because We Are Laser Focused On Helping You Achieve Financial Serenity Through Our Proven Comprehensive Goals-Based Planning & Investing Strategies.
Depending on how long you’ve possessed the high net worth that sets you apart from the vast majority of people, you may or may not remember what it’s like to only have $100,000 (or less) to your name.
Table of Contents
- What Is An Independent Wealth Management Firm?
- Large Firms Can’t Deliver Customized Wealth Management
- Understanding Financial Advisor Fee Structures
- What You Need Instead is an Independent Wealth Manager
- Prioritization of Asset Management with Performance
- Looking for The Best Independent Wealth Management Near Your State
- What Is an Independent Wealth Advisor?
Top 10 Wealth Management Firms by AUM
| # | Name | 2022 | 2020 |
 |
| $5,694.1 | $5,150.1 |
 |
| $5,407 | $4,761.8 |
 |
| $2,905.4 | $2,517.9 |
 |
| $2,032.6 | $1,747.6 |
 |
| $1,954.5 | $1,784.7 |
 |
| $1,845.6 | $1,684.5 |
 |
| $1,594.6 | $1,422.7 |
 |
| $1,423.4 | $1,289.5 |
 |
| $1,361 | $1,190.7 |
 |
| $1,300.9 | $1,280.4 |
You often come across stories of inspirational individuals who have amassed significant wealth. The journey of such individuals is often comprised of ambition, courage, hard work and relentless consistency. It’s extremely difficult to achieve “High Net Worth” status in today’s ultra-competitive world, but achieving “Ultra-High Net Worth” status is an even more difficult – and rarer – feat.
We’ve been protecting wealth for thirty years as independent wealth managers for independent or affluent families with high net worth ranging from $5 million up to $500 million in assets. You can reach us via email on our website, pillarwm.com, to get a fully custom investment plan provided by our advisors.
Financial advisors at a large firm are dependent on procedures, recommendations, the privacy policy of the company, and technology they didn’t come up with. They do not customize anything for you. They fit your name into their systems and their service.
What Is An Independent Wealth Management Firm?
An independent wealth management firm delivers customized wealth management services. It provides financial advice that is free from conflict between the client’s needs and those of the firm. Therefore, it can tailor investment and tax strategies to meet the unique financial needs of its clients.
Large Firms Can’t Deliver Customized Wealth Management
When you’re choosing the best financial advisor for your financial planning, consider the differences between large firms and smaller ones with independent wealth management. If you’re looking for an investment advisor that will improve your portfolio performance and help you plan your financial goals, Pillar Wealth Management will help you to personalize your portfolios, and you can check our official website for contact information to inquire about our services.
Moreover, there are four ways you won’t find what you need with non-independent wealth management advisors.
Can’t Get Unconflicted Advice from Financial Advisor
Their priority is to their shareholders, their sales goals, their revenue targets. Therefore, if a financial advisor from a big firm recommends particular mutual fund strategies, investment management, or investment product, you cannot know what else is behind that recommendation that gives you the best decisions with minimum risks. Does it have higher fees? Would it cost you more in taxes? Does its risk profile serve your long-term lifestyle and independent wealth management goals?
For your information, large firms have another agenda. They are not in the business of maximizing your investment performance and building a plan that seeks to surpass all your long-term financial and lifestyle goals, including your retirement.
As an ultra-high net worth investor, you deserve better. You can choose an independent wealth manager as the best choice. If you agree, read on our website or reach out via email or our phone number at Pillar Wealth Management to schedule a chat with one of our financial experts. Use cookies on our website to get better services. It’s worth paying an independent wealth manager because they aren’t only managing your wealth but also help you to secure your investment, future life, and financial serenity.
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Can’t Accommodate Clients Unique Needs
You have a different set of needs than a typical investor. Independent wealth management helps you to set your needs and goals. You may have multiple income streams from businesses, real estate, investments, retirement, and other sources. Estate planning, for clients, isn’t as simple as just willing all their money to their kids.
If someone only has $200,000 to work with, no one’s life is going to change when they pass it on. But if you have $20 million, or $200 million, serious questions must be explored and answered if you want to avoid having nearly half your wealth gobbled up by the government when you die or wasted by relatives and children unprepared for the responsibility in the short term.
