Many years ago, our firm decided not to attempt to be “all things to all people”. We have, rather adopted a selective process that allows us to be more things to fewer people. We serve a select few families and small business owners in our community.
Provident looks the following 5 considerations in determining a relationship “fit” and before extending an invitation to a family. These 5 criteria are as follows:
1) Does your family have realistic goals? - In our first meeting, we will attempt to get to know you better and learn more about your goals, your vision of your future, your true purpose for wealth, and what is even more important to you than money. We want to know if you have realistic expectations, and if we share common values, philosophies and beliefs. We have learned over the years that this first meeting can help us both to determine if we are a “fit” in working together. We only want to be part of success stories. When someone is not realistic with what they want and expect, we consider it in our best interest to pass on the relationship.
2) Chemistry - Can we work well together, or said another way, do we mesh? A client/family advisor relationship is built to last for a lifetime and possibly into future generations. We will have several initial meetings where we will collaborate in building your financial plan, and then we will work alongside you through future planning and monitoring meetings. We coach our clients through chaotic and uncertain markets and economies that will require we work well together and that we share a certain “chemistry”. We enjoy working alongside the families that we serve. We believe that chemistry is an important underpinning to any successful client/coach working relationship.
3) Can we bring value to your life? - Not very often, but occasionally we meet people who have things so well structured and organized that we would not find sufficient cause for you to make changes with your financial plans and investments. Our team needs to be able to see that we can bring demonstrative, significant and life changing value to your family before we would recommend you becoming a client of our firm. Comprehensive fiduciary based financial planning covers a variety of financial disciplines. Together we can explore our firm’s capacity to bring value to your family.
4) Motivated – Are you motivated to take action to change the course of your future? We serve an affluent community and yet we find that in our own community about 50% of the residents do not have a basic Will. This is a baseline financial planning document that every individual should have, however many people have been “meaning to get around to it” for years. This reveals that procrastination often derails even the best peoples plans. We need to know that this is the right time for you. We do not want to make good progress toward your goals and then deal with procrastination and/or bad timing. If next year is a better time for you then let’s revisit things at a future date. We only accept client relationships where a family is motivated to take action now in an effort to secure a confident financial future.
5) NetWorth – The families that we serve in our community tend to be successful in their chosen careers and have typically accumulated assets that if properly structured, supervised and managed can last well beyond their life expectancy. We reserve the right to evaluate net worth requirements on a case by case basis. We also consider age and income. For example, we may accept a client relationship for a younger family with limited assets when we see evidence that they have the capacity and opportunity for an abundant future should they apply best practices with investments, discipline, cash flow and asset management.
Exceptions: - At Provident we make exceptions to our client requirements at our sole discretion. For example, you may be a client of our firm with a friend or family member who truly needs help with planning, but may lack sufficient assets to be considered. Because of your client relationship with our firm, we may accept someone who does not meet our net worth requirements, so long as they qualify with regards to all our other criteria.