How Chicago Partners Adds Value as an Investment & Financial Advisor

By Nicholas Guido, CFP ®


"Great clients make us great advisors."

- Jim Hagedorn


September 12, 2019

How Chicago Partners Adds Value as an Investment & Financial Advisor

Every day, investors spend time trying to find the right advisor for them or their family, searching for someone that they can trust, someone who provides value, a robust service offering, low fees, and can help them achieve their goals. So often, advisory firms fall short of these goals. Chicago Partners takes a different approach – we strive to create a comprehensive, full-service offering for its clients and their families.

Our goal at Chicago Partners is to deliver a value-added approach to wealth management that other firms and broker-dealers rarely offer. We do this by delivering:

  • Investment Consulting
  • Custom Portfolio Creation
  • Tax-Efficiency Management
  • Tax Document Preparation
  • Financial Planning
  • Retirement Planning
  • Cash Flow Planning
  • Estate & Trust Planning
  • Insurance Planning
  • Comprehensive Performance Reporting

We accomplish all of this through our 5-Step Wealth Optimization Process, which helps our clients achieve their goals. Throughout the optimization process, we look to drive down costs, such as investment vehicle expenses, tax liabilities, trading fees, estate & tax preparation fees, and our advisory fee.

What does this mean to you as an investor? And what do each of these value-added steps actually include?

All of these steps are encompassed in our 5-Step Wealth Optimization Approach, which we will cover in detail below.

Investment Consulting

For every client and prospect, our first step is to review all of your current holdings, and investments we may manage (and even accounts that we cannot manage) to find any inefficiencies or areas where we can improve the current portfolio construction. This process is not just limited to your investment accounts, we review your tax returns, estate planning documents, insurance policies, and any financial planning that has previously been completed.  This is done holistically to make sure that we are not missing any aspect of your financial life, and to make sure that when we create your Chicago Partners Optimization Roadmap, an outline of the necessary steps to improve your financial profile, we have all of the necessary information to execute on.

Investment Management

In the investment management step, Chicago Partners works to build a custom portfolio that will be optimized through investment vehicle selection, asset location, asset class diversification, yield, and risk tolerance. We do this by utilizing our 8-Quadarant Investment approach:

For Equities, we use:

  • Direct Indexing
  • Complementary Indexing
  • Dimensional Fund Advisors
  • Chicago Partners Custom Indexes

For Fixed Income, we use:

  • Investment Grade Income
  • High Yield Income
  • Individual Issues
  • Strategic Alternatives

These investment vehicles help us to create a diversified and low-cost custom investment portfolio for our clients aimed at achieving their investment objectives. Again, we make sure that a client’s assets are working together, whether we are managing the entire portfolio or a select portion of the portfolio.

Tax Planning & Preparation

It is our belief that our client’s most important return is the after-tax return. We work with our clients and their selected CPA to make sure that all aspects of the portfolio and outside assets are as tax efficient as possible.

In addition, we work directly with our client’s CPA to make sure that all of the tax documents related to their investment accounts are sent to the CPA, and any investment strategy or idea is vetted by Chicago Partners, the CPA, and estate planner. This ensures that every decision is thoroughly discussed and thought-out before it is implemented.

Examples of Investment Strategies:

  • Qualified Opportunity Zones (QOZ)
  • Single-Member Defined Benefit Plans
  • Direct Indexing
  • Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts
  • Gifting Strategies (Family)
  • Donor Advised Fund (DAF)

Advanced Financial Planning

We start all of our client relationships by building their Wealth Management System (WMS). This system allows us to run a variety of reports (Cash Flow Plans, Retirement Plans, What-if Scenarios, etc). The system is important to our clients because it acts as their roadmap through retirement and a basis for all decision-making throughout retirement. We make sure to include financial planning for all clients because of how important this step is to the client.

Fiduciary Relationship

Great clients make us great advisors. What we mean by this is that our clients always push us to find new and innovative solutions to their unique goals and concerns with their financial picture. By doing this it makes us find new and innovative solutions to these goals and obstacles. By pushing us to create more effective solutions, our clients inspire us to continually innovate our offering.

