Information revealed early this 12 months by Cerulli Associates exhibits “advanced” and concierge-style companies that cater to particular consumer wants have gotten more and more essential for advisors in search of to compete for ultra-high-net-worth shoppers.
Entry to such companies outweighs private relationship elements with regards to bringing shoppers on board, in response to Cerulli’s examine. On the similar time, 35% of high-net-worth people polled stated they’d begun a relationship with their major advisory supplier due to both the companies or the consumer expertise on provide, up from 28% who stated this in 2017.
Valerie Wong Fountain, head of household workplace sources accomplice and platform administration at Morgan Stanley, informed ThinkAdvisor in a latest interview that these findings match intently along with her latest expertise on the job. Actually, Wong Fountain’s function contains main the agency’s division devoted to this want, Signature Entry Way of life Advisory, and he or she argued that the strategic significance of her group’s work for Morgan Stanley’s total success within the UHNW area shouldn’t be underestimated.
Wong Fountain described Signature Entry as a bridge between Morgan Stanley’s monetary planning companies and a well-connected community of execs and third-party service suppliers who specialize within the distinct wants of this consumer base. These vary from help with well being and safety points to journey and concierge companies; asset administration for tangibles like actual property, jewellery, plane or yachts; government teaching; bookkeeping and bill-paying; elder care companies; and extra.
“Signature Entry serves because the connection between shoppers’ monetary plans and the challenges that contact each facet of their daily lives,” Wong stated within the interview.
Listed below are some highlights from our dialog:
THINKADVISOR: You’ve virtually 20 years of expertise at Morgan Stanley. How did you come to be main this a part of the enterprise? Had been you all the time targeted on the UHNW section?
Valerie Wong Fountain: No, really not. I grew up in California and I went to the Wharton Faculty at UPenn, the place I studied finance and accounting. Naturally, it was a subsequent step after that to go to Wall Avenue and work for Morgan Stanley. It was a very fast-paced surroundings, and I obtained to interact with extremely good and fascinating individuals.
I joined initially within the gross sales and buying and selling enterprise earlier than shifting via a couple of completely different roles, together with being an ETF product supervisor. I additionally traded on and ran our worldwide ETF buying and selling desk, and I traded on our complete return fairness swaps desk as nicely.
From there, I used to be given the chance to interview to work for James Gorman. On the time, he was nonetheless the co-president of Morgan Stanley. They had been in search of a right-hand man or ladies to help James — a little bit of a nebulous job description admittedly — however I ended up getting the function.
I got here to see fairly rapidly that lots of the traits that make individuals profitable on the buying and selling ground additionally apply to agency management and administration. A giant a part of it’s actually about with the ability to assume rapidly in your ft and with the ability to execute and ship on the agency’s goals. So, I grew to become James’ first chief of employees and I stayed on with him after he was introduced to succeed John Mack as CEO.
Afterward, I made a cease as a co-head of our personal capital markets enterprise, the place I targeted on elevating personal types of capital, after which later I used to be requested to maneuver into this function. That was in 2016.
Earlier than we converse extra about Signature Entry, are you able to inform us a little bit extra about what the expertise was like working for James Gorman through the interval after the monetary disaster?
It’s fascinating. I’d say that, popping out of the monetary disaster, the therapeutic interval did take plenty of time — extra years than many business leaders had first anticipated. Right here at Morgan Stanley, I’d say that there was only a great quantity of gratitude to John Mack for the way in which he guided us via the disaster.
There was a sense that he had accomplished a lot to assist save Morgan Stanley and the agency, and when James grew to become the brand new CEO, we actually had been trying to keep on that sense of optimism. Popping out of that interval, there have been alternatives to proceed to construct on and make clear our core technique.