FA Talks is an interview series where industry thinkers share their thoughts and perspectives on a variety of market trends and themes impacting indexing
Accelerated Wealth (AW) is one of the fastest-growing wealth management firms in Colorado, with 9 offices around the U.S. AW, a hybrid planning firm specializing in both insurance and investment-based planning, just celebrated its first decade in business, and has won The Colorado Springs Gazette’s “Best of Colorado Springs” for financial planner 5 years in a row. As it is one of the few advisory firms we are seeing that are combining fixed indexed annuities and index-based investment management, S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI) recently interviewed senior leadership at AW to learn more about how indexing plays a role in how they plan and manage retirement risk.
S&P DJI: Tell us what holistic wealth management means for Accelerated Wealth?
AW: We created a process meant to bring as much peace to our clients’ lives as possible. Through our Keys to the City client service model, our process begins with holistic financial planning. This process includes a full evaluation across various financial strategies such as social security, income planning, required minimum distributions, investment portfolio analysis, life insurance and annuity inventory, health insurance, property and casualty insurance, identity and cyber security protection, estate planning, wealth transfer, and asset protection. We take great pride in our focus on building financial plans as opposed to running a business that is financial product centric.
The second step of the Keys to the City process is referred to as family legacy. In this process, we focus in on the family unit of our client. We want to do everything we can to ensure that the legacy that our clients are leaving are a blessing, and do not turn into a curse. We offer training on personality preference and emotional intelligence, and we help create an understanding for our clients as it relates to who they are as investors. We find that by providing this type of training, the family unit naturally begins to improve in their communication, conflict management, and decision-making.
If a wealth management firm is going to speak to holistic planning, we believe there is a mandate to provide offerings that do not just focus on the mechanics of the financial plan itself, but must also provide offerings that equip the client to execute the plan behaviorally.
As it relates to the financial plan itself, we want to ensure that we are not biased in the financial instruments we utilize by our licensing or past experiences. We want to know that our advisors have the ability to choose from the entire universe of asset classes when building their clients’ plans.
