Hauser explained how Wellington-Altus was able to offer Wickham their wealth management infrastructure, including marketing, financial planning, and compliance. Wellington-Altus, he said, offered the Wickham team the ability to focus solely on their clients and to stop worrying about the day to day operational issues of running a business. He sees that infrastructure as key to what Wellington-Altus offers advisors. Moreover, he sees that infrastructure as scalable enough to grow with his firm.
Balancing growth with advisory discretion and client service has been a key tension for any independent firm. As more teams and more clients come on board, with distinct approaches and needs, it can be challenging to ensure that the highest service standards are met across the firm while empowering advisors to act as entrepreneurs. Hauser’s solution is what he calls “mass customization.”
That approach, Hauser explains, involves the firm creating baseline standards in their marketing materials, financial planning tools, operational support, and regional management. All the pieces of support that advisors need are held to a single high standard. From there, those support teams can help customize offerings for advisors. Hauser uses the example of advisor websites. Every team begins with the same core template for their website, but there is a huge amount of customization within that template, allowing each advisory team to articulate their unique approach and value add.
Hauser says the test for that model’s success is a simple one: are advisors staying with his firm? He argues that Wellington-Altus advisors are looking at their firm as a partner and are keen to remain with the firm. He says, explicitly, that he wants advisors to love their work because they will spend more time on aggregate working than they will with their families. He says that his firm comes with a culture of accountability that facilitates trust between advisors and senior leadership and through that trust advisors can feel supported in making independent and entrepreneurial decisions.
Hauser says he’s still working to earn and maintain that trust, on an ongoing basis. Key to that work is addressing the myriad challenges advisors face now. Staffing, he says, is a constant challenge for advisory teams. He advocates for staffing up “wisely,” constructing teams that can grow efficiently and intentionally. He contrasts that approach with the “add bodies and figure it out” approach that others have taken. Succession planning, too, is another rapidly growing issue for advisors and one that Hauser believes an intentional approach to team growth can help address.