They began courting more wealthy families, including those with more than $25 million in assets.
"That was at a time when the term 'wealth management' was new," Colpitts adds. "The concept of one firm serving as a family office for multiple families had not been formed yet."
They began researching how to meet the different goals of wealthy families, particularly business owners and high-level executives-an extremely discriminating client base that usually wanted large bequests to charities to be included in their legacies. The work also involved leaving clients' wealth to children and other assorted issues.
So the founders of Signature began drawing from the same base of knowledge for both groups of clients.
"I can modify the plans I am doing for high-net-worth individuals with less than $25 million to invest and their plans would have less variables and be less complicated," she adds.
Yet the two groups continue to have distinct needs, she adds.
"High-net-worth individuals are more concerned with protecting and growing their wealth. Wealthy families think more about what they now want to do with their wealth," Shumadine says.
Signature had to figure out how to serve both clienteles without making either feel they were being shortchanged. The ultra-wealthy families do not want to feel they are underwriting the individual clients and the individual clients do not want to feel they are being assigned second-class status, according to the founders.
The common ground between the two is that both groups are in a position to start considering how they can have an impact on their families or on the community, they say.
"The people of these wealth levels start realizing the potential of their money," Webb says. "There is an escalating complexity as the wealth grows, but there are opportunities for the two different client bases to overlap."