Through this process, we have created a Quarterly Interactive call that allows us to present our thoughts on the capital markets, and allows our clients to ask us questions real-time. This ends up benefiting all our clients because these questions may be things that others are not thinking of but can benefit from.

Lastly, we always act as a Fiduciary for our clients – meaning that we always act in our client best interest under all circumstances.

Conclusion

In the end, we want to make sure that all of these services are delivered to our client in a cost-effective manner.

Our 5-Step Process ensures that each client has a customized, comprehensive investment portfolio, tax plan, and financial plan that aligns them with their goals and objectives.

If you have a complex financial situation, if you want to decrease the financial burden of being fully responsible for all of your finances, please reach out to me or any other member of the Chicago Partners team. We will welcome the opportunity to learn how we can optimize your wealth.

 

Nicholas Guido, CFP is a Senior Advisor at Chicago Partners Wealth Advisors. Nick works with clients to create custom financial and investment plans that meet their unique goals and objectives.


Important Disclosure Information

Past performance may not be indicative of future results. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and there can be no assurance that the future performance of any specific investment, investment strategy, or product (including the investments and/or investment strategies recommended or undertaken by Chicago Partners Investment Group LLC (“CP”), or any non-investment related content, made reference to directly or indirectly in this commentary will be profitable, equal any corresponding indicated historical performance level(s), be suitable for your portfolio or individual situation, or prove successful. Due to various factors, including changing market conditions and/or applicable laws, the content may no longer be reflective of current opinions or positions. Moreover, you should not assume that any discussion or information contained in this commentary serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from CP. Please remember to contact CP, in writing, if there are any changes in your personal/financial situation or investment objectives for the purpose of reviewing/evaluating/revising our previous recommendations and/or services, or if you would like to impose, add, or to modify any reasonable restrictions to our investment advisory services. CP is neither a law firm nor a certified public accounting firm and no portion of the commentary content should be construed as legal or accounting advice. A copy of the CP’s current written disclosure Brochure discussing our advisory services and fees continues to remain available upon request.


"Great clients make us great advisors."

- Jim Hagedorn


September 12, 2019

How Chicago Partners Adds Value as an Investment & Financial Advisor

Every day, investors spend time trying to find the right advisor for them or their family, searching for someone that they can trust, someone who provides value, a robust service offering, low fees, and can help them achieve their goals. So often, advisory firms fall short of these goals. Chicago Partners takes a different approach – we strive to create a comprehensive, full-service offering for its clients and their families.

Our goal at Chicago Partners is to deliver a value-added approach to wealth management that other firms and broker-dealers rarely offer. We do this by delivering:

  • Investment Consulting
  • Custom Portfolio Creation
  • Tax-Efficiency Management
  • Tax Document Preparation
  • Financial Planning
  • Retirement Planning
  • Cash Flow Planning
  • Estate & Trust Planning
  • Insurance Planning
  • Comprehensive Performance Reporting

We accomplish all of this through our 5-Step Wealth Optimization Process, which helps our clients achieve their goals. Throughout the optimization process, we look to drive down costs, such as investment vehicle expenses, tax liabilities, trading fees, estate & tax preparation fees, and our advisory fee.

What does this mean to you as an investor? And what do each of these value-added steps actually include?

All of these steps are encompassed in our 5-Step Wealth Optimization Approach, which we will cover in detail below.

Investment Consulting

For every client and prospect, our first step is to review all of your current holdings, and investments we may manage (and even accounts that we cannot manage) to find any inefficiencies or areas where we can improve the current portfolio construction. This process is not just limited to your investment accounts, we review your tax returns, estate planning documents, insurance policies, and any financial planning that has previously been completed.  This is done holistically to make sure that we are not missing any aspect of your financial life, and to make sure that when we create your Chicago Partners Optimization Roadmap, an outline of the necessary steps to improve your financial profile, we have all of the necessary information to execute on.

