Wealth Matters: Putting Your Doctor, or a Whole Team of Them, on Retainer

With that he entered the world of concierge medicine, a growing subset of medicine where patients pay doctors anywhere from $1,500 to $25,000 a year to receive personalized attention and care. (Dr. Glazer said he was paid toward the top of this range.) In most cases, patients presume that in an emergency their concierge doctor will push them to the front of the line to see a top specialist.

Even as more people are struggling to pay medical bills and being rushed through office visits with their doctors, an elite group with money has another option: exclusive medical care, around the clock and anywhere in the world, including on a yacht or private plane.

One of Dr. Glazer’s clients, for instance, has had his yacht outfitted with a system from Guardian 24/7, a company in Leesburg, Va., founded by former White House doctors that advertises itself as offering “medical protection previously available only to the president of the United States.” The company’s “ready room” will allow a doctor trained in the system to perform basic medical care remotely if something should go wrong while the patient is on the high seas.

“There is very little that we can’t do with the triage room on their yacht,” he said.

The cost of Guardian 24/7’s services ranges from $6,000 to $12,000 a month, plus an additional $700,000 for one of the company’s top-of-the-line “ready rooms” installed in a client’s home, yacht or airplane, said Jonathan Frye, chief executive.

While it is difficult to determine how many people are served by this more personalized care, the number of doctors who have moved to this new model has risen fivefold in the last five years. And that raises questions about medical care in America. For those who can afford it, what do they get for their money? Is it worth it? And for the rest of us, who cannot afford this level of care, is it fair and ethical for doctors to be doing this? Or is concierge care contributing to the growing gulf between the wealthy and everyone else?

COSTS AND BENEFITS Concierge medical care is nothing new. In places like Florida, with a high concentration of Medicare patients, some upper-middle-class retirees pay extra fees so they can see a doctor when they need to.

MDVIP, which has 450 concierge doctors in 34 states, charges patients $1,500 to $1,800 a year. Their doctors are each limited to 600 patients, whereas, the company says, most primary care physicians serve at least 2,000 patients. It says appointments with doctors “start on time and last as long as necessary” and can usually be made the same day or the next one. The company’s fee is for the extended care and comprehensive annual physical and wellness plan, but its doctors still bill the patient’s insurance company for procedures.

The international, around-the-clock programs take concierge medicine to a different level. Their primary goal is to offer an extra level of oversight to make sure that participants are getting the proper level of care whenever they need it.

Dr. Miles J. Varn, chief medical officer at PinnacleCare Private Health Advisory, which charges annual fees of $1,500 to $25,000, said the starting point for all patients was a complete review of all health records with an emphasis on finding gaps in care.

“We have physicians who look for omissions of care or deviations from standard care,” Dr. Varn said. “That record travels with them around the world.”

In promoting themselves, the plans say their doctors know each patient’s health conditions intimately and are able to discuss it with another doctor anywhere in the world.

Dr. Daniel Carlin, founder and chief executive of World Clinic, which charges $20,000 to $75,000 a year on average, said he recently had to intervene and stop a patient from getting the wrong procedure. The client was at a hospital in Florida where the doctors wanted to do bypass surgery for a blocked vessel. Dr. Carlin said the proper care was putting in a stent, and the difference was months of pain and recovery for the patient and tens of thousands of dollars for the hospital.

“You’re holding up a shield and saying, ‘We’ll weigh everything before we move forward,’?” Dr. Carlin said. “With the primary care guy gone, the average patient isn’t being treated.”

IS IT WORTH IT? Despite reports about the decline in the number of family physicians and the increase in the hours the remaining ones work, many wealthy people are reluctant to pay extra for health care.

 

For Many Chinese, New Wealth and a Fresh Face

 

But her jaw line? Too square for her liking. So the 22-year-old television reporter recently traveled from a coastal province to a private hospital in downtown Beijing to have it reshaped — for about $6,000. Her boyfriend, a 29-year-old businessman wearing designer eyeglasses, picked up the bill.

“I am not nervous at all,” said Devil (the English first name she chose for herself, and the only one she would reveal) as she awaited surgery at Evercare Aikang hospital in downtown Beijing. “I will look more sophisticated and exquisite.”

The breathtaking pace of transformation for upwardly mobile Chinese — from bicycles to cars, village to city, housebound holidays to ski vacations — now extends to faces. In just a decade, cosmetic and plastic surgery has become the fourth most popular way to spend discretionary income in China, according to Ma Xiaowei, China’s vice health minister. Only houses, cars and travel rank higher, he said.

