Wealth management
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Wealth management is an investment advisory discipline that incorporates financial planning, investment portfolio management and a number of aggregated financial services. High net worth individuals, small business owners and families who desire the assistance of a credentialed financial advisory specialist call upon wealth managers to coordinate retail banking, estate planning, legal resources, tax professionals and investment management. Wealth managers can be independent certified financial planners, MBAs, CFA Charterholders or any credentialed professional money manager who works to enhance the income, growth and tax favored treatment of long-term investors. One must already have accumulated a significant amount of wealth for wealth management strategies to be effective.
Wealth management can be provided by large corporate entities, independent financial advisers or multi-licensed portfolio managers whose services are designed to focus on high-net worth customers. Large banks and large brokerage houses create segmentation marketing-strategies to sell both proprietary and nonproprietary products and services to investors designated as potential high net-worth customers. Independent wealth managers use their experience in estate planning, risk management,and their affiliations with tax and legal specialists, to manage the diverse holdings of high net worth clients. Banks and brokerage firms use advisory talent pools to aggregate these same services.
The events of 2008 in the financial markets caused investors to address concerns within their portfolios. "The past 18 months have challenged traditional thinking about investing and asset allocation, diversification, and correlation. For individual investors, risk tolerances have been tested, investment assumptions have been overturned, and fundamental truisms have been questioned." [1] For this reason wealth managers must be prepared to respond to a greater need by clients to understand, access, and communicate with advisers regarding their current relationship as well as the products and services that may satisfy future needs. Moreover, advisors must have sufficient information, from objective sources, regarding all products and services owned by their clients to answer inquiries regarding performance and degree of risk-at the client, portfolio and individual security levels. "This state of affairs poses a dilemma for wealth managers, who, for a generation, have adhered to the core principles of asset allocation and earned their keep by preaching the mantras of 'buy and hold', 'invest for the long term', and when things get tough, 'stay the course'.” [2]
Today wealth management advisors must have access to an objective content repository. This repository must contain a current and readily available profile of the clients holdings.