Mark Kruspodin is a co-founding and current managing partner of Duffy Kruspodin. His emphasis in the firm is working with high-net-worth individuals, professional practices, international taxation, entertainment industry taxation and accounting, production accounting, retirement, and financial planning, complex real estate transactions, and mid-size businesses.
Russ Alan Prince: Please describe Duffy Kruspodin.
Mark Kruspodin: Duffy Kruspodin has been providing personalized financial guidance to local individuals and businesses for more than 30 years. Our expert tax and accounting professionals are driven and dedicated to helping our clients plan for the future and succeed.
Our team is committed to personally supporting the needs and financial goals of our clients. Our aim is to take the stress off our clients’ plates so they can concentrate on what they do best and continue to move with positive momentum.
One of the key factors in our firm’s success has been our uncompromising commitment to the highest standards of quality and professionalism. Providing quality service to our clients is our primary objective, and we have developed procedures along with our emphasis on open communication to ensure the highest standards of performance and efficiency.
Prince: What is your approach to wealth management?
Kruspodin: We recognized years ago the benefits of the collaboration of our clients’ professionals in optimizing their financial lives. The problem is that most wealth managers are more focused on selling financial strategies and products because that is how they are compensated, rather than being focused on delivering maximum value to clients.
We recognized that to ensure that the needs of our clients always come first, we needed to control the wealth management process. We have carefully selected elite wealth managers to partner with who are committed to the same goal of delivering maximum value to clients. Very importantly, we are continually involved to ensure that our clients are always getting the best possible wealth management solutions.
Our recommendations are determined by the deep understanding of our clients including their latent needs, wants, aspirations, and concerns. Based on these insights, we’re able to deliver the financial strategies and products that are most appropriate to help them optimize their financial lives.
With the combination of our deep understanding of our clients and the technical expertise we bring to the table both in-house and through our coordination with outside experts, we can deliver solutions that many others do not have access to or are not aware of.
In order to optimize our clients’ financials, we believe that wealth management needs to be woven into the fabric of the firm, rather than a stand-alone practice. We don’t look at a client and try to sell them investments or insurance products, rather, we bring the members of our elite wealth management team together with our tax, trusts and estates, and valuation groups to review our clients and determine together how we can bring more value to them.
Prince: What benefits does providing elite wealth management have for your firm?
Kruspodin: Our primary consideration is to benefit our clients. And this is what’s indeed happening. However, since so many of them have been poorly served by wealthy managers, financial advisors, and life insurance agents, we’re able to add significant value.
While I just said that the goal is not to sell products and services to clients so we can generate revenues, the nature of elite wealth management is that by being singularly focused on helping clients optimize their financial lives, our accounting firm’s elite wealth management practice is highly successful.
Since we’re focused on deeply understanding our clients, we regularly identify more than just wealth management possibilities. As clients have a diverse set of needs, wants, preferences, and concerns, our methodology helps identify these possibilities, thereby setting the stage to introduce other accounting practice areas.
By delivering ever greater value our clients are highly appreciative and increasingly introduce us to their peers. We love client referrals because nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. We’re seeing new high-quality clients for our elite wealth management practice, as well as other firm practice areas.
For example, we have many clients considering the sale of their business in the next three to five years. To help them understand the potential outcome, we will need to bring in our valuation department to help understand where the business is valued now and down the road. We will also need to bring in our tax group to determine if there are tax and estate planning strategies to ensure more of the proceeds stay in the family or with the causes they care about. The combination of these services will help them identify ways to increase their value and likely save millions of dollars in taxes.
While I know that there are no unique approaches or solutions in accounting and wealth management, our approach to clients first and our ability to function as the coordinator of experts with our elite wealth management team enables us to optimize the financial lives of our clients and drive more revenue and profitability to the firm.
RUSS ALAN PRINCE is the Executive Director of Private Wealth magazine (pw-mag.com) and Chief Content Officer for High-Net-Worth Genius (hnwgenius.com). He consults with family offices, the wealthy, fast-tracking entrepreneurs, and select professionals.