A Brief Q&A with Summit Wealth & Retirement Co-Founder Rob Cucchiaro
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What Makes Us Different?
Q. What makes Summit Wealth different?
A. There are a few things that make us different:
1) We fully integrate our client’s tax planning, tax returns and investment management into one comprehensive plan.
We are able to do this because we work with a small number of successful clients.
Our staff to client ratio is extremely high, which means we can go extremely deep with our clients and spend lots of time with them each year.
2) Our planning is extremely comprehensive. We help our clients with everything in their life that has a dollar sign attached to it.
3) We are completely independent. Many of the firms we compete with are owned by a bank, a brokerage firm or a private equity firm. That means the Advisor has a fiduciary duty not to the client, but to the firm that owns them. We are completely independent. Summit is owned by its Principles and that’s not going to change.
What is Wealth Management?
Q. What is wealth management?
A. The key words to remember here are “fully integrated”.
For a lot of Advisors, wealth management is limited strictly to one’s investment portfolio with some lip service paid to financial planning or tax planning.
Real wealth management is:
Investment Management + Retirement Planning + Tax Planning + Estate Planning + Charitable Planning
…all fully integrated for your benefit and peace of mind.
What are some ways that we can help you?
Q. How does a financial planner help with things like estate planning or tax planning?
A. Often, a client will have an estate planning binder that they haven’t looked at in awhile. To make things easier, we diagram a client’s entire estate plan into a single document, which allows for easy access.
With regards to tax planning, this is an area where we really shine. When a new client comes on board we dedicate time to review their tax returns with them, so that we both fully understand where all of the numbers are coming from.
This allows us to project what their future tax returns will look like (what we call a mock tax return), in which we can show them the impact of certain strategies.
When we are preparing a client’s tax projections in the fall, preparing their returns in the spring, and managing the tax efficiency of their portfolios, we are making their tax life and their financial life as simple as possible for them.
How long has Summit been around?
Q. How long has Summit been around?
A. Summit Wealth & Retirement Partners has roots going back to 1986.
In 1986, Paul Remack and Ed Gardner formed RG Financial. Ed and Paul eventually went their separate ways. Then, Hal Porter and I teamed up with Paul and rebranded the firm as Summit Wealth & Retirement. In 2015 we formed a new corporation and bought Paul out as a partner.
Though the name and the players have changed, the philosophy has remained the same. Successful families hire us to help them manage their wealth, prepare for the future, and make better financial decisions.
What is Our Investment Philosophy? How Do We Manage Client Money?
Q. What is your investment philosophy and how do you manage client money?
A. Clients hire us to manage their permanent, irreplaceable capital.
We start by asking new clients: “How long did it take to accumulate your wealth?” The answer is usually: “A few decades.” After that, we then ask: “How much of your wealth do you want to speculate with?”
As you can imagine, when a family has spent 3+ decades accumulating wealth, they do not want to be speculative with their money. Rather, they want to protect it and grow it, in that order. We build specialized, tax efficient portfolios for each of our clients, which are designed to do just that.
What is our Fee Structure?
Q. What is our fee structure?
A. One time onboarding flat fee + asset management fee
When we first sit down with the client, we get a sense of their net worth and the complexity that they're dealing with. We charge a flat fee to onboard them. And then we charge an asset management fee that starts at 1 percent and discounts as their portfolio grows.