1. Their investments were a collection of products rather than the implementation of a well-defined strategy.
2. Their portfolio was spread across multiple financial institutions and lacked meaningful coordination.
3. There were no standards of measure in place to evaluate the performance of their investment portfolio from year to year.
4. There was no written investment policy statement in place to set client and manager expectations.
5. They had not done any formal retirement planning to determine when they could retire and at what level of income.
6. Their wills and trusts, if they had them, had not been reviewed or updated in years and the client's financial situation and objectives had changed significantly.
7. Their life insurance was improperly owned, needlessly inflating the value of the client's estate.
8. Little or no planning had been done to minimize the impact that estate taxes would have on the client's net worth.
9. Our clients who are business owners did not have a clearly defined strategy to deal with the retirement, disability, or death of an owner.
10. No one had ever approached them with a comprehensive approach to planning that dealt with all aspects of their financial situation!