Best Ultra High Net Worth Advisors

When you’re dealing with enormous wealth such as what’s referred to as ultra high net worth in finance, the services of a financial advisor can prove incredibly valuable. Not only will you have a sense of accountability, but the advisor will constantly monitor your progress so that you stay on track to accomplish your long-term financial goals.

However, not everyone is capable of offering useful financial advice. There are some extraordinarily talented and high-profile advisors; then, there are some good ones and even some bad ones. If you’re an ultra high net worth individual looking for an advisor in the first category, hire Pillar Wealth Management, a reputable wealth management firm specializing in serving investors with $5 million to $500 million in liquid assets. In addition, if your net worth is $10 million or higher, be sure to go through our guide titled 7 Secrets to High Net Worth Investment Management, Estate, Tax, and Financial Planning as well.

Table of Contents

Who is the Best High Net Worth Financial Advisor?
Why the Wealthy Have Financial Advisors
Conclusion

Meanwhile, this guide will inspire you with some deep insights about the best ultra high net worth advisors.

Who is the Best High Net Worth Financial Advisor?

With an overwhelming number of professionals boasting to be financial experts and countless LinkedIn profiles representing wealth managers ready to offer financial advice, choosing the right mentor can be a daunting task. As an ultra-high net worth individual, it’s no wonder you’re thinking, “Who is the best high net worth financial advisor?” To help you out, we’ve compiled some characteristics to look for when sifting through advisor profiles and making a hiring decision.

Willingness to Listen

During the earliest stages of the relationship, inexperienced advisors will speak more and listen less, often in an attempt to show what they’ve got and demonstrate their expertise. Sadly, some clients will fall for it and end up hiring them, only to face serious financial mismanagement in the long run.

Hence, one of the most critical traits to look for in a high- or ultra-high net worth advisor is the willingness to listen to you. They should be asking questions and probe, letting you speak more, so that they can uncover precisely what you need across all aspects of your financial planning. The more questions they ask, the more information you will share with them, and the greater will be your chance of developing an effective comprehensive financial plan.

By listening to you, they’ll not only be able to understand your long-term financial goals but also be able to find and piece together small details and provide valuable solutions to your most pressing financial issues. To find out exactly how much your potential advisor should listen to you, schedule a video consultation with our wealth managers.

Passion for Wealth Management and Financial Planning

Regardless of the profession, passion is revealed through work. When someone really cares about their work, it becomes evident, and vice versa. If you wish to derive genuine value from your financial advisor, hire someone who has an absolute passion for what you expect them to do.

Remember, the methodologies, products, laws, and standards in the financial world are subject to constant change. Try to find someone who remains current on all the facets of the industry, not because they have to, but because they’re eager to know about them and improve the way they serve their clients.

On the other hand, someone who lacks passion for their work often struggles and lags behind in staying up-to-date with industry developments.

These differences between a passionate and non-passionate advisor can be the difference between their success and failure. When your ultra-high net worth is at stake, you don’t want to take any chances, do you?

Recognizes the Need to Align Interests

The best ultra high net worth financial advisor, or any advisor for that matter, is one who prioritizes their clients’ interests over their own. They should understand that aligning their interests with their clients’ interests is important, otherwise the relationship won’t be productive, nor will it last very long. For instance, the relationship won’t work out well if an advisor suggests their clients purchase insurance policies that offer more coverage than they need or policies that are irrelevant for the client.

Aligning interests is particularly important with regards to investment management fees the advisor charges as well as the type of investment products they recommend. Understandably, it’s not a very good practice to charge fees higher than necessary. For example, if the normal practice is to charge 0.5% for assets under management, it wouldn’t be fair for an advisor to charge 2% for the same service.

Hence, consider hiring someone who is willing to help you without draining you of your hard-earned money. But at the same time, make sure you compensate them fairly.

Deeply Analytical

A comprehensive financial plan covers many areas, including cash flow planning, tax planning, retirement planning, estate planning, investment planning, and insurance planning. Thus, the person you call your financial advisor should not only possess in-depth knowledge about areas like investment, taxes, estates, and insurance, but they should also have a somewhat analytical mind to tackle each of these areas to your benefit.

Experienced financial advisors understand that every aspect of a financial plan depends on the relationship between risk and returns. You should hire an advisor who structures an investment portfolio with this in mind and reallocate the assets accordingly. With analytical thinking, they should be able to develop and evaluate a portfolio based on several metrics, such as strategic asset allocation, standard deviation, drawdown, tactical asset allocation, and beta.

