Continuing Challenges to Delivering Integrated Wealth Management Services to Business Owners

Abstract

The author addresses a segment of the wealth management market which he believes is not yet served adequately: business owners. He points to the fact that these potential clients are facing a number of unique challenges surrounding management of their overall balance sheet through time. Though attempts have been made to serve that segment, the author believes that discourse about the problem has become hostage to a paradigm that needs reforming of its most basic terms. This article starts by examining the basic concept of wealth management in order to develop a common vocabulary around the range and depth of services involved. It then revisits the business owner client as a set of interacting subsystems, each with its own developmental needs and trajectories, with a view to describing the range of needs presented by this client type and suggesting what is possible to offer to the client with respect to service mixes. Third, and finally, it turns to the problem of how to organize and deliver these services and the associated management change challenges.