Top Wealth Management Firm for Rich Individuals – PillarWM

Pillar Wealth Management is an independent wealth management firm that exclusively serves high net worth and ultra-high net worth and families. Our team of wealth managers works with clients who have between $5 million and $500 million worth of liquid assets to help them accomplish their financial goals in the best possible way. Using our extensive knowledge, industry and market research, and a combined experience of more than six decades, we formulate personalized financial strategies that best meet our clients’ needs. To start working on your customized financial plan, click here to schedule a free consultation with one of our wealth managers.

The World’s Top 10 Wealth Management Firms by AUM

According to ADV Ratings, the following companies are the 10 largest wealth management firms for 2022.

1. UBS Wealth Management ($2 trillion)

UBS is the world’s largest wealth manager, operates in over 40 countries, and has more than 23,000 employees. Its business divisions are Global Wealth Management, Personal & Corporate Banking, Asset Management, and Investment Bank. It offers financial advice to wealthy individuals and families around the world.

UBS utilizes Wealth Way to turn your aspirations into a strategy, starting by discovering your goals, who matters to you, your aspirations for your legacy, and your priorities and concerns.

Given that information, a UBS financial advisor will build a plan focused on three strategies — liquidity, longevity, and legacy.

The UBS Wealth Way framework is centered on who you are as an individual or professional.

2. Edward Jones ($1.3 trillion)

Edward Jones, founded in 1922, is a financial services firm headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. It operates through its branch network of more than 15,000 locations and 19,000 financial advisors.

Edward Jones has approx. eight million clients, focusing on individuals and small business owners. Penny Pennington, the managing partner of the Jones Financial Companies, is the only woman to lead a major US brokerage. The company was ranked among the “100 best companies to work for” for the 22^nd time in 2021.

Edward Jones Advisory Solutions allows the client to delegate wealth management decisions to a team of Edward Jones research analysts.

3. Credit Suisse ($1.25 trillion)

Credit Suisse was founded in 1856 and is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. Credit Suisse has over 7,000 employees in the US and hubs in New York and Raleigh.

The bank’s wealth management division offers holistic, tailored advisory services to high- and ultra-high-net-worth individuals and asset managers. It requires an account balance of at least 50,000 euros.

Its products include investments, tax planning, philanthropy, foreign exchange, lending, and real estate.

In 2015. the company sold its US wealth management division to Wells Fargo.

4. Morgan Stanley Wealth Management ($1.23 trillion)

Morgan Stanley began in 1935 on Wall Street. In 1997, the Morgan Stanley Group combined with Dean Witter to form the world’s largest securities firm.

Morgan Stanley offers various investment options, from its  E*TRADE digital trading platform to working with either an online advisor or a dedicated financial advisor with customized solutions.

Morgan Stanley’s wealth management services are offered through its LifeView Personal Wealth Advisor, creating a strategy to meet your financial goals. A LifeView Plan can cost up to $10,000 for assets in the plan valued at over $5 million.

5. Bank of America Global Wealth & Investment Management ($1.22 trillion)     

Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch in 2009. Its Global Wealth and Investment Management division (GWIM) holds $1.6 trillion in AUM, with Merrill Lynch contributing $1.3 trillion. The bank has more than 200,000 employees.

Bank of America offers wealth management through Merrill Lynch (a registered broker-dealer) and Bank of America Private Bank. Merrill’s advisors build customized investment portfolios that align with the client’s financial situation. The services provided include lifestyle planning, tax consulting, investment management, trusts & estates, strategic philanthropy, and banking.

6. J.P. Morgan Private Bank ($677 billion)

JP Morgan Private Bank is the largest private bank in the US and has offices in major cities around the country.

JP Morgan Private Bank is a single source for advice in managing taxes, business strategies, estate planning, and charitable giving; its financial specialists deliver comprehensive wealth management. Its strategies are either tax-smart, thematic, or alternative.

For its banking solutions, JPMorgan Private Bank provides customer options in lending, including life insurance premiums, real estate, fine art, and aircraft. Its banking services are both personal and digital.

7. Goldman Sachs ($558 billion)

Goldman Sachs, founded in 1869, has its headquarters in New York City. It offers wealth management, asset management, and banking services to individuals, corporations, and institutions. It has 40,000 employees in offices across the US, Europe, and Asia.

The firm started to manage pension funds in 1988; it managed Microsoft’s IPO, generating $61 million, and it now has a real estate division.

Goldman Sachs Private Wealth Management advisors build customized portfolios for their clients and provide trust and estate planning. The firm offers lines of credit, lending, and philanthropic education.

8. Charles Schwab ($506 billion)

Charles Schwab was founded in 1971 and was purchased by Bank of America in 1983, but the owner bought the company back in 1987.

