What Today’s Affluent Families Really Need From a Financial Advisor

Choosing the right financial advisor is about more than investment performance—it’s about finding a trusted partner who understands your family’s goals, challenges, and long-term vision. In this podcast, the team at Pennsylvania Capital Management discusses what today’s affluent families really need from an advisor, and why a fiduciary relationship can provide value far beyond managing your portfolio.

Lesley: [00:00:00] Welcome everyone to our webinar. I’m joined by Andrew Randisi and Christopher Mallon. Excuse me. Today we’re gonna talk about why clients join PCM. We’re gonna tell you a little bit more about PCM and why our clients like us. Chris, wanna start us off?

Chris: Sure, yeah. So why clients choose PCM.

I think where we can be a little bit different than other advisory firms out there is the amount of time we can and do dedicate to each of our clients. We’re a little bit different in a sense where you don’t have thousands of relationships hundreds of different families to work with, or thousands of different families to work with.

It’s about 200 or so. So we’re able to really get into the weeds and do a lot of heavy lifting for the families we work with, versus if there’s thousands of accounts someone’s in charge of they’re not, there’s not gonna be able to, have the scale to manage those relationships, I think as deeply as we can.

Kick it over to Andrew to see what he wants to add, Yeah.

Andrew: The, the other thing to also add to that would be is [00:01:00] it’s not just, we’re not just doing one thing for the clients, which would be investments. And I think that’s where really how we pick up new client relationships, from referrals

I’d say really that’s probably our biggest source of new clients is referrals from the current clients that love us the most. But we try to do, we try to do more than just the investments. We’re here to talk to you about whether it be a tax planning issue, estate planning, life insurance. Most of the time we’re not even really talking about investments that much.

It’s really more talk about your situation, your life, and your future goals.

Chris: Yeah. I think there’s very few projects we won’t take on. Anywhere it’s in the financial sphere, we will get involved with. Car buying, mortgage shopping, really the– we prefer to be the first call when anything like that comes up ’cause we usually have at least, at least, combined experience and then working with these clients over many years at different phases of their life have gone through those things many times over versus something [00:02:00] that might be a one-time thing for somebody as an individual.

We’ve done, dozens of times at this point. So I think that’s where we’re able to add some value. We’re really different, right? So we’re able to take the time and do those things.

Lesley: Yeah. Absolutely. I was just talking to some friends this past weekend, and several of them have advisors who only handle their investments.

That’s all they do. They manage their money. And they had questions about, when should we take Social Security, and what about pensions and- … taxes in retirement at all. And I said, “Ask your advisor.” And they’re like, “Our advisor doesn’t talk to us about that. They just talk to us about the investments.”

Whereas, so PCM does all of that. We manage your investments, and we talk to people about when to take Social Security all the time. That is a very common topic with many of our clients. Yeah. So we, we cover a, a broad range of topics with our clients.

Chris: Yeah. I’d say the, especially anything related to taxes, there are some, for a lot of firms, especially larger ones, that are not allowed to talk about tax planning at all or they’re [00:03:00] just don’t feel confident enough to even discuss it so they kick the can over to the accountant.

Whereas, everyone’s relationship with their accountant might be different. If someone has a, an accountant their tax preparer every year, th- they’re not necessarily gonna be in the weeds with all the financial things anyway whereas the advisor should, we think should be. So yeah, they were able to dive into more details even, with other family members who have similar situation have asked me a bunch of questions.

I was like, “Don’t you have somebody who does this?” And they’re like, “Oh yeah, but they don’t know or don’t, I don’t talk to them very often.” So it’s different companies have different models of their service level, and we say yes more than no for for both good and bad.

Lesley: Yeah. And I would say we’re very hands-on.

We meet with our clients, a vast majority of them, at least four times a year, sometimes more often. Yeah. And, we’ve got cl- The other day, Andrew helped a client purchase a new car. We do stuff that I think a lot of investment advisors don’t do, like Chris mentioned before.

And I think also, and Andrew you mentioned this, the vast majority of our [00:04:00] clients come from referrals. I think I can only count on one or two hands how many clients we have in, we got from something other than a referral. That’s definitely the, the major source of how clients come to us.

Yeah. Anything else either of you want to add about what makes PCM different?

Chris: I’ll just bring one thing about the investment side I think that makes us a little bit different is our… It’s the overall theme is where the flexibility. We’re not landlocked into any particular models.

We don’t outsource the investment management side into a few different things and then, “Oh, you’re this age and this i- risk tolerance. You go into this,” and that’s that. It’s really, we’ll, work in individual stock positions, which some advisors don’t do at all. We’ll look at different alternative strategies, which some other places may not look into.

If somebody’s more interested in real estate or, dividend things, we’ll, go into the weeds and tailor a custom portfolio that makes sense versus just, “Hey, this is your [00:05:00] age and, risk, and here’s your model, and that’s it.” And so we’ll get, we can go anywhere with that kind of stuff, too, which is a bit different.

Andrew: Yeah, and we’re all, we’re not in the product creation business. I always cringe a bit when I hear “My former advisor worked for insurance company XYZ.” ‘Causethere’s nothing worse than seeing a 35-year-old with a whole life cash policy.

Yeah. You don’t need, you don’t really need that. Or an annuity, that might not be the most suitable product for you given your stage of life or your family situation. We abide by a fiduciary standard. We, when we recommend investments, it’s within the client’s best interest, not our interest.

Lesley: Yes, absolutely. that’s a really good point, Andrew and when people ask me, “What do you look for in an advisor?” One of the things, first things I say is, “Find out how they get paid.” Because if they’re- Yeah … getting paid by s- something else, by some sort of company, an insurance company, a mutual fund company, something, then they might not be putting you where your best [00:06:00] interest is.

They’re putting you what matters to their paycheck. So at- … at PCM, all, the only way we get paid is by our clients, and that means that we are doing what’s best for you.

Chris: Yep. It’s about aligning incentives and expectations.

Andrew: Yeah. And I’d say one last thing is, what’s our goal at the end of the day, is to be the voice of reason in the room, and your problems, and your problem solver.

And if we’re not able to answer that problem directly or solve that, that situation that you have, we have a professional network of various estate attorneys tax C professionals, real estate agents, insurance people if you need, if there is an insurance situation that needs to be addressed, that can help solve the problem.

Lesley: Absolutely. Great. Thank you both very much for joining me today. I’m glad we talked about this so that folks out there can learn a little bit more about Pennsylvania Capital Management. Take care, everybody. Thank you. Bye-bye.