| Happy New Year!
I wanted to take a moment today to thank you for your faith and confidence in the work we do at nVest Advisors to be your choice to meet your financial planning and investing needs.
The last few years have given us all so many challenges, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent military escalations, plus the challenging effects of the inflation that’s been the result of so much recent government spending and the hikes in interest rates that began in 2022. All of this is coalescing, in my opinion, into a recession that will likely affect us in just the next few months.
In short, it’s been a challenging time for all of us, and I want you to know that I and our growing team at nVest Advisors wake up each day with a single purpose: to shepherd your family’s finances through the confusing, often contradictory world of markets and economics with all the care, diligence, and absolute seriousness of purpose that we can.
My message today is to give you all a quick update on what’s going on here, where we plan to be later in 2024, and how we’ll keep you informed and actively participating in the work we do for you.
1) Please sign our new New Unified Client Agreement if you haven’t already.
We use several account custodians to safekeep your accounts, and there were significant enough changes at some of those custodians in 2023 that the State of Colorado (where our company is located and who is our primary regulator), requested that we update our client service agreements to address those custodial changes. For many years before this, we had a different client agreement for each custodian (since they often have different features, costs, etc.) but we decided to take the opportunity to re-write all of these into one Unified Agreement, no matter which custodian(s) you may have accounts held at.
You’ve all been sent this Agreement to sign by now and many of you have already signed it (thank you!), but if you haven’t yet, please do so as soon as possible. This is important enough that we will be sending you reminders and text messages to ask you to do so.
2) We’re committed to connecting with you much more often in 2024.
We work diligently all day for our clients, but I’ll be the first to admit that our reports back to you on that work were spotty in 2023. There are valid reasons for it – our company experienced tremendous growth, we relocated to more permanent offices, we are training our first two junior advisors, and we even went through our first state-level administrative audit – but those reasons are not excuses. We need to be talking with you much more regularly, but frustratingly, we let other internal matters get in the way of that in 2023. That’s something I’m not okay with and it is something that we will fix – with your help – in 2024.
Systematically (but meaningfully) communicating with our clients has always been a challenge for our firm because most of our clients are still working and raising families. Your time is limited – we know that. And we don’t want to just “go through the paces” of taking AT you without talking TO you.
We strongly feel it’s our job to be there when you need us, not the other way around, so we’ve always tried a strategy of being available to you without intruding on you, such as having our appointment calendar always available online so you can book meeting times whenever you want one.
But if you don’t book a meeting, we may not talk to you for months at a time. That’s not okay.
So we’ll work with you to find an optimal call, email, and meeting schedule that works for you. You need relevant information about your financial plan and accounts, but you also need the “face time” with your advisor so that we can truly listen to your concerns and needs that help us do our job better for you.
So we need to talk more. That will begin with the Annual Review Meetings, which I will soon be asking you to schedule (see below):
3) It’s annual review time.
At least once each year, we are expected to meet with you to review our relationship and update the information we have from you so that our advice and fiduciary investing work always remain in your best interests. This is called our Annual Review Meeting, and we typically try to do them in the first weeks of each calendar year.
We start this process by sending you a survey of relevant questions. At the end of that brief survey, you can schedule your meeting.
This survey will be sent to all of our clients this week. When you receive it, please take 5 minutes or so to complete it (it’s MUCH shorter than in previous years), and book the meeting. |
I look forward to reconnecting with you all in the weeks ahead. If there is anything you need to discuss ahead of our first meeting in 2024, please do not hesitate to reach out to me.
