Goals-Based Wealth Management: An Integrated and Practical Approach to Changing the Structure of Wealth Advisory Practices

Conclusion

Dealing with the needs of wealthy individuals has been the focus on this book, and our principal area of attention has been in the area of asset management, because this is the area within which the proposed change—the adoption of a goals-based wealth management approach—is the most needed and arguably imminent. We certainly recognize and discussed the extent to which asset management is but one of many facets of the challenge. In conclusion, it is necessary to broaden the discussion to suggest that many of the principles we developed here apply to most other disciplines.

The most important such principle relates to leverage and thus to the need for wealth management advisors to adopt much more systematic processes. I hope one of the many insights discussed will have been that the asset management needs of wealthy individuals and families are varied and differ considerably from one individual to the next. This should serve to dispel the notion that systematization is possible in the world of asset management, but does not work when it comes to other disciplines, be they related to taxes, estate transfers, philanthropy, or family governance and education. Each and every discipline has its own axes around which client services must be structured, its own goals that can be specified, and its own processes that should be designed and executed.

The first critical element, which is common to all disciplines, relates to information. Client data must be acquired and managed. ...