Family Office Services
Ellsworth Advisors and our affiliated partners maintain the experience and expertise to structure, establish and manage family offices for high net worth individuals and families. Family offices tend to be as unique as their individual family members. Whether the goal is to maintain a discreet office to manage existing wealth or drive deal flow and partnership opportunities by maintaining an active, networking office, Ellsworth Advisors can help.
Ellsworth Advisors helps assemble all the necessary resources in one place to manage and monitor the family office from top to bottom. Some of the services we bring together to support a family office include investment management, asset management, private equity, private real estate, accounting services, bookkeeping services, tax, legal, insurance, estate planning, transition planning, financial literacy education, charitable giving and website development and maintenance. We maintain the capability to provide a full suite of back office to support a family office and thus eliminate the need to build from scratch.
We also provide concierge services including travel, event management and professional security services. Our family office services provide a one-stop program for individuals and families looking to manage their assets and business interests in-house.
Alternative Investing
As a complement to our public equity, fixed income and commodities portfolios, Ellsworth Advisors offers our clients the opportunity to review and potentially invest in private equity and private real estate transactions. These private investments, as part of a well-diversified portfolio, can offer enhanced diversification and returns non-correlated to the public markets.
Only after an opportunity has been reviewed by the Ellsworth team and our principals decide to move forward will that opportunity be presented to our clients. These investments are presented on a deal-by-deal basis and no investor dollars are ever invested into private partnerships without a client’s explicit approval and proper documentation that the investment is appropriate for their risk tolerance and that the client meets the standards of an Accredited Investor.
Since these investments are illiquid and generally have longer time horizons, we strive to provide at least quarterly financial updates as well as access to any material information that becomes available in the interim. These investments are a complement to a well-diversified investment portfolio and will generally be a small percentage of a client’s investable assets.
Financial Consulting
The cornerstone of a solid financial plan is data. At Ellsworth Advisors, we develop financial plans utilizing a software package called eMoney. eMoney is a robust cloud-based financial planning software that updates as the markets move. When your accounts change, the underlying assumptions are updated accordingly. eMoney can also serve as an aggregator where all of your accounts can be viewed on one screen as well as a secure repository for important documents.
We believe that the key to building a solid financial plan is communication. When we build out a financial plan, we do it by sitting face-to-face with individuals to understand their unique situation. Understanding your goals and building out a reality-based plan is a powerful tool to ensure a successful next chapter, whatever you want that chapter to be.
The goal of our financial plans is to keep you focused on the objectives. Many times, a financial plan will validate an individual’s belief that they are on the right path. Unfortunately, sometimes the plan shows that an individual needs to work longer, save more or reduce expenses in order to achieve their goals. Helping people get on track or back on track is our mission. The assumptions may change, but the math does not lie. Understanding your goals and building out a reality-based plan is a powerful tool to ensuring a successful next chapter, whatever you want that chapter to be.
In addition to financial plans, our advisors are here to provide advice for more than just your investment accounts. Our team and affiliated partners have experience in estate planning, public accounting, investment banking and private equity. We are available to offer estate planning advice, tax advice and advice to business owners, whether that advice be an informal business valuation or overview of the merger, acquisition and financing markets. We can even assist in running a process to buy, sell, raise capital or merge a business. At Ellsworth Advisors, we are truly advisors and not just wealth managers.
Corporate Retirement Plans
Ellsworth Advisors is proud to be the advisor to more than 40 corporate retirement plans covering nearly 4,000 participants across the country. Whether you are a business owner, trustee or executive, it is our mission to ensure your retirement plan is effectively working for you so you can focus on what is most important. We understand that a robust employer sponsored retirement plan can be a powerful enticement to current and future employees.
Our Retirement Plan Consulting Program is designed to reduce the administrative burden born by the plan sponsor. Ellsworth Advisors strives to make sure that retirement plans are operating as efficiently and effectively as possible through the implementation of technological advancements and keeping plans updated with industry trends, which includes regular benchmarking of each plan’s cost structure. We further help plan sponsors reduce their fiduciary liability by acting as a 3(38) Investment Manager, outsourcing other fiduciary tasks to independent service providers, and implementing fiduciary best practices.
We help plan participants by taking an unbiased, holistic approach in evaluating their unique financial situation and developing a strategy tailored to their financial goals. For plan participants, Ellsworth Advisors seeks to be a financial partner and not just a retirement plan partner. That means that our team is available to provide advice beyond the scope of the retirement plan. We are available at no additional cost to develop financial and estate plans as well as provide advice on investment accounts, rollovers, 529 plans, insurance, mortgages, refinancing, student loans and annuities. Whatever the question may be, we want to be there to offer advice. In addition, plan participants have access to the same financial planning software, eMoney, that Ellsworth Advisors provides to individual clients at no additional charge.
Regardless of whether your company is setting up a new retirement plan or looking to improve a current plan, Ellsworth Advisors can help you optimize your employer sponsored retirement plan’s benefits for both the plan sponsor and plan participants.
Wealth Management
The hallmark of our wealth management practice is managing assets in-house by your Ellsworth Advisors team. Our portfolios largely consist of individual equities, individual bonds, commodities and alternative investments. Our investment research, portfolio construction and trading are also all performed in-house.
Our approach in utilizing individual stocks and fixed income comes from our experience. Many wealth managers utilize mutual funds, bond funds or exchange traded funds to manage a client’s wealth. We believe that this creates excess costs as well as a disconnect in the client / advisor relationship, where the actual management of the wealth is being performed by a non-affiliated third-party. In addition, our experience shows that it is possible to generate appropriate diversification and maintain lower expenses through the use of individual stocks and fixed income. We design our client portfolios with the goal of taking advantage of upside movements while also protecting downside risk. Every portfolio that we build is based on our knowledge of the client, their lifestyle, investment needs, investment horizon, their future milestones and risk tolerance.
For every client, we start by discussing goals in a comprehensive discovery session. This provides a full-framed assessment of your plans, objectives and upcoming cash needs. In addition to individual goals, we discuss family goals and family dynamics in order to gain a comprehensive overview of each client’s unique situation. We then tailor a full discretionary investment strategy that fits you and your life. That includes access to all of our investment professionals with transparent pricing.