Knowledge printed early this yr by Cerulli Associates exhibits “complicated” and concierge-style providers that cater to particular consumer wants have gotten more and more vital for advisors searching for to compete for ultra-high-net-worth purchasers.
Entry to such providers outweighs private relationship components in relation to bringing purchasers on board, in keeping with Cerulli’s research. On the similar time, 35% of high-net-worth people polled mentioned they’d begun a relationship with their major advisory supplier due to both the providers or the consumer expertise on supply, up from 28% who mentioned this in 2017.
Valerie Wong Fountain, head of household workplace sources accomplice and platform administration at Morgan Stanley, instructed ThinkAdvisor in a current interview that these findings match carefully along with her current expertise on the job. In truth, Wong Fountain’s position contains main the agency’s division devoted to this want, Signature Entry Way of life Advisory, and she or he argued that the strategic significance of her crew’s work for Morgan Stanley’s total success within the UHNW area 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 purchasers’ monetary plans and the challenges that contact each facet of their everyday lives,” Wong mentioned within the interview.
Listed below are some highlights from our dialog:
THINKADVISOR: You’ve gotten virtually 20 years of expertise at Morgan Stanley. How did you come to be main this a part of the enterprise? Had been you at all times centered on the UHNW phase?
Valerie Wong Fountain: No, really not. I grew up in California and I went to the Wharton College at UPenn, the place I studied finance and accounting. Naturally, it was a subsequent step after that to go to Wall Road and work for Morgan Stanley. It was a very fast-paced surroundings, and I acquired to have interaction with extremely sensible and fascinating folks.
I joined initially within the gross sales and buying and selling enterprise earlier than shifting by way of a couple 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 properly.
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 in search of a right-hand man or girls to assist James — a little bit of a nebulous job description admittedly — however I ended up getting the position.
I got here to see fairly shortly that lots of the traits that make folks profitable on the buying and selling flooring additionally apply to agency management and administration. An enormous a part of it’s actually about with the ability to assume shortly in your ft and with the ability to execute and ship on the agency’s goals. So, I turned 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 personal capital markets enterprise, the place I centered on elevating personal types of capital, after which later I used to be requested to maneuver into this position. That was in 2016.
Earlier than we converse extra about Signature Entry, are you able to inform us a bit of extra about what the expertise was like working for James Gorman in the course of the interval after the monetary disaster?
It’s fascinating. I might say that, popping out of the monetary disaster, the therapeutic interval did take a number of time — extra years than many business leaders had first anticipated. Right here at Morgan Stanley, I might say that there was only a large quantity of gratitude to John Mack for the best way he guided us by way of the disaster.
There was a sense that he had accomplished a lot to assist save Morgan Stanley and the agency, and when James turned the brand new CEO, we actually have been trying to keep it up that sense of optimism. Popping out of that interval, there have been alternatives to proceed to construct on and make clear our core technique.