Andy Wallerstein, CEO of Avalon Trust in Santa Fe, N.M., describes his firm as a 12-year-old wealth management and trust company serving wealthy individuals, families and trusts. "We have about $400 million under management and offer a high-service family office type of management," says Wallerstein.
Wallerstein says Avalon has been involved for more than a decade with Fidelity. "We joined them because we felt they had a well-articulated service model for folks like us ... not just trading and technology, but practice service pieces, too." In addition to the technology consulting Fidelity has provided Avalon, it's also provided HR assistance and insurance-buying opportunities.
"We had used an HR agency that consulted with us on hiring an analyst. We posted the analyst position on the CFA Web site and had 80 resumes pour in," Wallerstein says. "Fidelity helped us articulate the job description and narrow the field down to 12 to 13 people. They then interviewed all the finalists and wrote us a memo on each, narrowing the field further down to four or five people."
Wallerstein notes Fidelity functioned much like an in-house HR department. Since Avalon was billed hourly, the cost was just a few thousand dollars rather than the large fee a headhunter would have charged.
In addition to the HR function, Wallerstein says Fidelity helped Avalon significantly reduce its premiums for E&O insurance. "As a trust company, we'd been paying about $22,000 per year for E&O. We're hard to rate since we're not easily pigeonholed."
Wallerstein says Fidelity put them in touch with the insurance agency of Starkweather and Shepley. "They put the bid out to some carriers and we ended up with better coverage at half the price."
Wallerstein is completely satisfied with Fidelity's practice management services and says the only help they need now is getting new clients. Says Wallerstein, "Fidelity completely exceeded my expectations."
Paul Brahim, executive vice president and managing director of Pittsburgh-based BPU Investment Management, is also a Fidelity advocate. "We're a dually registered firm of 42 employees serving middle-class millionaires-typically with $500,000 to $5 million of assets-with wealth management services."
Brahim says Fidelity has worked extensively with BPU to bring in outside specialists to create the look and feel of its brand. "They designed a corporate capability brochure, provided input on our Web content, brought in a marketing/graphics company, and we worked with an internal Fidelity consultant to put that all together."
Brahim hasn't found Fidelity's practice management services lacking. "They do so much for us it's hard to say what we're not getting that we would like to have."
Schwab advisor services
Scott Slater, the managing director of business consulting at Charles Schwab, says Schwab defines its practice management solution as business consulting-that is, helping firms move from being a practice to being a profitable and growing business.
About six years ago, Schwab began to invest in resources to build the business consulting internally and provide proprietary content and solutions. Now Schwab's deliverable covers the following areas:
Technology consulting and support