WHY THE ADVOCATE GROUP?
What are the individual elements that in combination make The Advocate Group unique?
We Serve a Select and Specific Clientele
The pressures of piloting a successful corporate career are mighty forces. Our clients have borne this pressure and maintained their successful career focus to the point where they now recognize that they have become, or soon will be, wealth creators. We serve families who wish to join with us in order to become confident that they are maximizing every element of potential in their employers’ compensation system, as well as in the management of their diversified investment holdings. The majority of our practice is devoted to serving the unique investment and planning objectives of select executives at Minnesota’s large publicly traded and privately held companies.
We are a Collaborative One-Stop-Shop
We share our offices with an accounting firm (Accounting Resource Group) and a law firm (Waybridge Law Group). The accounting and law firms are completely independent of the Advocate Group 1 and we do not share revenue or provide referral fees; yet we operate in a collaborative, team environment. Our clients are not obligated to use the legal or tax services of these firms, yet many clients value the “One-Stop-Shop” environment of our offices. All clients indirectly benefit from our association with Accounting Resource Group and Waybridge Law Group because the three firms share research, knowledge, and professional insight with each other… none of us is as smart as all of us.
We are Comprehensive Financial Advisors
We are charged by our clients with the responsibility of proactively bringing to the front any issue, across the broad spectrum of personal finance. Through an intensive discovery process we are empowered to help our clients make confident decisions around what we all discover matters most. We are advisors who possess expertise in the broad disciplines of cash and stock-based compensation, employee benefits, estate planning, insurance, risk management, tax planning, and investments.
We are Firm-centric, Not Advisor-centric
Advocate Group clients are clients of the firm, not a particular advisor. We believe that to properly honor the investment of trust and time which our clients place with us, our firm’s commitment should extend beyond the active professional life of any individual team member.
We Exercise a Pristine Standard of Care for our Clients through Two Separate Entities
The Advocate Group is a fee-based registered investment advisor (RIA) subject to audit and oversight by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The Advocate Group is the entity through which all financial planning and fee-based investment management is delivered to clients.
Operating a second entity, TAG Financial Services, enlarges the scope of our capabilities by permitting us to engage in the placement of specialized insurance and investment products which are uniquely beneficial to our high net worth clients but which are only available through proper licensing and/or affiliation with a Broker/Dealer. Unlike the Advocate Group, where the firm is compensated exclusively through pre-disclosed fees paid by our clients, TAG Financial Services is paid by commission and capital placement fees paid to its representatives by specific financial institutions. TAG Financial Services is audited every year by LPL Financial and is supervised and subject to audit by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) as well as various State Commerce departments.
LPL Financial is the Nation’s largest independent broker/dealer. 2 As a truly independent broker/dealer, LPL Financial manufactures no financial products nor is it engaged in the investment banking business. TAG Financial Services is therefore under no pressure to represent any particular financial product, service, or inventoried security to the public.
All client assets are held in custody at independent, nationally recognized third party custodians. Every position in every client’s portfolio is known every day.
All client communication, documentation, recommendations and investment transactions are permanently retained in a state of the art, searchable, electronic storage system.
We use Sophisticated Technology
We utilize a cutting edge client service platform that provides each client with a personal financial homepage that consolidates all investment, financial projections, and estate planning data in ONE secure location, accessible whenever desired from any global location where internet access is available. The consolidated information is updated every market day. This information feeds into our planning tools, which keep the client and their advisory team continuously informed and focused.
Watch a two-minute audio-visual overview of our Client Service Platform
1. Accounting Resource Group and Waybridge Law Group are neither endorsed nor affiliated with LPL Financial.
2. As reported in Financial Planning Magazine, June 1996-2011, based on total revenues.
