Financial advising is one of the most requested services that banks offer for clients looking for investment advice or managing assets. Wells Fargo offers advisory services for investment funds and retirement accounts.
What can financial advisers do?
Wells Fargo’s financial advising team focuses on managing investments for a variety of future events. Investments can be a crucial piece to that future retirement or managing an estate after your death. In fact, Wells Fargo focuses on these key areas:
• Estate Management
Estate management is a fairly large portion of financial planning for many consumers. Handling end-of-life events such as assisted living or disability can be costly and financial planners are trained to make sure assets and wishes are maintained during the process. Financial advisors at Wells Fargo usually focus on managing trusts and specific policies such as long-term care insurance for events like this. The entire estate management process is one that works with tax professionals and an attorney.
• Retirement Planning
Retirement planning is a combination of planning for specific risks and changing priorities depending on when the account was set up. A retirement plan developed in your 30s will have a radically different approach if it’s planned in your 50s. Wells Fargo uses monitoring tools to identify potential risks and develops goals throughout each decade.
• Managed Planning
Unforeseen events and education expenses make up the bulk of the rest of Wells Fargo’s financial advising. Future educational expenses are usually managed to reduce the amount of tax liability and stay safe for the future.
Putting money to work
There are several investment products offered through Wells Fargo. Each one has its own pros and cons. Financial advisors work with everything from secured bonds to exchange-traded products for more leverage.
Wells Fargo uses several advisory programs to make sure funds are managed properly.
• Separately managed accounts
Private management is a popular option that Wells Fargo considers the ultimate program for transparency in the process. The benefit of this program is the ability to customize your investment portfolio with clear objectives you can develop with a private manager. You can also use personal preferences to avoid investing in a specific sector or company in a portfolio. However, consumers should be aware that the fees associated with this type of management can be substantially higher depending on the strategy. A client-directed portfolio can be a more affordable choice for options such as education planning.
• Unified Managed Accounts
A unified managed account is Wells Fargo’s way of managing information remotely in one brokerage account. The portfolio can take a high or low-risk approach and compliment the appropriate funds and investment managers to focus on your chosen strategy. The fact that you can differentiate several investments in one brokerage account makes this easy for clients looking for a single risk factor in investing.
• FA-directed portfolio management
This type of financial advising management program allows financial managers to leverage more control on everyday investment decisions. Portfolios are customized based on goals and risk tolerance. How does this differ from other managed portfolios? FA-directed portfolios rely on a team of advisors to make decisions. A financial advisor will have more control over important decisions such as how retirement funds will be invested. The downside to this management plan is less flexibility and control over a more diverse portfolio arrangement.
• Client-directed portfolio management
If you are looking for the most flexible financial portfolio available, Wells Fargo uses the client-directed method in the advisory program to give full control over decisions to the client. The financial advisor functions as advice and someone to contact with any questions on a portfolio. The pricing structure is also fixed and is popular with clients wishing to have full control over assets and portfolio diversity. Full control can also be a downside in some investment portfolios. Wells Fargo’s managed accounts may make more sense to leave to the professionals for complex estate planning or retirement funds.