Charles Schwab focuses its Wealth Advisory on the client, centering its wealth management on the client’s goals, with a dedicated advisor backed by a team of experts and a strategy that evolves with the client’s life changes.

Charles Schwab’s dedication to quality is reflected in its policy of refunding fees and commissions if the client is not completely satisfied.

Charles Schwab Wealth Advisor has an account minimum of $1 million, with fees starting at 0.80% of asset value.

Charles Schwab acquired TD Ameritrade in 2020.

9. Citi Private Bank ($500 billion)

Citi Private Bank, a subsidiary of Citigroup, has 60 offices in 23 countries. Its private banking services are offered to over 14,000 ultra-high-net-worth individuals, including 25% of the world’s billionaires. Citi’s services aim to protect and grow the wealth of the firm’s clients worldwide. Its services are customized and focus on clients with an average net worth of $100 million.

10. BNP Paribas Wealth Management ($424 billion)

BNP Paribas Wealth Management is a French banking group that has 6,800 professionals in Europe, Asia, and the US, ranking the bank first in the Eurozone.

BNP Paribas Wealth Management provides a one-stop shop for the financial needs of wealthy individuals and entrepreneurs. One option is for discretionary portfolio management, where clients delegate their portfolios to the BNP teams. At BNP Paribas Wealth Management, clients benefit from their advisor’s guidance on over 850 international stocks in the USA, Asia, and Europe.

What Are Wealth Management Firms?

Wealth management firms are financial firms that provide comprehensive financial and investment management services to their clients. The wealth managers at these firms manage complex financial issues and coordinate financial experts on behalf of their clients.

The wealth managers at Pillar Wealth Management will help you manage, secure, and build your money and assets according to your life goals. We can:

• Evaluate your current financial situation and investment portfolio.

• Understand the financial goals you want to achieve using a comprehensive line of questioning.

• Develop a plan that allows you to accomplish all your financial goals strategically.

• Enhance your financial circumstances by optimizing your investment portfolio performance. For more information on how we can help you attain the highest investment performance, read our guide Improving Portfolio Performance.

• Secure your investment portfolio from market volatility and losses.

• Conduct a comprehensive asset allocation analysis to come up with the best strategy.

• Help you plan for retirement by choosing the best financial instruments such as insurance policies, etc.

Type of Top Wealth Management Firm Services?

1. Investment Management
2. Retirement Planning
3. Risk Management
4. Estate Planning
5. Tax Management

By now, you have a fair understanding that wealth managers help you effectively manage your wealth. However, that’s an extremely superficial view of what wealth managers do and the kind of services they offer.

So, in this section, we will take a detailed look at the type of top wealth management firm services.

1. Investment Management

Investment management forms the basis of high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals’ financial plans. Whether you’re able to attain your financial goals and how successfully you attain them all boils down to how intelligently you plan and execute your investment. Estate planning, retirement planning, tax planning all of them link back to your investment portfolio.

Given how important investment management is for your financial health, you really cannot experiment with it. Hence, this is one service that you can get from the top wealth management firm. Wealth managers have significant experience when it comes to creating and managing investment portfolios, which helps them make the most appropriate decisions about it.

These financial advisors won’t just work towards generating short-term gains but will have a much longer outlook. They will devise intelligent investment plans that allow you to enjoy steady and high returns for years to come. If you want to do everything possible to maximize your investment performance, read this guide and learn about the five paradigm shifts you need to make.

2. Retirement Planning

Planning for retirement is an essential activity that every high net worth and ultra-high net worth investor has to take up at some stage in their life. Everyone looks forward to spending a stress-free retirement where they live off and enjoy the wealth they have accumulated in the past years. However, if you don’t have a comprehensive retirement plan in place, you might not be able to sustain the lavish and costly lifestyle you presently enjoy.

At Pillar Wealth Management, we offer retirement income planning services where we develop an appropriate retirement plan for you. We guide you about the investments you need to pick that will create a passive stream of income and give recommendations on how you can maintain your current standard of living without running out of money.

We highly recommend you start with retirement planning as early as possible, as this will ensure you have sufficient time to execute your plan. To get started with your retirement planning, click here to book a free meeting with one of our team members.

3. Risk Management

You spend a good number of years building your wealth and accumulating assets with a particular goal in mind. But one day, you end up losing all of what you have collected because of some unexpected market crash. Sounds like a challenging situation to be in, right?

Well, this is precisely why wealth managers at top wealth management firms don’t just focus on building your wealth but safeguarding it as well. Keep in mind that there’s no warning before a disaster strikes, and there’s no one who can predict what’s going to happen in the future. 

Hence, wealth managers offer comprehensive risk management services to ensure that your wealth stays secure. Such professionals will ensure that your assets are properly diversified and allocated so that you can cope with market volatility. They might even set up long-term illness insurances and liability insurances to protect your wealth and assets.

