Have a complicated financial situation?

Consider an ensemble cast of advisors.

Life can get complicated—and people are living longer. It makes sense that more complexities will arise as people age.

Consider the sandwich generation—those with children still at home, or boomerang children who’ve needed to return home—and are also caring for elderly parents. Adults ages 45 to 64 are the most likely to be caregivers for an aging adult, and some 15% of millennials lived in their parents’ home for a period, according to the Pew Research Center.

That pretty much captures everyone served by Compass Advisors of Melville, New York: high-net-worth individuals, business owners and their employees, and young professionals.

“If a client has a multimillion-dollar portfolio and they come in wanting us to invest it, we run through a list of priorities,” Lauren King, managing partner told Advisors Magazine in a recent interview.
And one of those priorities is family.

“Do you have people above you – parents or grandparents?” King will inquire. “Or to the side of you – siblings? Any below you, or other family members you need to take care of? So really all of that we’re able to solve through financial planning and the longevity is the biggest piece,” she added.

“We tend to focus on a few different segments,” Michael Cuneo, managing partner, noted. In addition to high-net-worth individuals and closely held businesses (including at the institutional level) a third segment is what the Compass Advisors partners refer to as ‘achievers.’

“Achievers are younger clients who generally are 15-plus years away from retirement and either have substantial accumulated assets or a significant income trajectory,” he explained. Professional examples would include tech executives, future law firm partners, and others.

In fact, 100% of Compass’ nationwide clients have come from referrals. There is no minimum investment required, but Cuneo says there are minimum expectations. “As an independent firm, we embrace our fiduciary responsibility,” he said. “And as importantly, we want clients that seek us out – the ones that will really benefit from the level of expertise that our team brings the table.”

In addition to King and Cuneo, there are four other experienced and credentialed advisors/staff at Compass.

“Everybody here has their own respective discipline and institutional experience,” Cuneo said. “Our client service approach is really an ensemble practice where the client will be onboarded into our ecosystem.”

Once onboarded, clients engage with different members of the team based on their unique needs, but the full team will then work collaboratively to deliver the best solutions to the client.

“Generally, we find our clients have common denominators of high-tax situations, estate planning complexities, business or real estate assets, hedge fund assets, and so on,” Cuneo said. “The greater the level of complexity, I think the more we can deliver for them and that just has become organically who our clients are,” he added. “And it's been great because the practice has been growing significantly and we're getting the types of clients that we truly like to serve.”

King and Cuneo met in 2013. King was already at Compass when Cuneo joined. Two years later they became partners and took over the practice as an independent, registered investment advisory (RIA) firm.

Both are certified financial planners (CFP™) and started their careers on the institutional side, but with different, complementary specialties.

“I started working for a financial advisor at an enterprise that ran a phenomenal practice,” Cuneo recalled the beginning of his more than 20 years of experience. From there, he went to work institutionally with Cohen & Steers Capital Management and RiverSource distributors.

“Most of my clients in the institutional world were financial advisors,” he said. “And one of the paths that led me to where we are today is I got to see tens of thousands of financial advisory practices across the country – New York, Seattle, and everything in between.” He added: “I was able to learn first-hand how some advisors did business the right way; growing and treating their clients as preciously as they should. And I saw a lot of other advisors that were struggling.”

King, on the other hand, grew up in the world of financial advising; it was her father’s career.

“I was very aware of what he (her father) did,” King said. “I majored in finance and economics in undergraduate, and then post-graduate. I realized I really liked the business analytics side of things.”

She spent some time working institutional accounts on Wall Street with Brown Brothers Harriman and enjoyed that but wanted to pursue something a bit more analytical.

“So, I went into equity research for several years at a Sanford Bernstein, the subsidiary of Alliance Bernstein and worked there for several years and then wound up going off to business school to get my MBA,” King said.

She had the analytics experience, the business management side, the financial markets side, but she realized a big part of running a business was the marketing-branding side. So, she spent several years working in branding and marketing at Sara Lee Corporation in Chicago.
Family brought her back to New York in 2010 as a financial advisor where she realized she would be the next face of Compass Advisors.

“But I knew I needed a business partner to really take the firm to the next level,” King said. “And fortunately, and fortuitously, I met Mike in 2013.”

Nowadays, the partners agree education is crucial to good financial planning.

“I was on a call yesterday with a new prospect and she's an avid watcher of the financial news and enjoys the stock market,” King mentioned. “She was more knowledgeable than the average client, but in speaking with her, I said, a big part of our relationship is for me to help you understand what we're doing. I will educate you as much as you want to be educated.”

King added: “So we do have the entire spectrum of clients saying, ‘you know what I trust you wholeheartedly, do what you got to do.’ And other ones at the other extreme that say, ‘I want to know why you're doing things.’”

As such, Compass will walk clients through a very disciplined process on how to get to certain numbers and how to implement the parts of the firm’s framework and program to achieve defined goals.

“It's a really 360-degree look at our clients' view,” King said. “And as I often tell our clients, investments, insurance, all of that is extremely important. Those are the tools for which you're hiring us as financial advisors, financial planners--to allow us to really put goal-based planning in place and in a portfolio.”

In addition to working with individuals and families, Compass provides extensive services to businesses and employees.

“We serve close to 200 business owners because we have a large retirement plan practice where we service 401(k) pension plans,” Cuneo said. “Dealing with business owners on a day-to-day basis is a big part of what we do.”
In fact, 2020 and 2021 were two of the strongest growth years ever for the practice.

“I think it's because we have a methodology, and a process to communicate and service our business owners,” Cuneo explained. “What happens to the business is their life. We get that. The cash flow of the business is their cash flow,” he said. “And you really need to get into that head space to service this type of clientele.”

During the pandemic especially, some of those businesses were struggling with the prospect of closing, or trying to get government lending, or loan forgiveness, or hoping to pay and keep employees.

“For example, it’s been a very challenging employee-employer relationship market due to the Great Resignation,” Cuneo emphasized. “And these are all things that we're grappling with on the client's behalf on a day-to-day basis.”

For more information, visit: compassadvisors.com