My partners and I are often asked, “what makes your firm different?”

We love to answer this question because our firm is a leader in providing contemporary financial planning and asset management solutions. Still, even for the most discerning of investors, it is critical to highlight what makes us unique. 

Here are what we call our brand pillars. They define our firm, our value proposition, and what we seek to deliver to our clients. Most importantly, they demonstrate how we are, in fact, different:

1. Offer sophisticated solutions.  Commoditized portfolios built from high fee funds or pre-structured firm level portfolios typically fall short of an investor’s goals. We, therefore, strive to offer solutions that seek to optimize our clients’ ability to reach their financial destination. One way we do this is by offering access to private investments through our advanced network of entrepreneurs, trusted advisors, and institutional investors. We believe this offers attractive risk and return benefits and diversification from traditional public markets.

2. Provide a team of specialists.  To put it politely, it is dubious to think that one or even two financial advisors can handle the complexity offered by an ultra-high net worth family or institutional investor. As a result, our firm is built on a foundation of multi-disciplinary experience and expertise. For example, as a former practicing lawyer, I regularly assist multi-generational families with the implementation of their estate and succession planning and charitable giving strategies. Our CIO Mike Parker, on the other hand, is a former Portfolio Manager at the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System and develops our sophisticated in-house asset management solutions, such as the Dynamic Growth Opportunities Strategy. This provides greater transparency, depth, and breadth in the solutions we offer to our clients.

3. Innovate continuously. One of our motivations for founding SWS Partners was to never again work at a firm that slavishly defaulted to the way things have always been done. Instead, our primary focus as a firm is to deliver contemporary asset management and financial planning solutions to our clients. To do so, we have committed to constant evaluation of our technology and solutions to see if there are more efficient ways to express our views. A recent example of this is our newly improved Multi Asset Income Strategy, which was implemented for our clients on March 1 of this year.

4. Leverage technology. Technology is the bedrock of our business. We believe that by emphasizing the application of modern technologies, we can create broad efficiencies and deliver better outcomes to clients. We have written about this extensively, as we continue to find that investors of all stripes appreciate the transparency and simplicity that technology affords them. We continually find that by allowing digital technology to indulge the intellect of our clients, we can focus more on strategic objectives rather than the financial noise emanating from the media.

These are the brand pillars of SWS Partners. This is what makes us different.