No official figures exist, but the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery estimated in 2009 that China ranked third, behind the United States and Brazil, with more than two million operations annually. And the number of operations is doubling every year, Mr. Ma said at a conference organized by the Health Ministry in November.

“We must recognize that plastic and cosmetic surgery has now become a common service, aimed at the masses,” he said.

Face-lifts and wrinkle-removal treatments are in vogue, just as in the West. But at Evercare, which runs a chain of cosmetic-surgery hospitals in China, two-fifths of patients are in their 20s, said Li Bin, the general manager and one of the founders.

Nationally, the most requested surgeries have nothing to do with age: The No. 1 operation is designed to make eyes appear larger by adding a crease in the eyelid, forming what is called a double eyelid, said Zhao Zhenmin, secretary general of the government-run Chinese Association of Plastics and Aesthetics.

The second most popular operation raises the bridge of the nose to make it more prominent — the opposite of the typical nose job in the West. Third is the reshaping of the jaw to make it narrower and longer, he said.

The youthful patients include job applicants hoping to enhance their prospects in the work force, teenagers who received cosmetic surgery as a high school graduation present and even middle school students, most of whom want eye jobs, surgeons say.

China’s regulatory system, by all accounts, has not kept up. At the conference in Beijing in November, Mr. Ma, the vice health minister, said the situation “can even be called neglect.”

Out of 11 clinics and hospitals offering cosmetic or plastic surgery that were inspected late last year, he said, fewer than half met national standards. Employees lacked professional credentials, he said; equipment and materials were subpar. Beauty parlors are flagrant violators, illegally administering Botox injections and performing eyelid surgery.

Mr. Ma likened the industry to a medical “disaster zone,” with frequent accidents. His point was underscored when a 24-year-old former contestant on the Chinese reality show “Super Girl” died after her windpipe filled with blood during an operation to reshape her jaw in Hubei Province.

Health officials demanded an inquiry. But Mr. Zhao, who also serves as the vice director of Beijing’s government-run Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery Hospital, said it was impossible to gather evidence because the body was quickly cremated — a common practice in China when hospitals privately settle malpractice claims.

“Personally speaking, I think this is pretty despicable,” he said. “We need to get to the bottom of such cases in order to protect people in the future.”

The shortcomings of China’s medical system are hardly limited to cosmetic and plastic surgery. But the industry now generates an estimated $2.3 billion in revenue, and the government has begun to take note. Officials say new regulations will probably be issued this year.

One implicit goal is to halt the flow of Chinese patients to better-established hospitals in South Korea. Mr. Ma estimates that Chinese make up 30 percent of cosmetic surgery patients in Seoul.

For now, many beauty salons, like one downtown Beijing branch of a major chain, are capitalizing on the lack of oversight. One recent afternoon, a 62-year-old woman in a white coat who described herself as an internist said she could summon a doctor who could give a visitor double eyelids in 20 minutes about $180, a fraction of the standard hospital fee.

“Immediately you will look different,” she said.

Shi Da, Li Bibo, Zhang Jing and Jonathan Kaiman contributed research.

 

For Many Chinese, New Wealth and a Fresh Face

 

But her jaw line? Too square for her liking. So the 22-year-old television reporter recently traveled from a coastal province to a private hospital in downtown Beijing to have it reshaped — for about $6,000. Her boyfriend, a 29-year-old businessman wearing designer eyeglasses, picked up the bill.

“I am not nervous at all,” said Devil (the English first name she chose for herself, and the only one she would reveal) as she awaited surgery at Evercare Aikang hospital in downtown Beijing. “I will look more sophisticated and exquisite.”

The breathtaking pace of transformation for upwardly mobile Chinese — from bicycles to cars, village to city, housebound holidays to ski vacations — now extends to faces. In just a decade, cosmetic and plastic surgery has become the fourth most popular way to spend discretionary income in China, according to Ma Xiaowei, China’s vice health minister. Only houses, cars and travel rank higher, he said.

No official figures exist, but the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery estimated in 2009 that China ranked third, behind the United States and Brazil, with more than two million operations annually. And the number of operations is doubling every year, Mr. Ma said at a conference organized by the Health Ministry in November.

