Wealth Management Professionals

Selecting Scottsdale Wealth Management Professionals

It is a privilege that very few people, if any, will get in their lives to be entrusted with guiding you financially and helping you look after your financial well-being.

Wealth management professionals, similar to doctors, attorneys, accountants or other service professionals, are all a bit like icebergs, with 10 percent of their attributes above water and visible for you to see and the remaining 90 percent of their attributes below the surface and invisible to you.

There are always lots of differences between best-in-class, run-of-the-mill, and bottom-of-the-barrel. Discerning if wealth management professionals can truly provide the wise counsel, good judgement, leadership, technical competence and managerial responsibility you seek is not easy, but it is not impossible either.

Product Guidance is Not Competent Wealth Counsel

During the past 30 years, access to financial markets has been successfully democratized with the help of technology and the internet. Anyone can now open an account at a variety of discount and retail brokerage firms and gain access to well-constructed, low-cost investment products coupled with product guidance and account service help. But call-center employees offering product guidance and account service help is not the same as wealth management professionals solving the complex and deeply nuanced problems we all have with preserving, protecting, growing and transferring our wealth.

Competent Wealth Counsel is Multi-Disciplinary

The enduring truth of wealth management is that successfully preserving, protecting, growing and transferring wealth is a multi-disciplinary challenge of continual problem-solving. Like so many other aspects of modern life and career fields, wealth management has become much more complex. The complexity requires the advanced education and training, deeper experience, and lifelong career commitments of wealth management professionals.

Competent Wealth Counsel Helps Solve Problems

When you research and interview wealth management professionals, you are looking for someone who is prepared and capable of helping you solve complex and nuanced problems. Naturally then, your search and selection process should focus on finding the talent and resources you’ll need to solve your current and anticipated problems. Start by identifying the subject areas of the problems you want addressed now and in the future.

  • Financial Planning
  • Risk Management
  • Retirement Planning
  • Tax Planning
  • Investment Management
  • Special Needs Planning
  • Trust and Estate Planning
  • Trust Advisory Services

Wealth Management Professional Breadth and Depth-of-Field

The wealth management body of knowledge covers more than 100 subject matter areas, each discipline of which represents an extensive body of knowledge and can easily develop into a career path of its own. As a result, managing wealth becomes a multi-disciplinary endeavor. Look for wealth management professionals whose education, professional training and experience combines breadth and depth-of-field.

Wealth Management Professional Integrity and Commitment

There are markers for integrity and commitment. Career wealth management professionals will subject themselves to the highest legal standards of fiduciary client care and adhere to professional codes of ethics that create career jeopardy for bad acts of faith. Look for the standards to which they are willing to adhere. Look for wealth management professionals who adhere to these standards of professional conduct.

Look for Adherence to a Fiduciary Standard

A fiduciary stands in a special relationship of trust, confidence and responsibility with another person. The duties of a fiduciary include loyalty to the client and reasonable care with regard to the client’s assets. All of a fiduciary’s actions are to be undertaken in the best interest of the client. A fiduciary must avoid self-dealing and minimize and disclose conflicts of interest to the client. Look for wealth management professionals who adhere to a fiduciary standard. Intelligent Capitalworks is certified to a fiduciary standard.

Rate Wealth Management Professionals

Managing wealth is an advanced-level game that requires competent wealth management professionals – those with a Level 7 rating and above on our Professional Knowledge and Practice Experience Rating exercise in our Selecting a Wealth Management Professional guide (see pages 6 – 17).

A-level wealth management professionals will be independently board-certified in more than one of 10 allied disciplines of wealth management and have core competencies that rate at least a Level 7 on nearly every topic in our Professional Knowledge and Practice Experience Rating Exercise.

Scottsdale Financial Advisors and Fiduciary Wealth Management

Our career wealth management professionals serve each client as a team, with a passion for excellence, intellectual honesty, integrity and leadership.  Learn more about becoming a client at Intelligent Capitalworks.

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