How Morgan Stanley Wows Its Extremely-Rich Shoppers

Information printed early this 12 months by Cerulli Associates exhibits “advanced” and concierge-style providers that cater to particular consumer wants have gotten more and more vital for advisors searching for to compete for ultra-high-net-worth purchasers.

Entry to such providers outweighs private relationship components in the case of bringing purchasers on board, in keeping with Cerulli’s research. On the identical time, 35% of high-net-worth people polled mentioned they’d begun a relationship with their main advisory supplier due to both the providers or the consumer expertise on supply, up from 28% who mentioned this in 2017.

Valerie Wong Fountain, head of household workplace assets associate and platform administration at Morgan Stanley, advised ThinkAdvisor in a current interview that these findings match intently along with her current expertise on the job. In reality, Wong Fountain’s position consists of main the agency’s division devoted to this want, Signature Entry Life-style Advisory, and she or he argued that the strategic significance of her group’s work for Morgan Stanley’s total success within the UHNW area shouldn’t be underestimated.

Wong Fountain described Signature Entry as a bridge between Morgan Stanley’s monetary planning providers and a well-connected community of execs and third-party service suppliers who specialize within the distinct wants of this consumer base. These vary from assist with well being and safety points to journey and concierge providers; asset administration for tangibles like actual property, jewellery, plane or yachts; govt teaching; bookkeeping and bill-paying; elder care providers; and extra.

“Signature Entry serves because the connection between purchasers’ monetary plans and the challenges that contact each side of their each day lives,” Wong mentioned within the interview.

Listed below are some highlights from our dialog:

THINKADVISOR: You will have nearly 20 years of expertise at Morgan Stanley. How did you come to be main this a part of the enterprise? Had been you all the time targeted on the UHNW phase?

Valerie Wong Fountain: No, really not. I grew up in California and I went to the Wharton Faculty at UPenn, the place I studied finance and accounting. Naturally, it was a subsequent step after that to go to Wall Road and work for Morgan Stanley. It was a extremely fast-paced atmosphere, and I obtained to interact with extremely sensible and attention-grabbing individuals.

I joined initially within the gross sales and buying and selling enterprise earlier than transferring by way of a couple of completely different roles, together with being an ETF product supervisor. I additionally traded on and ran our worldwide ETF buying and selling desk, and I traded on our whole return fairness swaps desk as effectively.

From there, I used to be given the chance to interview to work for James Gorman. On the time, he was nonetheless the co-president of Morgan Stanley. They have been in search of a right-hand man or ladies to assist James — a little bit of a nebulous job description admittedly — however I ended up getting the position.

I got here to see fairly rapidly that most of the traits that make individuals profitable on the buying and selling ground additionally apply to agency management and administration. An enormous a part of it’s actually about having the ability to assume rapidly in your toes and having the ability to execute and ship on the agency’s goals. So, I grew to become James’ first chief of workers and I stayed on with him after he was introduced to succeed John Mack as CEO.

Afterward, I made a cease as a co-head of our non-public capital markets enterprise, the place I targeted on elevating non-public types of capital, after which later I used to be requested to maneuver into this position. That was in 2016.

Earlier than we communicate extra about Signature Entry, are you able to inform us somewhat extra about what the expertise was like working for James Gorman throughout the interval after the monetary disaster?

It’s attention-grabbing. I’d say that, popping out of the monetary disaster, the therapeutic interval did take a whole lot of time — extra years than many trade leaders had first anticipated. Right here at Morgan Stanley, I’d say that there was only a great quantity of gratitude to John Mack for the way in which he guided us by way of the disaster.

There was a sense that he had achieved a lot to assist save Morgan Stanley and the agency, and when James grew to become the brand new CEO, we actually have been seeking to stick with it that sense of optimism. Popping out of that interval, there have been alternatives to proceed to construct on and make clear our core technique.