Laurie Kamhi with LCK Wealth Management came over to HighTower in November 2013 after 20 years at Merrill Lynch. She says the biggest reason was that she was looking for Next Gen and millennial clients, and they were looking for a new model—advice rather than brokerage. She had started her career dealing with corporate treasuries and institutions and worked backwards to start dealing with their executives, people who would transfer their wealth and seize on liquidity events.
Those executives would eventually transfer their wealth to their children. More than half her clients worked in some facet of the media business—broadcasting, magazine publishing, radio, advertising, online publishers—“and being in the media world, you end up in the technology world. A lot of traditional media became what we call digital technology.” She helped a lot of these executives go public, go through takeovers, handle illiquid company positions, etc.
Their kids had naturally followed that path through the business, told their friends and became a nice ecosystem of referrals for Kamhi.“I saw HighTower trying to build an open model, fee for advice—the subscription model of ‘I will pay for what you deliver’ is in every walk of life right now,” she explains.
At Merrill, she says, she faced skepticism from her clients over who she was serving—them or the bank she worked for. HighTower was agnostic about where the banking was done and where the investment research was done. “I like the fact that I can buy all the research, buy-side, sell-side and formulate an opinion that suits the clients.” Younger people do a lot of homework, but face more noise. “More information makes them feel more informed, but it also confuses them, and I think they need somebody who has the time to drill down to what’s important to them.”
Peter J. Klein was a veteran of UBS for almost 20 years when he joined HighTower in 2013 under the name of his firm Klein Wealth Management with 265 client relationships and $225 million in AUM (now at about $300 million). He said at UBS he was trying to build a fee-based, consultative practice, but said that the wirehouses were not fully embracing the fiduciary model.
He said that clients always understood his fiduciary role, but knew that UBS could get in the way of that. Also, at HighTower he was no longer working with the confines of what UBS middle management wanted, and he could think as an entrepreneur. “Part of my growth has been in the niche field of philanthropic and charitable planning, so coming here I’ve put more effort behind that. HighTower was helpful and right there with me in developing marketing and relationships and helping continue to move that forward and that has resonated.” John Wiley & Sons had asked him to write a book on philanthropic giving, A Passion For Giving, which allowed him a platform for his niche practice of hooking people up with donor-advised funds and foundations. A bigger firm would throw up more hurdles for marketing that kind of practice, he said. The HighTower model also allows him to talk with other advisors in the network about his practice.
“This is a very collegial atmosphere that’s very refreshing in that regard,” Klein says. “It’s the difference between a big firm and a more entrepreneurial firm. One’s more nimble.”