“We must recognize that plastic and cosmetic surgery has now become a common service, aimed at the masses,” he said.

Face-lifts and wrinkle-removal treatments are in vogue, just as in the West. But at Evercare, which runs a chain of cosmetic-surgery hospitals in China, two-fifths of patients are in their 20s, said Li Bin, the general manager and one of the founders.

Nationally, the most requested surgeries have nothing to do with age: The No. 1 operation is designed to make eyes appear larger by adding a crease in the eyelid, forming what is called a double eyelid, said Zhao Zhenmin, secretary general of the government-run Chinese Association of Plastics and Aesthetics.

The second most popular operation raises the bridge of the nose to make it more prominent — the opposite of the typical nose job in the West. Third is the reshaping of the jaw to make it narrower and longer, he said.

The youthful patients include job applicants hoping to enhance their prospects in the work force, teenagers who received cosmetic surgery as a high school graduation present and even middle school students, most of whom want eye jobs, surgeons say.

China’s regulatory system, by all accounts, has not kept up. At the conference in Beijing in November, Mr. Ma, the vice health minister, said the situation “can even be called neglect.”

Out of 11 clinics and hospitals offering cosmetic or plastic surgery that were inspected late last year, he said, fewer than half met national standards. Employees lacked professional credentials, he said; equipment and materials were subpar. Beauty parlors are flagrant violators, illegally administering Botox injections and performing eyelid surgery.

Mr. Ma likened the industry to a medical “disaster zone,” with frequent accidents. His point was underscored when a 24-year-old former contestant on the Chinese reality show “Super Girl” died after her windpipe filled with blood during an operation to reshape her jaw in Hubei Province.

Health officials demanded an inquiry. But Mr. Zhao, who also serves as the vice director of Beijing’s government-run Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery Hospital, said it was impossible to gather evidence because the body was quickly cremated — a common practice in China when hospitals privately settle malpractice claims.

“Personally speaking, I think this is pretty despicable,” he said. “We need to get to the bottom of such cases in order to protect people in the future.”

The shortcomings of China’s medical system are hardly limited to cosmetic and plastic surgery. But the industry now generates an estimated $2.3 billion in revenue, and the government has begun to take note. Officials say new regulations will probably be issued this year.

One implicit goal is to halt the flow of Chinese patients to better-established hospitals in South Korea. Mr. Ma estimates that Chinese make up 30 percent of cosmetic surgery patients in Seoul.

For now, many beauty salons, like one downtown Beijing branch of a major chain, are capitalizing on the lack of oversight. One recent afternoon, a 62-year-old woman in a white coat who described herself as an internist said she could summon a doctor who could give a visitor double eyelids in 20 minutes about $180, a fraction of the standard hospital fee.

“Immediately you will look different,” she said.

Shi Da, Li Bibo, Zhang Jing and Jonathan Kaiman contributed research.

 

For Many Chinese, New Wealth and a Fresh Face

。

But her jaw line? Too square for her liking. So the 22-year-old television reporter recently traveled from a coastal province to a private hospital in downtown Beijing to have it reshaped — for about $6,000. Her boyfriend, a 29-year-old businessman wearing designer eyeglasses, picked up the bill.

“I am not nervous at all,” said Devil (the English first name she chose for herself, and the only one she would reveal) as she awaited surgery at Evercare Aikang hospital in downtown Beijing. “I will look more sophisticated and exquisite.”

The breathtaking pace of transformation for upwardly mobile Chinese — from bicycles to cars, village to city, housebound holidays to ski vacations — now extends to faces. In just a decade, cosmetic and plastic surgery has become the fourth most popular way to spend discretionary income in China, according to Ma Xiaowei, China’s vice health minister. Only houses, cars and travel rank higher, he said.

No official figures exist, but the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery estimated in 2009 that China ranked third, behind the United States and Brazil, with more than two million operations annually. And the number of operations is doubling every year, Mr. Ma said at a conference organized by the Health Ministry in November.

“We must recognize that plastic and cosmetic surgery has now become a common service, aimed at the masses,” he said.

Face-lifts and wrinkle-removal treatments are in vogue, just as in the West. But at Evercare, which runs a chain of cosmetic-surgery hospitals in China, two-fifths of patients are in their 20s, said Li Bin, the general manager and one of the founders.

Nationally, the most requested surgeries have nothing to do with age: The No. 1 operation is designed to make eyes appear larger by adding a crease in the eyelid, forming what is called a double eyelid, said Zhao Zhenmin, secretary general of the government-run Chinese Association of Plastics and Aesthetics.

