Prestige Wealth Management is a financial advisor firm with multiple offices in New Jersey. It was founded in 1994. The firm serves multiple types of clients but most of its current clients are individual investors, the majority of whom are high-net-worth individuals.
You can receive a variety of financial planning services from Prestige Wealth Management, including some targeted directly at women and businesses. The firm also provides multiple types of investment management services.
Prestige Wealth Management Background
Roy Williams founded Prestige Wealth Management in 1994. He is the firm’s sole owner and serves as its president. Williams is also a chartered financial consultant (ChFC) and recently published his first book, which covers mistakes you should avoid in order to have a successful retirement.
Williams also owns the affiliated firm, The Pillar Strategies (officially Prestige Wealth Services Group, Inc.). This is a separate financial advisor firm that primarily handles client portfolios. The Pillar Strategies has just four financial advisors on staff and more than $65 million in AUM.
Prestige Wealth Management Client Types and Account Minimums
The majority of Prestige Wealth Management’s clients are individual investors, more than half of whom are high-net-worth individuals. However, the firm also works with business entities, pension and profit-sharing plans, trusts, estates and charitable organizations.
There is generally no set account minimum required for you to receive asset management services from Prestige Wealth Management.
Services Offered by Prestige Wealth Management
Prestige Wealth Management provides a range of financial planning and investment services. The following list includes some of the common services that you can receive:
- Financial planning
- Cash flow analysis
- Tax planning
- Personalized CFO Services
- Trust and estate planning
- Retirement planning
- Social Security election timing
- Education planning
- Investment management
- Insurance management
In addition to its investment management services, the firm also offers an automated, online investing service called Prestige Virtual Portfolios. These portfolios are managed with a software that Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. provides to independent advisors. While your portfolio will be opened and held in a brokerage account with Charles Schwab, Prestige Wealth Management will manage your account. In many ways, this service operates like a robo-advisor.
The firm’s private vaulting services allow clients to electronically organize and store important financial planning documents. For example, you could store tax returns, insurance policies, estate planning documents and other legal documents.
Prestige Wealth Management also offers educational programs designed specifically for women. These programs are available both independently of and in conjunction with the firm’s other financial planning and investing services.
Prestige Wealth Management Investment Philosophy
When managing client portfolios, advisors at Prestige Wealth Management will primarily allocate assets among stocks, bonds, other fixed-income securities, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Advisors may also use separately managed accounts, independent managers and master limited partnerships (MLPs). The exact kind of investments used in a portfolio will depend on a client’s investment objectives.
To determine which investments are suitable for use, advisors utilize multiple methods of analysis. This could include fundamental analysis, technical analysis, charting and cyclical analysis. Fundamental analysis attempts to determine the intrinsic value of an asset, while technical analysis looks at the markets in order to find patterns in asset prices and investor behavior. Charting is a type of technical analysis that uses statistics to study trends in asset prices. Cyclical analysis considers the historical relationships between the price of an asset and market trends, with the goal of forecasting the direction of asset prices.
Advisors may also use multiple investing strategies. This could mean making long-term purchases (investments held for more than one year) or short-term purchases (investments held for less than one year). Advisors also execute some trades within 30 days of buying a security.
Portfolios managed through Prestige Virtual Portfolios will operate slightly differently than those managed through the firm’s traditional advisor services. The first step in opening an online portfolio is for the client to complete an online questionnaire. The goal is to determine the client’s investment objectives and risk tolerance. Based on the client’s answers, Prestige Wealth Management will recommend an appropriate investment strategy and asset allocation. There are four allocation options: aggressive, moderately aggressive, moderate and conservative. Portfolios typically hold some mix of cash and ETFs. To maintain a proper asset allocation, the portfolio will be regularly rebalanced.
Fees Under Prestige Wealth Management
Because Prestige Wealth Management offers more than one type of investment management, the advisor fees you pay will depend on which services you use.
If you use the wrap progeam, where all services are sold together for one price, the fees will range from 0.50% to 1.95%. For asset management alone, the fees will range from 0.45%to 1.95%.
Fixed fees for financial planning range from $3,500 to $50,000. Hourly charges range from $500 to $750.
What to Watch Out For
Prestige Wealth Management and its advisors have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of their clients. With that being said, there are some potential conflicts of interest that a client might like to know about.
First off, current and prospective clients should note that advisors at the firm may earn a commission for the sale of certain investments. Some advisors are also licensed insurance agents and may earn commissions from selling insurance products.
Also worth noting is that if for some reason the firm will not handle a client’s account, it may refer the client to The Pillar Strategies. This firm is affiliated with Prestige Wealth Management, as they are under common ownership and have advisors who work for both firms. The firms’ common owner may benefit from referring a client from one firm to the other.
The final potential conflict of interest to note relates to the firm’s agreement with Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. The agreement states that Prestige Wealth Management will not pay a licensing fee for the use of Virtual Portfolios if it maintains $100 million in client assets in accounts at Charles Schwab but independent of Virtual Portfolios. This could provide an incentive for Prestige Wealth Management to advise clients to maintain their accounts with Charles Schwab.
Prestige Wealth Management has not been subject to any disciplinary actions in the past decade.
Opening an Account with Prestige Wealth Management
If you are interested in talking to an advisor or opening an account with Prestige Wealth Management, you will need to contact the firm. You can visit either of the firm’s two offices, email the firm or call. The firm provides its address, email address, phone number (including a toll free number) and fax number on its website at prestigewmg.com/contact. That page also has a contact form that you can use to ask specific questions.
Once you have opened an account, you can access and manage your investment portfolio via prestigewmg.com/p/my-account.
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