Cambridge’s new Private Client Solutions offering will help the firm’s 3,800+ financial advisors access expertise from across the firm to target the needs of high-net-worth and ultra-high net worth clients.
The offering from the Iowa-based independent broker/dealer is currently available for Cambridge advisors and is a part of the firm’s Client Solutions platform. The firm intends to help advisors extend advice beyond investment management to other kinds of expertise clients may need depending on their circumstances, including business solutions, tax and estate planning and cash management.
To Jeff Vivacqua, Cambridge’s president of growth and development, the offering streamlines an approach Cambridge had already practiced.
“We were all doing it informally; somebody was talking to Joe or Jane or Tim and we were all offering this expertise and advice from different areas informally,” he said. “So this does bring it together with a better mindset for the financial professional and a more focused approach.”
The firm commenced a soft launch in 2022, before its official unveiling earlier this month during Cambridge’s Circle of Excellence gathering in Boca Raton, Fla. It follows the October 2022 launch of Cambridge’s RetireTRAC, a retirement planning and advisor growth tool developed with Nettuno Group that helps advisors assess clients’ retirement readiness.
As an example of its use, Vivacqua described a small business owner with significant assets who’d require investment management advice. But if the business owner wants to buy a competitor, Vivacqua wants advisors to be able to use the experience Cambridge has developed while operating in an industry with its own rapid M&A pace.
“What do they need to know about valuation, about purchase agreements?” he asked about the small business owner. “Our advisors can leverage our expertise because we do succession and acquisitions as a firm for ourselves and we provide those services for our advisors to help them with M&A activity.”
Vivacqua also said the offering's ease of use might help advisors dissuade clients from looking outside the firm for services, and potentially losing the client altogether.
“Without that, they’re left to go search in different directions for hopefully the ideal solution,” Vivacqua said. “It’s a way to help them narrow that funnel and work with them to connect the dots.”