My firm, Rebalance, recently celebrated a milestone — $1 billion in assets under management.
It is an easy figure to misunderstand. The firm is not “bigger” or “more important” than a few years ago. What has changed is that an increasing number of people trust us with their investments, and those investments have grown.
That $1 billion is their money, their future, their hopes and dreams.
Getting to that number was no easy feat in a fragmented, highly opaque business such as financial advising. It is a testament to our process and the results we have brought for hundreds of families and individuals across the country.
We got to $1 billion by doing a few very simple things: Putting clients first, embracing diversification to lower client risk, and leveraging decades of investment experience.
We come to this experience through the firm’s acclaimed Investment Committee, which includes Professor Emeritus Burton Malkiel, the world-renowned Princeton University economist and author of the groundbreaking book A Random Walk Down Wall Street; Dr. Charley Ellis, the former longtime chairman of the Yale University Endowment; and Jay Vivian, the former managing director of IBM’s $100-plus billion in retirement investment funds, which oversees the savings of more than 300,000 employees worldwide.
Passionate about education
Not content to simply manage money well, at Rebalance we decided to add value, personalizing our services and taking every opportunity to educate our clients. The goal is to bring them along in the money conversation so that they feel more comfortable and more “in tune” with their investments.
This unyielding commitment to education is no small thing. Most investment firms gladly avoid the entire topic of educating their clients. By contrast, the entire Rebalance team is passionate about providing our clients with the investing fundamentals necessary to have a sense of control over their financial destiny.
So that is the challenge before us. Not just rationalizing cost…not just lowering fees…but getting our clients interested in understanding their money and living comfortably with the ups and downs of the economy and the stock market.
Getting to $1 billion in customer assets is, in our view, just a starting point. It is gratifying, of course, but the true goal of Rebalance is not to simply offer a better product at a lower price, but to help our clients achieve the peace of mind that comes with knowing that they have a trusted partner to help them stay on the path to a secure financial future.