In this situation, independent wealth management is best suited to helping individuals or families to craft the very best estate plan that achieves all your life and next-generational goals rather than just an investment adviser.
Independent wealth management firms, like PillarWM, not only have professional investment advisers, they also offer services with benefits for our clients, and your income will increase without changing your net worth. Contact us via email and use cookies to improve your experience.
Tax Planning
Another unique need is tax planning. Make the wrong choices, and you can lose millions of dollars to taxes you didn’t have to lose. But independent wealth management will doggedly pursue the best possible tax outcomes for your situation.
And to be clear – this is not to say that your wealth manager specializes in all these services. But neither does the investment advisor in a big bank. The difference is, we know who the very best professionals in Silicon Valley or the San Francisco Bay Area are in each of these fields, including estate planning, tax accounting, philanthropic planning, legal planning, life insurance, and many other areas where you have unique needs that the average person does not.
Big banks that claim to offer those services will not be connecting you with independent advisors at the top of their fields, of which the great majority are independent practitioners. Just like wealth managers – here’s how to find the best one for you.
Doesn’t Understand What’s At Stake for You
A financial advisor working for a large firm isn’t aware of how these stakes uniquely affect you. The advisors may see taxes as just part of the ‘cost of doing business as an investor in investment management.
Investment advisors are more focused on reaching their revenue goals, which may require them to frequently buy, sell, and trade equities and mutual funds. Frequent trading activity triggers short-term capital gains taxes, which are taxed at the same rate as ordinary income.
You cannot sit idly by while a wet-behind-the-ears ‘advisor’ goes trade-happy with your money!
The same holds for fees and the many other hidden costs you can pay, avoid, or minimize, depending on the alertness and awareness of the individuals managing your investments. This relationship is more than about having a good plan. It’s about the ongoing stewardship of your wealth for long-term growth, security, and permanence. Regarding the future generations in your family, what do you want your wealth to accomplish for them after you’re gone?
Are your financial advisors aware of these stakes? Do your advisors have experience helping you avoid that undesirable but prevalent outcome and risks? Do they have anything to offer you to ensure the protection of your family’s wealth?
A non-independent financial advisor simply thinks this way. They have other masters to serve besides their clients. The less time they can spend on you, the better. That’s how they think.
Think Investment Management Is the Same as Independent Wealth Management
They would never admit this, of course. But their actions bear it out. Investment management, and the planning that produces it, is just one component of comprehensive independent wealth management. That plan is massively important, and you need one that serves your short and long-term interests. But there is so much more.
You’re going to face situations that require hard choices about your independent wealth management. Who are you going to turn to during those times? Who has the complete understanding of your entire financial planning and lifestyle picture, understands your goals and dreams, and knows you?
Large banks and brokerage firms are not likely to fulfill that service. It’s simply not in their job description. However, independent wealth management firms exist to be that all-in-one go-to advisor you will need, especially when unexpected scenarios arise.
Understanding Financial Advisor Fee Structures
There are five ways to calculate a registered investment advisor’s fees for advisory services:
5 Financial Advisor Fee Structures:
- Percentage of AUM (assets under management): a percentage of total assets in your account; this percentage could be on a sliding scale. The lower the percentage, the higher your asset amount.
- Hourly rates: a rate per hour paid, usually for a particular project or consulting.
- Fixed payments: a predetermined sum charged for a service, such as creating a financial plan.
- Commissions: type of bonus received when a transaction or a trade is created.
- Fees based on performance: if a given benchmark is outperformed, an additional fee is paid.
What You Need Instead is an Independent Wealth Manager
Customized Investment Process
Your life and your financial needs don’t fit into pre-determined little boxes. But that’s how a large bank or brokerage firm will treat you. More appropriate for ultra-high net worth investors is a customized independent wealth management and investment process. What does that mean?
It begins with you, not with questions about risk tolerance and predictions about annual rates of return. Your risk tolerance must be subject to your lifestyle and generational goals. The right risk tolerance for you might be different than for your neighbor. It depends on what you want to accomplish in life.
