Look Both Ways: Don’t Get Hit By The Bus

By HMA Team on April 24, 2023

When visiting London, or other countries that drive on the other side of the road, you always look both ways. Right?! Especially for the bus. You can’t help yourself. This is not a bad instinct—looking both ways— it’s human nature when you are unsure. The same applies to your financial advisor.

Let me extend the metaphor of looking both ways to looking at the execution of your financial and estate plan. You have everything in place – investments, trusts, charitable giving, and your financial plan. Fine. But what happens when your baby boomer advisor pulls the plug? What then? Spoiler alert: Many financial advisors have done a remarkably poor job of putting succession plans in place for their practices, meaning that a majority do not have an individual—much less a team— in place to take care of you when they step away. Gasp! Talk about not seeing that and getting hit by the bus.

Most likely, whomever is chosen by your financial institution to next execute your plan is an unknown commodity. They don’t know you, your children, or the intricacies of your financial matters. A friendly heads up: Your next advisor and their team must be well-rounded and conversant with operations, investment management, client management and comprehensive financial planning. What worked in the past, does not work today. Gone are the days of the sole proprietor. We live in a much more complicated world that is solution-driven, not product-driven. This requires a multi-generational team approach that can meet the multi-generational issues coming at you faster than the tsunami wealth transfer we have all heard about.

At HMA, we emphasize to our clients that there are no shortcuts to successful estate planning. We would extend the same dictum to succession planning: you need to have the right team of young, experienced professionals securely in place to guide you and your family into the next generation. Financial services, and how they are delivered to clients, have changed dramatically in the last thirty years. Take pause and ask yourself: Am I at the right financial firm and in the proper hands for the next generation? You have options. Exercise them.  Don’t get caught looking the wrong way. That’s HMA.  

-Grove M.