How We Advise

At Borwick Wealth Management, our approach to working with new clients is centered around understanding your unique needs and building a strong, trusting relationship. Here’s how we guide you through the process:

Client Onboarding
Our client onboarding process is designed to get to know you and what matters most to you. To begin our relationship, we want to hear from you. Whether you are an individual or a business, we gather the relevant information needed to help you achieve your goals. This can be done through an in-person meeting, a Zoom call, or simply by filling out a questionnaire. Our first priority is to address the most pressing matters in your life.

When we meet a prospective client for the first time, it’s crucial for us to determine early on if we are a good fit for each other. That’s why we meet with prospective clients two times with no obligation, before making any decisions about signing an agreement and working together. If we decide to work together, great! If not, no harm done, and at the very least, perhaps we will each meet a new friend.

Financial Planning as a Process, Not an Event
Our approach to working with clients is something that most of you have probably never experienced before, and in fact, our approach is not for everyone. When a new client comes on board, we typically meet with them six to eight times over the course of the first year. This allows us to break down and tackle each financial planning topic with the client one at a time, making it easier for the client to digest the information and allowing us to get to know each other slowly and build trust and confidence between us.

This approach is called modular financial planning. Practicing modular financial planning helps our clients to be more effective in implementing our recommendations because they can work on a few items at a time and are not overwhelmed with a huge list of things to do all at once across multiple financial planning topics. Taking a modular approach reinforces the idea that financial planning is a process and not an event. It takes time to go through things and figure out what needs to be done and how it needs to be done.

Investments: Important, But Not Rushed
Concerns about investments are a primary reason why people seek the help of a financial planner. Often, a new client is in a hurry to get advice on their portfolio and then make changes. When this occurs with a new client, we explain that unless we see something that could harm them financially if not changed right away, we are in no hurry to make changes.

Before we can advise on how a portfolio should be structured and make specific investment recommendations, we need to understand the client’s financial situation in detail. We want to know about their income and cash flow needs (now and in retirement), their assets and liabilities, goals, family situation, and risk tolerance (how much volatility can they stand) and risk capacity (ability to financially take risk based on their current situation) among other things. All of these factors need to be taken into account when advising on the structure of the portfolio and the investments it should contain.

We also analyze the current portfolio to determine how the investments are divided among stocks, bonds, and cash, and what the costs are on the investments in the portfolio. We then educate our clients on their current portfolio and use that discussion as the starting point for why changes may be needed.

In general, if changes are needed in a portfolio, unless there is something that needs urgent attention, we will likely not start making those changes until the third or fourth meeting of that first year we work together.