Let's Get Personal

, By Elizabeth K. Miller, managing director, Trevor Stewart Burton & Jacobsen Inc., New York

By Elizabeth K. Miller, managing director, Trevor Stewart Burton & Jacobsen Inc., New York

The Institute for Private Investors' annual Family Performance Tracking surveys have found over the past few years that most high-net-worth investors have been achieving overall reasonable benchmark returns. Yet the World Wealth Report 2005, released this summer, looked at mid-tier millionaires with $5 million to $30 million in net worth and found that, after losing significant assets in the recent bear market, they are increasingly pursuing illiquid, alternative investments in search of greater returns.

Indiscriminately increasing the risk of investments is not the way to satisfy and retain clients throughout market cycles; but delivering personal strategies and better communication is. The bear market tested financial advisors' mettle — and clients found us lacking, not so much in the results produced, but rather in a failure to truly partner with them in bad times as well as good.

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