Conclusion: Focusing On a Few Key Variables

Wealthy families face a plethora of challenges as they seek to identify the financial advisor that's best for their family. The advisory business has become ever more complex, offering a myriad of platforms, megafirms, and boutiques, conflicted and unconflicted models.

In this chapter I've tried to organize this cumbersome process by focusing on a few key variables that will profoundly affect a family's advisory experience. Those variables are open architecture versus closed architecture, discretionary versus nondiscretionary mandates, and bundled versus unbundled services. Within each of these choices, there are blended options—semi-open architecture, for example, or firms that bundle a few services but not all services.

Finally, I've given the example of the fictitious Schulberg family, and how its own evolution as a family affected its advisory needs.

A family without an advisor is like a ship without a rudder. But a family with a bad (incompetent, venal, conflicted) advisor is probably in even worse shape. Thus, difficult as the advisor selection process is, it needs to be taken seriously.