What is The Sovran?

The SOVRAN (Sov-Ran) Noun (Retired) (Literary interpretation from the old English) Meaning:

An independent autonomous ruler of all things under god. Typically, ruling class charged with the oversite and protection of one’s people, armies, laws, lands, trade, traditions, and legacy.

 

Instead of following the countless firms that name their business after their partners, I decided to go a different route. I could think of no better way to represent this brand than to name it after those whom we serve. I first saw the name “The Sovran” when reading the story of Beowulf. I looked up the meaning and it immediately stood out to me how similar the responsibilities of the Sovran were to the clients that we serve. It was perfect.

Next, I needed to decide on how we would run this business and make it different. Since our focus was 100% on the clients, it made sense to build the entire firm on the values, requirements and attributes that families were looking for in an advisor. Over the years I would ask clients their opinion on our relationship. After these conversations it seemed as if the same main attributes kept coming up. Eventually I realized that the only way to be able to emulate and deliver on all of these values was to start my own independent Advisory Practice.

 

Built on client feedback.
Therefore, our clients are our brand.

 

Some of these main attributes were:

  • Latest Technology,
  • Convenient easy to navigate website for tax reporting, basis tracking and performance.
  • Written financial plan
  • I want to be more involved, collaborative ongoing financial planning process. No cookie cutter planning.
  • No conflicts of Interest (no Banks)
  • We want a fiduciary
  • We want a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®)
  • Can you come to my home instead of your office?
  • We want transparency in our fees.
  • We want to be informed/educated on what you are doing and what we should do
  • We want low reasonable management fees
  • Intuitive Investment strategies that are easy to understand and unique to my goals.
  • Sustaining My Lifestyle is the most important thing to me

We took all of these attributes and built them directly into our service model and value proposition.

 

Convenience:

Our Clients are looking for less complicated, service driven relationships

  1. We can come to you. Over 70% of my meetings were on the road in 2019. Either at the client’s home or place of business/work. Who has time anymore to meet after work and battle traffic jams and parking when they have so many other things to do? I found that this ordeal of coming to my old office was so time consuming that clients actually put off getting important planning done simply because they couldn’t make it during business hours and had responsibilities after work. Some feel that they just live too far or it’s a real challenge due to mobility. As a planner I have had a few occasions where we learned so much more about a client needs simply by sitting in their own domain and getting the full picture of needs.
  2. ZOOM Meetings. We also can conduct any meeting with you virtually through Zoom. We found that using zoom was very useful when making decisions that required the entire family to be involved. We occasionally have invited clients CPAs or attorney to “Zoom” into our meeting in order to fully describe their tax or trust situation. If you haven’t used this yet it’s a very useful engine.
  3. Latest Financial Planning Technology.
    E money client access. This tool allows the client to see and interact in their own planning allowing a truly collaborative effort to assist in the ongoing financial planning process. With E money Pro a client can consolidate digitally all of their outside investments under one sign on including Life insurance, annuities, 401Ks, Ira, Brokerage, and even add in their own real estate, private investments and business interests. Clients also get access to their own secured digital vault where they can hold important documents such as life insurance policies, homeowner’s insurance, Legal Docs all at no cost.
    LPL Client Center. Easily manage your account statements, e delivery and access your tax docs, basis information and performance metrics all in a few clicks though our dedicated secure portal.

 

Trust:

There is no relationship if there is no trust.

Our Clients do not appreciate conflicts of interests, they need a fiduciary, and demand trust. I believe trust comes from educating your clients, providing great service and upholding the highest standards in the industry. We are Fiduciaries on all comprehensive wealth management services relationships. Simply stated, if it’s not in your best interests, we want nothing to do with it.

 

Education3: Knowledge Attained, Maintained and Explained.

Our clients require Competent and Knowledge Advisors.

a. I have a requirement that each FA that joins our firm must have an accredited designation. I have 3 and am working on another as we speak. CFP, CRPC, CPFA. These designations and the continuing education required to keep these designations are proof of our dedication to enhance our knowledge capital and deliver sound advice. If you would like information on what each of these designations represent, just ask. I personally take over 60 hours per year in continuing education course work.

b. We take the time to educate our clients on our investment and planning recommendations. We have found that informed and educated clients make better decisions and are more confident long term with their financial lives, especially in hard times and volatile markets. We believe the pathway to trust is a firm understanding of your financial plan and an easy-to-understand investment strategy.

 

SERVICE:

Our Clients demand service.

Service Philosophy. Really, it doesn’t matter what we think we are good at, only what the clients think we are good at. We do not have a suggestions box. We have a service actions box.

We measure our success utilizing client surveys. In order to make sure we are doing an outstanding job, we need to test ourselves regularly and adjust accordingly. We will send a comprehensive survey periodically to every client with the goal to learn how to better serve their needs. We always want to improve our processes to ensure our clients are completely satisfied with their service experience. Of course, the biggest compliment that we can receive is a referral from our existing clients.

 

Value Delivered

Our clients want comprehensive wealth planning and custom investment management at a realistic cost.

INTRODUCING our FEE CAPS Program. This new fee schedule is simple to understand and will help our average clients save tens of thousands in planning and management fees over time. When we made the decision to go independent, we gained the more control over our own expenses and can now pass the savings along to the client. There are numerous graphs out there that show clients how their advisors fees over time can affect their long-term appreciation. We also see how many firms use phrases like “they win when you win” meaning their fees get higher as your accounts grow as if this is a good thing for you. With this program we put a stop to this madness. Get in touch with us today to see what the fee caps program can do to help lower your ongoing planning and management expenses.

 

Investment Management

Our clients want an intuitive investment strategy that is easy to understand and custom designed to meet their goals and objectives.

There are no one size fits all or pizza pie model portfolios here. We custom build our client portfolios using top technical and fundamental research coordinated with a time-tested process designed to deliver more predictable results. We utilize the latest low cost etf’s, Mutual funds, stocks, structured notes, and alternatives in our universe in order to deliver a more robust and cost effective strategy.

 

Lifestyle

Our clients like to have fun and lead a healthy and independent lifestyle.

We love our clients. We are dedicated to helping them reach their financial goals. We know that maintaining lifestyle was by far the most important personal goal that our clients collectively shared in our survey. Therefore, we decided to launch a new free activity group to host events designed to get people together to learn/ experience more. Below are a few of the events we plan to host.

Events include… Healthy Cooking and Eating, Relaxation and Meditation, Fitness education for Retirees, Downsizing in retirement, Estate planning, Kids in Finance classes, New Tax Code and what you can do, Book clubs, Art Enthusiasts, Wine Club, Business Networking groups, New to town, holiday gatherings, Yoga 101, community volunteering opportunities.