4. Estate Planning

When you have a family, it’s not sufficient for you to achieve financial serenity in your life. Rather, you need to ensure that you leave this legacy behind for your family members as well.

So, when you think of the type of top wealth management firm services, this is it. The best wealth management firms don’t just help you reach financial serenity, but they even help you with estate planning so that your beneficiaries can enjoy this financial serenity too.

For individuals who have $5 million and above worth of assets, estate planning can be quite tricky and complicated. We elaborate on some of the problems associated with estate planning in our book The Art of Protecting Ultra-High Net Worth Portfolios and Estates – Strategies For Families Worth $25 Million To $500 Million.

Hence, these high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals opt for wealth managers to avail estate planning services. These financial experts devise comprehensive estate plans which ensure that all their clients’ wealth reaches their intended beneficiaries without any unnecessary tax burden.

5. Tax Management

Tax management is another essential service offered by the top wealth management firms. Plus, when you’re a wealthy individual, you probably don’t even have the time to carry out this monotonous task.

Nevertheless, to make this process easy and straightforward for yourself, you can avail the tax management services that wealth management firms provide. In fact, wealth managers can even make your investment portfolio more tax-efficient and help you save potentially hundreds and thousands of dollars. Who doesn’t want to cut down their tax bill?

How Much Money Must You Have Before Hiring A Wealth Management Firm?

When you join the millionaires club, you might think when’s the best time for you to hire a wealth management firm. The simple answer to this depends on your current net worth. If you do a quick Google search on “How much money must you have before hiring a wealth management firm?” you might get answers that lie in the range of $1 million – $5 million.

At Pillar Wealth Management, we offer dedicated wealth management services to families and individuals who have liquid investable assets ranging from $5 million to $500 million. As opposed to other financial institutions, we only take a limited number of clients each year. This allows us to make sure that we provide the type of excellent service our valued clientele deserves.

We don’t believe in giving standardized, cookie-cutter plans to our client base. Rather, we devise personalized wealth management and investment strategies to help you successfully attain your financial objectives. Click here to speak to our wealth managers and learn how they can help you manage your wealth.

How to Find the Best Top Wealth Management Firm? 

1. Get Referrals from Family Members and Friends
2. Conduct A Comprehensive Background Check
3. Schedule A Meeting with A Wealth Manager

Once you become eligible to avail the services of a wealth management firm, the biggest question on your mind will be how to find the best top wealth management firm?

Well, here is a list of steps you need to follow to find and pick the best wealth management firm for yourself. If you need detailed information about the topic, you can simply read our ultimate guide on choosing the best financial advisor.

Step #1 – Get Referrals from Family Members and Friends

The easiest way to find a competent wealth management firm is by asking your family members and friends for recommendations. This can be extremely helpful if they are wealthy individuals such as yourself. The high net worth and ultra-high individuals in your circle may be able to connect you with wealth management firms they have worked with in the past.

Step #2 – Conduct A Comprehensive Background Check

After you have collected a few wealth management firms’ names, you need to carry out a comprehensive background check. Some things that you need to pay special attention to include:

Credentials:Checking credentials allows you to know if the wealth managers at the firmare adequately qualified to handle your financial affairs. When choosing a wealth management firm, opt for one where the wealth managershave cleared their CFP (Certified Financial Planner) exam. You can also check if a financial advisor is a member of The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA), which requires ongoing education that goes beyond the basic credentials.

Experience: The experience of a wealth manager is a huge testament to their skills and abilities. Hence, to differentiate a good wealth manager from an average one, you should ignore what they say they can do for you. Instead, it would be best if you focused on what they’ve already accomplished in the past. Specific skills, such as asset allocation strategies, are only polished through experience, so you need to look for a wealth manager who is adequately experienced in their field.

Client Base: You should only opt for wealth management firms that provide exclusive services to high net worth and ultra-high net individuals. This category of wealthy clients requires a complex set of services, extensive knowledge about the industry and market trends, and a high level of expertise.

Step #3 – Schedule A Meeting with A Wealth Manager

Most wealth managers allow you to meet with them before you officially recruit them. Use this opportunity to ask any questions that you may have? For instance, you can ask them about their business model, which can help you identify any potential conflict of interest. You can find a complete list of questions to ask a financial advisor in our guide for investors with $10 million or more.

Asking specific questions can allow you to determine how the wealth manager communicates, along with their area of expertise, and if they’re right for you. The key is to ensure you comprehend their responses, and in case you don’t, feel free to ask follow-up questions.

Last Few Words

At Pillar Wealth Management, we have been providing wealth management services to high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals for more than thirty years. Based on our extensive experience and expertise, we believe that we are the top wealth management firm that you can opt for. To speak to our team of wealth managers, click here to set up an absolutely free consultation with us.

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