Knowledge published early this year by Cerulli Associates exhibits “complicated” and concierge-style providers that cater to particular consumer wants have gotten more and more necessary for advisors in search of to compete for ultra-high-net-worth shoppers.
Entry to such providers outweighs private relationship components in relation to bringing shoppers on board, in keeping with Cerulli’s examine. On the identical time, 35% of high-net-worth people polled mentioned that they had begun a relationship with their main advisory supplier due to both the providers or the consumer expertise on provide, up from 28% who mentioned this in 2017.
Valerie Wong Fountain, head of household workplace assets accomplice and platform administration at Morgan Stanley, advised ThinkAdvisor in a latest interview that these findings match intently together with her latest expertise on the job. Actually, Wong Fountain’s function consists of main the agency’s division devoted to this want, Signature Access Lifestyle Advisory, and she or he argued that the strategic significance of her workforce’s work for Morgan Stanley’s general success within the UHNW house shouldn’t be underestimated.
Wong Fountain described Signature Entry as a bridge between Morgan Stanley’s monetary planning providers and a well-connected community of execs and third-party service suppliers who specialize within the distinct wants of this consumer base. These vary from assist with well being and safety points to journey and concierge providers; asset administration for tangibles like actual property, jewellery, plane or yachts; government teaching; bookkeeping and bill-paying; elder care providers; and extra.
“Signature Entry serves because the connection between shoppers’ monetary plans and the challenges that contact each side of their everyday lives,” Wong mentioned within the interview.
Listed below are some highlights from our dialog:
THINKADVISOR: You might have virtually 20 years of expertise at Morgan Stanley. How did you come to be main this a part of the enterprise? Have been you all the time targeted on the UHNW phase?
Valerie Wong Fountain: No, really not. I grew up in California and I went to the Wharton Faculty at UPenn, the place I studied finance and accounting. Naturally, it was a subsequent step after that to go to Wall Avenue and work for Morgan Stanley. It was a very fast-paced surroundings, and I obtained to have interaction with extremely good and attention-grabbing individuals.
I joined initially within the gross sales and buying and selling enterprise earlier than shifting by a number of completely different roles, together with being an ETF product supervisor. I additionally traded on and ran our worldwide ETF buying and selling desk, and I traded on our complete return fairness swaps desk as effectively.
From there, I used to be given the chance to interview to work for James Gorman. On the time, he was nonetheless the co-president of Morgan Stanley. They have been searching for a right-hand man or ladies to assist James — a little bit of a nebulous job description admittedly — however I ended up getting the function.
I got here to see fairly shortly that lots of the traits that make individuals profitable on the buying and selling ground additionally apply to agency management and administration. A giant a part of it’s actually about with the ability to suppose shortly in your toes and with the ability to execute and ship on the agency’s targets. So, I grew to become James’ first chief of workers and I stayed on with him after he was introduced to succeed John Mack as CEO.
Afterward, I made a cease as a co-head of our non-public capital markets enterprise, the place I targeted on elevating non-public types of capital, after which later I used to be requested to maneuver into this function. That was in 2016.
Earlier than we communicate extra about Signature Entry, are you able to inform us somewhat extra about what the expertise was like working for James Gorman in the course of the interval after the monetary disaster?
It’s attention-grabbing. I might say that, popping out of the monetary disaster, the therapeutic interval did take a number of time — extra years than many trade leaders had first anticipated. Right here at Morgan Stanley, I might say that there was only a great quantity of gratitude to John Mack for the way in which he guided us by the disaster.
There was a sense that he had accomplished a lot to assist save Morgan Stanley and the agency, and when James grew to become the brand new CEO, we definitely have been trying to stick with it that sense of optimism. Popping out of that interval, there have been alternatives to proceed to construct on and make clear our core technique.
