I stay out of making day-to-day investment decisions. I leave that to the pros. When you went into management at my former firm, you give up all your accounts. The logic was simple: You need to concentrate on your new role and the advisors. I chose our advisor. Twenty-six years later we are still together. Almost all our assets are in managed money. 

From my point of view as a client, here’s why I (we) like it.

1. Day-to-day market movement? Not my problem. There’s a team of money managers behind each separately managed account. They are style and size specific. They do what they do best—manage impartially according to a strategy.

2. Getting buy confirmations on down days. Confirms used to come by mail. Now I get an e-mail alerting me they did something. On down days they are often buying. On days when we set new highs, they are sometime selling.

3. The trendy stuff is there. The pandemic put plenty of stocks in favor. I didn’t need to try thinking ahead, wondering what those stocks might be. When I review our consolidated account statement, I often see we own the stocks people are talking about.

4. 100% of the money goes to work. There are no upfront fees. You put money into a managed money program and every dollar is working on our behalf.

5. Transparency in pricing. There’s no surrender charges or fees hidden in the structure of a product. We know what we are paying. FYI:  I’ve seen many people in the industry try to avoid all transaction costs when investing their own money. In my opinion, a good advisor deserves to be paid. They are giving you attention. Their time has value.

6. Pay as you go pricing. Sometimes money gets taken from one manager and given to another. You stop paying when you sell and restart paying when you buy. It’s the ultimate in pay as you go pricing.

 7. We see stocks we might never have chosen. Yes, they bought companies doing drug research during the pandemic. They bought a toolmaker while people locked down at home did home improvement projects. They bought the big brokerage firms. They bought luxury goods firms in Europe.

8. Size and style specific. Each manager is selected because they are good at one thing. My former firm keeps watch for style drift or significant personnel changes that might impact their strategy.

9. Volume discounting. We might utilize several money managers, yet we get the benefits of volume pricing. Pricing is determined by how much in assets we have under management overall.

10. We can withdraw money if necessary. Although investing should be approached as a long-term commitment, we might need to move money for RMDs or because we want to make a large purchase. We call our advisor. Three days later the money is in the right account.

11. Continuity. If one brilliant person made all the investment recommendations you would worry “What if something happened to them?” Who might you get next? The day-to-day investment decisions are made by the teams behind each investment manager. We know there’s continuity.

12. We can add money. There are events in the future that might send cash in our direction. Cash accumulates in other accounts. We know it can be redistributed to one or several of our money managers. Or maybe a different one.

Our advisor works like the conductor of a symphony orchestra. She brings the separate sections together to deliver the performance. We are the audience reaping the benefits.

Bryce Sanders is president of Perceptive Business Solutions Inc. He provides HNW client acquisition training for the financial services industry. His book, Captivating the Wealthy Investor can be found on Amazon.