At Yerba Buena Financial Partners, we are firm believers in having a clear process for creating an accurate, useful, and evolving wealth plan. Imagine completing the wealth planning process with confidence that there was a closely controlled method used to gather your information, input and analyze your special circumstances, illustrate custom options for your planning, and finally stress test your options. Our team of knowledgeable professionals will create a plan for organizing and managing your wealth and implementing your Three Pillars of Wealth Management. Our proprietary, systemized approach provides the risk management and disciplined investment process you need and deserve, which sets us apart from “other” financial advisors.
Whether your financial situation is straightforward or complex, we can present options that will address your needs. Our process includes the following steps:
1. Initial consultation: As a prospective client, we’ll first ask you to complete a summary confidential client profile and personal values questionnaire. We’ll then sit down with you and have a discussion about whether Yerba Buena Financial Partners and our services are a good fit for your needs. We’ll also discuss whether you are a good fit for our firm. Mutual fit is important; we understand we are not right for everyone and everyone is not right for us. We believe it is critical that all parties―both clients and advisors―feel comfortable with the relationship before we move forward.
Finally, we’ll explain the philosophy behind our Three Pillars of Wealth Management, so you’ll understand the rationale behind any recommendations we may present. It is at this point that we fully define our engagement, your planning scenarios, and determine the appropriate investment you will be making to complete your wealth plan.
As a courtesy to our existing clients, we only accept a limited number of new client families each year. If we do not feel we can bring added value to your situation, we will be happy to recommend another qualified professional.
2. Discovery process: We begin the process of getting to know you with our eyes wide open. As part of our discovery process, you’ll be asked to complete qualitative and quantitative questionnaires along with personal interviews with your advisor. We want you to be open with us as we move through the discovery process. Not only do we want to get a total picture of your financial situation, we also want to understand your family and business situation, tolerance for risk, personal priorities, and where you’d like the journey of life to take you. For couples, we use a series of private and joint questionnaires to confirm that your goals are aligned. Couples may not see eye to eye on every issue, but we’ll work with you to facilitate a plan that creates alignment as appropriate and that works for both partners. All basic facts are confirmed prior to moving forward to the next step in our process: analysis and scenario building.
3. Analysis and scenarios: Because we’re good listeners, our analysis will always keep in mind the things we learned about you in the discovery process. Before beginning this step, we confirm where you are today versus where you’d like to be in the future, and prepare a gap analysis if necessary. We will also prepare illustrations of your scenarios and our initial findings along with planning options for you to consider. Finally, in order to help you understand your hidden risks, we prepare stress testing of your scenarios against inflation, bear markets, premature death, and long-term illnesses.
4. Plan presentation: You’ll meet with us in our office, where we will share the outcome of the scenarios and the findings we prepared. We will review reports that lay out estimated cash flows, earnings, and/or additional savings needed to achieve goals, generational transfers, and tax implications. During this meeting, we’ll talk through options for your Three Pillars, as well as the results of stress testing these findings.
Multiple meetings may be required to provide the plan alterations, comprehensive education, and implementation timing that best fit your needs. We then finalize your initial plan and begin your account opening and transfer process. Once that is complete, we deliver your final printed plan.
5. Implementation: We complete the account opening, transfers, and underwriting processes as required by the plan. We communicate with you at every step along the way so you know the status of everything as it is happening. If your engagement includes account aggregation and e-vault, we will begin the input process during this phase.
Frequently, new clients prefer we start with an investment proposal and transfer assets immediately while information is being gathered to complete their wealth plan. If this sounds like the approach you would prefer, we can talk about how that might work for you. We’re comfortable working on parallel paths so your capital works appropriately for you.
6. Concierge service: Once your accounts and other instruments are in place, we will update you again to confirm your status and talk about what to expect going forward. Generally, we like to have a meeting after 90 days to review your first statements and discuss your continued comfort level. You’ll also receive Weekly Market Commentary, monthly statements and quarterly performance reporting, quarterly updates in your e-vault, annual review meetings, rebalancing of investments, minor plan adaptation as needed, newsletters, educational material, and invitations to special client events.
Once your plan is in place, you’ll be able to monitor your total financial life through our Wealth Management System. This secure, state-of-the-art, web-based software allows you to form a complete picture of your financial life. As a client, you’ll be able to monitor your portfolio, view balances, run “what if” scenarios, and communicate directly with us through your personal financial homepage. Detailed charts and graphs will provide an easy-to-understand overview of your complete financial picture. Our Wealth Management System also features an e-vault―secure online storage for your important documents such as wills, trusts, deeds, passports, contracts, or insurance policies.
The Wealth Management System provides constant, up-to-date access to your financial information and makes it easy for us to work together with you and your other advisors to make sure you’re on track to reach your goals.
The Yerba Buena Financial Partners’ Wealth Management System
