Traditional Wealth Management vs. Our Total Wealth Solution

The wealth management industry is notorious for focusing on gathering assets, rather than helping its clients build and grow their assets. 

Given this, we built our Total Wealth Solution with the goal of providing a more holistic approach to wealth management, where we remove the “asset gathering” incentives. We wanted to go deeper in our efforts to help Fortis clients with all aspects of their wealth, not simply their investment accounts. 

When clients think about their wealth, they don’t just think about their investment accounts – they also think about their 401(k), stock awards, homes, rental properties, debts, etc. We built the Total Wealth Solution with this in mind.

This approach has required us to become well-rounded problem solvers. If a client has unique issues – such as financing the purchase and construction of a new home while not uprooting the family – we want to help him or her solve it. If the client doesn’t understand why they end up owing so much money to the IRS each year, we can help them understand and calculate the amount that their employer is under-withholding on their stock vests. If the client is considering buying short-term rental properties we can run rental income estimates to help him or her decide whether the returns are worth the work.

In sum: the Total Wealth Solution is about helping clients increase their total wealth, not just their investment accounts. As a result, we also have a different billing model. Rather than the historical model of simply billing based on assets under management (AUM), Fortis charges a much lower percentage across a client’s entire net worth. 

We find that this method eliminates conflicts of interest, particularly as it relates to tech compensation and restricted stock units. Our clients don’t have to worry that if we recommend them to sell some of their stock vests that we are simply doing it to increase our AUM. Or when one of our clients wants to take money invested in their accounts to buy a rental or pay down a loan, they can feel comfortable they are getting the best advice for increasing their net worth over the long-term.

The Total Wealth Solution is a unique model built to address the unique needs of tech professionals. If you’d like to learn more, please setup a free initial consultation and our team is happy to answer any questions you have.