Celebrating 10 Years!
October 23, 2018
In September 2008 Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy touching off the worst market rout in our history since the Great Depression. That same day, I resigned my partnership of 14 years to launch a new kind of firm. I had noticed that my clients needed more than investment management; they were looking for answers to a wide range of financial questions in their families. I saw the opportunity for a unique, high service firm focused on all the wealth complexities of high net worth clients. This month we celebrate the 10th anniversary of Summit Place Financial Advisors, LLC.
In the past ten years, we have grown more than four-fold. We have added services and strategies to meet our clients’ needs such as secured lending, donor advised funds, tax prep coordination, ETF portfolios, socially responsible investing, and a robo-advisor offering for our investors who are just starting out. We have expanded our team, welcomed interns and trained young professionals, proudly launching some of them on to the next steps in their careers.
We have upgraded technology to assure that we stay abreast of both the latest opportunities as well as the latest security for our clients. Today we offer our clients personalized websites; communication as they prefer- be it email, video, phone calls or mail; secure document exchange and paperless, digital signature processing for most account requests. Behind the scenes, we have upgraded our internal technology multiple times to deliver redundant backups, increased security and remote access for our professionals.
I am also very proud that since our founding, the firm’s long-term investment results have exceeded the popular benchmarks. Every firm, however, must be able to deliver results, and so I do not consider numbers alone to be the measure of our success. Success is when we help a family achieve their goals and simplify their financial challenges. Success is when we help their children understand how to manage a budget or read an investment statement and prepare them for their financial future. When we help a family find comfort and confidence in their financial situation, I know we’ve made a positive contribution.
Our growth and success have confirmed my vision of ten years ago. Today, we are equally committed to the continued growth and success of Summit Place, including welcoming our newest professional in the next few weeks. We look forward to reporting similar growth over the next 10 years, but we will never pursue growth as a singular goal, nor compromise quality or service.
I am gratified and humbled as I look at the firm today, ten years after a daring launch. We would not be here today without the support of the clients and friends who have become family to us. We value their business; the friends you have sent our way and the business opportunities they have shared. More than anything though, they have put their trust in us and we deeply value that trust. As we have for the past ten years, we will continue to work daily with a singular goal to earn that trust over and over again.