Kotys Wealth Professionals in Valparaiso operates with one goal in mind: making financial strategies and decisions that seek to meet the needs and goals of each individual client. Kotys Wealth Professionals offers a range of financial services in both the personal and business sectors, and the four key steps that inform the way they operate are to evaluate, plan, grow and preserve their client’s wealth.
At the outset of a new client relationship, Kotys Wealth Professionals seeks to get a detailed look at their financial situation and from there they work to build trust, identify needs, and establish goals.
“We’re looking to make sure that we’re a good fit for someone just as they’re looking to find the right fit for an advisor,” described Wes Kotys, president at Kotys Wealth Professionals. “Our first meeting is very conversational, and it’s more of a gathering of information on how we do business, what are our fees, what are our processes, and we’ll inform them about all of the services that we provide.”
All of these factors serve as the framework on which the experts at Kotys Wealth Professionals will build a plan and establish processes that ultimately work to meet that client's needs and help them reach their goals.
For Kotys Wealth Professionals, the approach they take towards managing their clients’ wealth is two-fold: Holistic and Comprehensive Planning, coupled with an Investment Management Process.
“We want to get to know someone’s entire financial situation and that’s the holistic part of our services,” Wes said. “We want to know how many college educations or weddings they’ll have to pay for. In our planning processes, we’ll take all of our clients out to age 90 or 100. We’re using multiple software programs to model and determine, ‘Hey, this is where you are today and here are your goals.’”
“Rather than just hoping that someone can meet their goals, we’re going to run this model that gives them a picture of their finances well into the future. They’re going to actually get to see their financial lives happen in a projection,” commented Wes.
A big part of Kotys Wealth Professionals’ holistic planning process is running through, as Wes put it, the “What if?” scenarios. Rather than making assumptions, Kotys takes rule-of-thumb out of the equation in order to say, “Let’s build a plan for your specific goals and your specific situation that works.”
From there, Wes and the team at Kotys Wealth Professionals move into the next phase which includes portfolio management.
“Then we can work to build a customized portfolio that caters to those goals. On the investment management side of things, we’re a bit different from most companies in the region in that we do manage money. At most financial firms, and it’s not to say that it’s either good or bad, advisors gather assets and they put money with other money managers. We actually manage our portfolios and we have a very specific, rules-based investment process.”
The processes that Kotys Wealth Professionals operates under is designed to manage risk as much as it’s designed to create growth and income for investors. A lot of effort and capital has been put into the technology that Kotys Wealth Professionals use to inform their decisions in executing the investment process.
“That (technology) is as much of a bright spot as anything we do,” Wes commented. “There are just times that people take more risks than they think and we don’t necessarily invest 100% of a client’s money. Some advisors might suggest investing it all but if we have this detailed plan we’re going to know that, for example, if a client is going to need 20% of their portfolio in cash to meet any short-term goals.”
Kotys Wealth Professionals operate as a fiduciary 100% of the time meaning that they only operate under a fee-only model with the financial interests and well-being of their clients as the most important factor in the decisions and recommendations they make.
“I wanted to pursue this conflict-free arena and I wanted our clients to know that I’m not recommending something, for instance like, life insurance because I want to get paid a commission on that recommendation,” described Wes when speaking about the difference between the fee-only fiduciary model that Kotys Wealth Professionals maintains and the commission, that some wealth firms make on the products that they sell to clients.
“An advisor that’s not fee-only is likely going to be incentivized to recommend that policy, and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but it needs to be disclosed to that client. We operate with a very needs and goals-based approach based on each individual client, and we sought to conduct our business on the purest platform that we could. We’re not making decisions for our bottom line; we’re looking towards our client’s long-term needs and goals at all times and in every decision that we make.”
To find out more about how Kotys Wealth Professionals can help to secure your financial future, visit: www.kotyswealthpro.com!