Investment Management

In the investment management step, Chicago Partners works to build a custom portfolio that will be optimized through investment vehicle selection, asset location, asset class diversification, yield, and risk tolerance. We do this by utilizing our 8-Quadarant Investment approach:

For Equities, we use:

  • Direct Indexing
  • Complementary Indexing
  • Dimensional Fund Advisors
  • Chicago Partners Custom Indexes

For Fixed Income, we use:

  • Investment Grade Income
  • High Yield Income
  • Individual Issues
  • Strategic Alternatives

These investment vehicles help us to create a diversified and low-cost custom investment portfolio for our clients aimed at achieving their investment objectives. Again, we make sure that a client’s assets are working together, whether we are managing the entire portfolio or a select portion of the portfolio.

Tax Planning & Preparation

It is our belief that our client’s most important return is the after-tax return. We work with our clients and their selected CPA to make sure that all aspects of the portfolio and outside assets are as tax efficient as possible.

In addition, we work directly with our client’s CPA to make sure that all of the tax documents related to their investment accounts are sent to the CPA, and any investment strategy or idea is vetted by Chicago Partners, the CPA, and estate planner. This ensures that every decision is thoroughly discussed and thought-out before it is implemented.

Examples of Investment Strategies:

  • Qualified Opportunity Zones (QOZ)
  • Single-Member Defined Benefit Plans
  • Direct Indexing
  • Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts
  • Gifting Strategies (Family)
  • Donor Advised Fund (DAF)

Advanced Financial Planning

We start all of our client relationships by building their Wealth Management System (WMS). This system allows us to run a variety of reports (Cash Flow Plans, Retirement Plans, What-if Scenarios, etc). The system is important to our clients because it acts as their roadmap through retirement and a basis for all decision-making throughout retirement. We make sure to include financial planning for all clients because of how important this step is to the client.

Fiduciary Relationship

Great clients make us great advisors. What we mean by this is that our clients always push us to find new and innovative solutions to their unique goals and concerns with their financial picture. By doing this it makes us find new and innovative solutions to these goals and obstacles. By pushing us to create more effective solutions, our clients inspire us to continually innovate our offering.

Through this process, we have created a Quarterly Interactive call that allows us to present our thoughts on the capital markets, and allows our clients to ask us questions real-time. This ends up benefiting all our clients because these questions may be things that others are not thinking of but can benefit from.

Lastly, we always act as a Fiduciary for our clients – meaning that we always act in our client best interest under all circumstances.

Conclusion

In the end, we want to make sure that all of these services are delivered to our client in a cost-effective manner.

Our 5-Step Process ensures that each client has a customized, comprehensive investment portfolio, tax plan, and financial plan that aligns them with their goals and objectives.

If you have a complex financial situation, if you want to decrease the financial burden of being fully responsible for all of your finances, please reach out to me or any other member of the Chicago Partners team. We will welcome the opportunity to learn how we can optimize your wealth.

Nicholas Guido, CFP is a Senior Advisor at Chicago Partners Wealth Advisors. Nick works with clients to create custom financial and investment plans that meet their unique goals and objectives.


Important Disclosure Information

Past performance may not be indicative of future results. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and there can be no assurance that the future performance of any specific investment, investment strategy, or product (including the investments and/or investment strategies recommended or undertaken by Chicago Partners Investment Group LLC (“CP”), or any non-investment related content, made reference to directly or indirectly in this commentary will be profitable, equal any corresponding indicated historical performance level(s), be suitable for your portfolio or individual situation, or prove successful. Due to various factors, including changing market conditions and/or applicable laws, the content may no longer be reflective of current opinions or positions. Moreover, you should not assume that any discussion or information contained in this commentary serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from CP. Please remember to contact CP, in writing, if there are any changes in your personal/financial situation or investment objectives for the purpose of reviewing/evaluating/revising our previous recommendations and/or services, or if you would like to impose, add, or to modify any reasonable restrictions to our investment advisory services. CP is neither a law firm nor a certified public accounting firm and no portion of the commentary content should be construed as legal or accounting advice. A copy of the CP’s current written disclosure Brochure discussing our advisory services and fees continues to remain available upon request.