As an increasing amount of data is becoming centrally located in Cloud storage vaults, some financial advisors are beginning to keep a more comprehensive set of client data stored in electronic format. The usual gathering of a client’s portfolio choices, risk tolerance, investment strategies, account statements and income tax returns tops the list of items being included. Copies of documents such as wills, power of attorney and medical directives are also commonly included.

As of late, however, the contents of this Cloud storage strategy is becoming more diversified based on the client’s personal life. Items such as names, physical addresses, email addresses and phone numbers as contact information for the client’s family members, close friends, accountants, attorneys, doctors, lawyers, therapists or any other desired contact information is also not just finding its way in to, but purposely being included in, electronic data storage.

It’s an emerging trend Brett Davis, CEO and Co-Founder of TRUE Private Wealth Advisors, based in Salem, OR., has already taken on as a standard operating practice.

“We serve as a vault of our client’s most important financial and personal documents,” he said. “We have a secure storage system in the Cloud for each of our clients where we keep track of these documents. If an event should occur that could impact their family financial situation, such as the death of a spouse, we can truely run point during that time of crises. We are there every step of the way to help protect the financial interest of the client.”

It is a unique service, Davis said, but one he believes is in line with his fiduciary duties as a Registered Investment Advisor.

It also isn’t the only unique service method Davis believes he and his team at TRUE are utilizing. He believes being an RIA gives him the latitude to help clients control the ups and downs of their market interaction in a way he never could when he worked for big wire house firms.

It is why he and partner, Steve Altman, both left the Merrill Lynch Private Client Group in Salem, Ore., along with  The Gescher Herber Group and independently hung up their own shingle forming TRUE in the fall of 2012.

He wanted the ability to lay all options out on the table for a client to review, for the client to hear his fiduciary advice without the pressure of having to push a particular proprietary product because of company mandates. Davis believes this provides the freedom for his client to ultimately make decisions based soley on their best interest.

“The ability to truly serve clients in a completely unbiased and very transparent manner, in which the clients know they are paying only for advice, and not for commissioned products, is really rewarding. It is rewarding to see that our clients understand the better mousetrap that we now have,” Davis said. “People get what we are doing. They get the value proposition of the independent space and they trust it.”

He’s a firm believer that the volatility in the stock market does not have to rock his client’s boat.

“We believe very strongly that volatility can be managed. It is the enemy of the investor for a lot of emotional and psychological reasons,” Davis said. “When a client is put in a position where they have more volatility than they can stand, they end up making bad, emotional decisions at key stress points where they really need to just stay put in the chair. We have been very successful in positioning clients in portfolios that not only achieve their long term financial goals but also allow them to sleep at night.”

He understands what is at risk for his clients. It isn’t just dollar amounts; it is the lifestyle and emotional safety those dollar amounts represent.

His firm is handling sizable accounts. The firm’s current average account has assets under management valued between $1 and $2 million. The firm has many accounts of significantly greater value and more importantly to his management, these accounts are quite complex with many different variables and moving parts, he said.

The firm minimum of $500,000 to start is fairly firm, he said. However, in very specialized circumstances, he will consider working with a new client with fewer assets.
What he won’t consider is putting any client at undo risk or minimizing their perception of how risk affects them.

“Risk is still a four-letter word to many of our clients,” he said. “I think this is a generational thing that will not go away anytime soon.” Noting that two major financial collapses – the tech crunch or dot.com bubble that burst in 2000 and the housing and banking crash from 2007 to 2009 now better known as The Great Recession – have occurred within the lifetime of today’s investing generation, Davis said, “the impression and effects of those two major events will most likely never leave the perception of risk this generation now has. They simply are inherently more conservative now than they ever were leading up to those events.”

For more information, visit: www.truepwa.com