8 Keys to Meeting the Needs of Ultra-Wealthy Clients

During a recent interview with ThinkAdvisor, Paulina Mejia, the newly appointed national fiduciary counsel at Fiduciary Trust International, emphasized that ultra-high-net-worth clients are, at least in one important sense, not very different from the typical advisor’s middle-class or mass affluent clients.

At the core of the UHNW client’s goal-setting and financial planning process, Mejia said, are the same emotions and psychological motivations that drive essentially any person who seeks out the support of a financial professional. Put simply, they want to know that their wealth is being protected and being put to good use — whatever that means to them.

While this central fact about highly wealthy clients is an important concept to grasp, it doesn’t mean the UHNW space resembles the middle-class and mass affluent markets in all respects. In fact, according to a trio of experts who gave a presentation last week at BNY Mellon Pershing’s Insite conference in Orlando, the task of winning and retaining UHNW clients is its own special ballgame.

The session featured Chris Castellano, director of wealth strategies at GM Advisory Group; Stephen Brooks, vice president of business development with the American Endowment Foundation; and Shadia Kirk, vice president of product management with BNY Mellon Pershing.

According to the panel, one key to success in the UHNW space is an ability to connect the client’s asset management and financial planning needs with various other areas in their life, from charitable giving and life insurance to specialty art curation and travel planning.

Whether the advisor can deliver all of this internally or needs to bring in outside experts matters far less than their ability to connect all the dots and help save the client time and hassle.

But perhaps the most powerful UHNW client acquisition and retention strategy, Castellano, Brooks and Kirk said, is demonstrating an ability to bring the different generations of a client’s family together to ensure wealth goals are set and executed in the context of two, three and potentially four (or more) generations.

The experts said this work may sound easy, but in practice, there are both technical and behavioral hurdles to jump. True intergenerational planning, they explained, requires knowledge of estate planning matters and tax issues, as well as an ability to navigate complex, potentially thorny family dynamics.

Ultimately, the trio argued, advisors with the right skill set can deliver a tremendous amount of value to the UHNW client and their family. See the slideshow for eight top tips from the panel for advisors looking to break into the UHNW space.

[Editor's note: An update was made to tip No. 6 to reflect the fact that while foundations can make gifts to DAFs, the IRS does not allow DAFs to make gifts to family foundations.]

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