Holistic Thinking

High-quality financial advice is not merely about stocks and bonds or developing a good investment portfolio. A good suite of financial advice should be much broader than that, encompassing insurance, taxation, retirement planning, estate planning, and so on.

Therefore, your financial advisor should have a holistic view of all these aspects and be able to offer insightful counseling in all these areas. They should be able to assess whether your investments are tax efficient or not, decide which insurance policy is right for you, trade for you on your full range of investments, and make sure that the decisions you’re making are aligned with your goals.

Be Transparent about Pricing

When you begin connecting with your shortlisted financial advisors, some of them will say they don’t charge any fee. This doesn’t mean they offer their services for free. They’re probably earning by charging a percentage of client’s investment asset value or a bulky commission on the funds they help their client buy. On top of that, there can be other hidden charges and add-on fees.

Different fee structures suit different scenarios, but it’s important that your advisor is totally transparent on the fees in the first meeting and help you understand them easily. If you have no idea what to expect from pricing for financial advisory services, schedule a video consultation with our wealth managers.

Highly Responsive

Choose an advisor who remains on their toes and responds fast to any sudden changes in your plans. For example, timing is particularly important in the case of investment decisions, in which any amount of delay could mean a lost opportunity. When conducting financial planning, a good advisor will immediately plug in and assess the effect of your new plan to, for instance, buy a second home or spend $60,000 for your child’s higher education.

They should also help you conduct an annual review to evaluate whether your risk tolerance has increased or decreased due to a major life change.

While the aforementioned characteristics should help you find an experienced financial advisor, you may want to check out our more comprehensive guide titled Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Best Financial Advisor for Families worth $5 Million to $500 Million.

You might also be wondering whether you need a financial advisor for managing your ultra high net worth. Learning why the wealthy have financial advisors can address this concern.

Why the Wealthy Have Financial Advisors

Some of the top reasons why the wealthy have financial advisors include:

To Achieve Specific Financial Goals

Wealthy people who have long-term plans for their assets seek professional help from financial advisors. Your advisors not only provide you with in-depth insights into the financial market but also suggest the best decisions you can make based on those insights. They will help you ensure that everything you do strongly aligns with your long-term financial goals.

Peace of Mind

Finance is a complex subject, and being wealthy makes things even more complicated. By hiring a financial advisor, high- or ultra-high net worth individuals get peace of mind, knowing that their money is being managed and protected by experts who’ve spent years in the financial industry and stay updated on the latest trends. The wealthy also understand that financial markets are highly volatile, and a financial advisor will cut through the hype to help them advance in the right direction. To learn more about how a financial advisor provides peace of mind regarding your finances, schedule a video consultation with our wealth managers at your convenience.

To Build a Powerful Investment Portfolio

Remember, investing is about much more than maximizing growth. It’s also about diversifying assets to ensure protection against potential downsides. Recognizing this fact, the wealthy know that a financial advisor will conduct a detailed assessment of their risk tolerance before suggesting investment options. The super-rich also know that their advisor won’t allow them to put all their eggs in one basket.

The advisor will help them diversify across asset classes, product providers, accounts, and individual funds. To obtain an idea about how experienced financial advisors help grow their clients’ investment portfolios and improve portfolio performance, read our guide titled 5 Critical Shifts For Maximizing Portfolio Growth Strategies – For Families Worth $5 Million To $500 Million and our Performance Guide.

High-Quality Advice

Many of the wealthy are also well aware of the fact that financial advisors have insightful advice for high net worth clients in all areas of their financial planning. While the wealthy already have a lot in their mind about how they want to manage their wealth and what decisions they should make, that’s not enough. A financial advisor offers counseling on financial goal-setting, managing cash flow, managing debt, retirement planning, estate planning, managing emergency funds, insurance coverage, and more.

Conclusion

This was our take on the best ultra high net worth advisors. Not only should you now be in a much better position to hire a good financial advisor, but you should also have developed an idea about how to make the most of an advisor.

If you’re a high net worth individual looking for an experienced financial advisor, reach out to Pillar Wealth Management, which specializes in serving investors with $5 million to $500 million in liquid assets. Our wealth managers will take care of everything from the planning stage to investment decisions, and saving on taxes to estate planning, and everything else you need. To have an idea about the quality of services we offer, schedule a video meeting with our wealth managers today!

Authors

Hutch Ashoo

Chris Snyder

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.