Fiduciary's approach to financial planning

Investors need more than advice on asset allocations or which stocks to buy – they also need an advisor who communicates often and in language they can understand. When the market fluctuates, investors may make rash decisions, and it takes a trusted advisor who can communicate and educate to explain to clients what is happening to their money. Redhawk Wealth Advisors, Inc., understands that clients need frequent and useful communication. The firm even works with other advisory firms to improve their client communication processes.

“We built the solutions to problems that both our respective clients and our industry were not really solving at all,” said Dan Hunt, AIF®, CRPS®, Chief Executive Officer of Redhawk Wealth Advisors, Inc. “One of those problems was the lack of meaningful contact, especially when markets go the wrong way. Everybody suddenly doesn’t want to communicate. Our solution requires that all clients are communicated with on a regular basis and that each communication is meaningful and material.”

Redhawk Wealth Advisors, based in Minneapolis, offers clients a full suite of wealth management and retirement planning services. The firm’s services are supported by proprietary technology, comprehensive clearing and compliance services, practice management, and training and research. The firm works with small business owners, individual investors, and offers support services to financial advisors nationwide.

Hunt founded Redhawk Investment Advisors in 2005 (later became Redhawk Wealth Advisors in 2008) after a difficult inheritance dispute with distant relatives who came out of the woodwork following a death in the family. The experience taught him that proper financial planning matters when it comes to protecting family wealth and ensuring it gets passed on to the right people.

Providing tailored financial solutions to clients, the firm utilizes a thorough process to take a holistic view of clients’ finances and each investor’s individual plan reflects their financial goals.

“As a fiduciary you have to do whatever helps each individual client or family the most, so in that sense no two clients can be exactly the same,” Hunt told Advisors Magazine in a recent interview, adding that the financial plan also needs open and honest communication between both parties.

At Redhawk Wealth Advisors, open conversations are the norm. The firm acts as a fiduciary, meaning investors’ best interests come before the bottom line. Hunt takes an approach to client finances called the “do unto others model.” If an advisor sells a product, Hunt said, then it should be a financial tool they themselves use, or would use. Clients who ask their advisors for references, success cases, and other typical statements of credibility risk are being led astray. Instead, a true fiduciary advisor should be willing to disclose how their own finances work, he said.

“If they offer to sell me a certain product, they had better be ready to show me how it worked for them,” Hunt said. “The optimal way to feel an advisor out is to simply test the do unto others model, because an advisor could simply say anything.”

For more information on Redhawk Wealth Advisors, Inc., visit: redhawkwa.com