Your investment plan will then be created out of that unique set of goals and needs. And, as your life continues to change and unexpected events force you to make new choices and head in different directions, your plan will adapt to those changes rather than persist in defiance of reality.
Most independent wealth managers will begin with some customized approach like this.
At Pillar Wealth Management, what happens next is where you start to see differences even between independent wealth managers.
We take your unique set of needs, lifestyle goals, and generational planning and develop a customized investment planning built to achieve all of them, with room to spare.
Our investment process incorporates 100 years of historical market data. Why 100 years? Because over the past 100 years, the market has experienced wars, depressions, recessions, inflation, booms, busts, and everything in between. We have seen how the market behaved during all that volatility.
All these things have happened. Our process uses history to make high-probability projections of how your portfolio will perform in different scenarios. If your portfolio still surpasses all your goals and plans of those scenarios, we consider your portfolio to be ‘on track.’ We call this the Comfort Zone.
That is a customized investment process.
Prioritization of Asset Management with Performance
The preservation and permanence of your wealth matter far more than whether you earn 10% or 9% in a particular year, especially in a place like New York with high taxes and a high standard of living. The key to our portfolio projections is the historical data backing the process. Our planning is based on creating the ideal asset allocation customized to your goals and needs.
Asset allocation is the determining factor in how well a portfolio performs over long periods of time – like the decades between now and when your wealth passes on to someone else. One good year? Who cares? You need one good lifetime of investment growth and wealth security.
You need what we call ‘financial serenity.’
This is far more important than risk tolerance without context.
Looking for The Best Independent Wealth Management Near Your State
At Pillar Wealth Management, we provide our clients with the same respect as we give ourselves. We pay attention to our client’s needs and goals, then consider them as individuals rather than portfolio balances. In independent Wealth Management, you will see how we take into account our clients’ goals and needs. We give our clients the trust they need in financial decisions.
As you can hopefully see, our approach goes way beyond just having independent wealth management. Hopefully, you already understand how essential that is.
Your real decision then is choosing the best wealth manager for you.
1. Look into Pillar Wealth Management
If you want to learn more about what we’ve already shared about customized portfolio planning and how we help secure your long-term future using smart asset allocation based on historical market performance, click the linked website below and find out more.
Are you ready to talk about your goals and dreams? Schedule a chat with one of our wealth management experts.
2. Read our Free eBook Guide
We created free registered investment for the sole purpose of helping ultra-high net worth investors choose the best wealth manager or financial advisor. It might not be us. But one thing you can probably count on – it’s not likely a big bank or brokerage firm.
Get your copy of The Ultimate Guide for Choosing the Best Financial Advisor for Investors with $10M – $500 Million Liquid Assets.
What Is an Independent Wealth Advisor?
An independent wealth advisor is an investment firm or an individual advisor who provides financial services to high-net-worth individuals. Independent advisors are not constrained by any relationship with a bank or other institution.
You can determine if a wealth advisor is independent by looking at who owns the firm and if they are directly affiliated with other firms. The advisor may be an employee of an investment firm, so they are not independent. Or simply ask them if they are independent and what makes them independent.
How to Tell If a Wealth Advisor Is Independent
An advisor may not be independent if they offer only a limited number of products. An independent advisor is not beholden to a parent company.
Pros and Cons of Independent Wealth Advisors
Independent advisors provide customized guidance based on what’s best for you, offering unbiased advice. They hold themselves accountable to their clients. Their fee structure is usually simple and transparent. Independent advisors use outside custodians for your money.
However, an independent advisor may not be able to offer all the services you need, for which you may need to look elsewhere.
An independent advisor has to work to find clients, takes on the burden of setting up and maintaining an office, and has to invest in conducting research. Non-independent wealth advisors will have access to more research resources within their firm. However, they may be required to sell particular financial products, such as insurance from particular companies.
To be 100% transparent, we published this page to help filter through the mass influx of prospects, who come to us through our website and referrals, to gain only a handful of the right types of new clients who wish to engage us.
We enjoy working with high net worth and ultra-high net worth investors and families who want what we call financial serenity – the feeling that comes when you know your finances and the lifestyle you desire have been secured for life, and that you don’t have to do any of the work to manage and maintain it because you hired a trusted advisor to take care of everything.
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