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WEALTHREPORT FAMILY
EXCLUSIVE INTELLIGENCE FOR THE FAMILY OFFICE COMMUNITY
INTERVIEW:
HighTower On Connectng With Clients And Winning
New Ones - The Lerner Groups Educaton Strategy
TOM BURROUGHES
GROUP EDITOR
7 October 2014
Educatng your clients is a smart way to keep them on board for the long haul, including during those rough moments
when markets go sour.
It sounds like an obvious point, but at The Lerner Group at HighTower, regular engagement with clients is crucial. The
US wealth management house provides regular opportunites for clients to learn about the frms thinking, while also
encouraging debate. This, it believes, is not only important for client retenton, but is vital to bring in new clients too.
This publicaton recently spoke to Walter Gondeck, partner and managing director at The Lerner Group at
HighTower - a member of the partnership which currently has 46 teams. Asked about how the frm engages with
clients on a day-to-day basis, the point about educatng clients emerged as a big concern for The Lerner Group.
Gondeck said the frm holds monthly seminars for clients/friends of clients (about 50-70 people). An educated client
is a beter long-term client, he told Family Wealth Report.
HighTower has been staging these seminars for the past 10 years a period spanning the real estate market bubble,
the 2008 crash and subsequent and sometmes uneven recovery. Anyone atending such seminars has been on a sharp
learning journey.
Wealth managers sometmes will say of how they win new clients through word-of-mouth referrals. What The Lerner
Group does with its seminar events is to ensure that non-clients, when they come along to an event are so impressed
by what they see that the logical next step is to sign up.
The idea of working to educate clients and their ofspring is hardly unique to The Lerner Group, of course. GenSpring,
Threshold Group and Wells Fargo, for example, have made moves in this area. The trend is part of an industry shif
away from focusing purely on the fnancial side of wealth planning, with advisors and investors increasingly recognizing
the importance of addressing the sofer elements of wealth.
HighTower has certainly been busy lately. In early September, HighTower transitoned its 46th team with the
additon of Wolf-Collins Wealth Management in New Jersey. In August, HighTower added the Baltmore, MD-based
401(k) practce Fiduciary Plan Advisors to its Network aimed at breakaway advisors. (To see more about that business
arm, see here.)
The Lerner Group is part of umbrella organizaton HighTower, which also has a number of other elements in the stable.
HighTower was launched in 2007.
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Another way in which HighTower likes to engage with clients is to make it easy for them to see and understand
decisions managers make about the individual investments and securites that are bought and sold.
An important diferentator is that The Lerner Group at HighTower does asset management in-house and doesnt
outsource it, Gondeck said. Depending on the kind of requirements for income that a client has, The Lerner Group can
explain what sort of asset allocaton and degree of risk needs to be run to deliver it. If this is not possible at a risk level
that a client is unhappy with, that is usually a sign that the requirements are unrealistc and need to be changed, he
said.
There are three broad asset management models for clients at The Lerner Group: long-term growth; high-dividend
equites and fxed income.
We have an ongoing discussion with clients about the three models, Gondeck said.
The teaching mentality also extends to how best to bring in the next generaton, he said.
Many of our clients wish to educate their family on investments and fnancial literacy and have found that
establishing family foundatons has provided an appropriate avenue to get the children and grandchildren involved in
understanding how investments need to be handled to reach an objectve. For those of our clients who do not have
family foundatons, we encourage them to begin annual gifing to their heirs. We can educate families on long-term
investng decision making and building toward their retrement, Gondeck said.
In summary, educatng clients is a central part of what The Lerner Group is all about.
October 2014 - This artcle is reproduced with the permission of Clearview Financial Media Ltd, publishers of
FamilyWealthReport (www.familywealthreport.com).
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