The second most popular operation raises the bridge of the nose to make it more prominent — the opposite of the typical nose job in the West. Third is the reshaping of the jaw to make it narrower and longer, he said.

The youthful patients include job applicants hoping to enhance their prospects in the work force, teenagers who received cosmetic surgery as a high school graduation present and even middle school students, most of whom want eye jobs, surgeons say.

China’s regulatory system, by all accounts, has not kept up. At the conference in Beijing in November, Mr. Ma, the vice health minister, said the situation “can even be called neglect.”

Out of 11 clinics and hospitals offering cosmetic or plastic surgery that were inspected late last year, he said, fewer than half met national standards. Employees lacked professional credentials, he said; equipment and materials were subpar. Beauty parlors are flagrant violators, illegally administering Botox injections and performing eyelid surgery.

Mr. Ma likened the industry to a medical “disaster zone,” with frequent accidents. His point was underscored when a 24-year-old former contestant on the Chinese reality show “Super Girl” died after her windpipe filled with blood during an operation to reshape her jaw in Hubei Province.

Health officials demanded an inquiry. But Mr. Zhao, who also serves as the vice director of Beijing’s government-run Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery Hospital, said it was impossible to gather evidence because the body was quickly cremated — a common practice in China when hospitals privately settle malpractice claims.

“Personally speaking, I think this is pretty despicable,” he said. “We need to get to the bottom of such cases in order to protect people in the future.”

The shortcomings of China’s medical system are hardly limited to cosmetic and plastic surgery. But the industry now generates an estimated $2.3 billion in revenue, and the government has begun to take note. Officials say new regulations will probably be issued this year.

One implicit goal is to halt the flow of Chinese patients to better-established hospitals in South Korea. Mr. Ma estimates that Chinese make up 30 percent of cosmetic surgery patients in Seoul.

For now, many beauty salons, like one downtown Beijing branch of a major chain, are capitalizing on the lack of oversight. One recent afternoon, a 62-year-old woman in a white coat who described herself as an internist said she could summon a doctor who could give a visitor double eyelids in 20 minutes about $180, a fraction of the standard hospital fee.

“Immediately you will look different,” she said.

Shi Da, Li Bibo, Zhang Jing and Jonathan Kaiman contributed research.

 

For Many Chinese, New Wealth and a Fresh Face

。

But her jaw line? Too square for her liking. So the 22-year-old television reporter recently traveled from a coastal province to a private hospital in downtown Beijing to have it reshaped — for about $6,000. Her boyfriend, a 29-year-old businessman wearing designer eyeglasses, picked up the bill.

“I am not nervous at all,” said Devil (the English first name she chose for herself, and the only one she would reveal) as she awaited surgery at Evercare Aikang hospital in downtown Beijing. “I will look more sophisticated and exquisite.”

The breathtaking pace of transformation for upwardly mobile Chinese — from bicycles to cars, village to city, housebound holidays to ski vacations — now extends to faces. In just a decade, cosmetic and plastic surgery has become the fourth most popular way to spend discretionary income in China, according to Ma Xiaowei, China’s vice health minister. Only houses, cars and travel rank higher, he said.

No official figures exist, but the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery estimated in 2009 that China ranked third, behind the United States and Brazil, with more than two million operations annually. And the number of operations is doubling every year, Mr. Ma said at a conference organized by the Health Ministry in November.

“We must recognize that plastic and cosmetic surgery has now become a common service, aimed at the masses,” he said.

Face-lifts and wrinkle-removal treatments are in vogue, just as in the West. But at Evercare, which runs a chain of cosmetic-surgery hospitals in China, two-fifths of patients are in their 20s, said Li Bin, the general manager and one of the founders.

Nationally, the most requested surgeries have nothing to do with age: The No. 1 operation is designed to make eyes appear larger by adding a crease in the eyelid, forming what is called a double eyelid, said Zhao Zhenmin, secretary general of the government-run Chinese Association of Plastics and Aesthetics.

The second most popular operation raises the bridge of the nose to make it more prominent — the opposite of the typical nose job in the West. Third is the reshaping of the jaw to make it narrower and longer, he said.

The youthful patients include job applicants hoping to enhance their prospects in the work force, teenagers who received cosmetic surgery as a high school graduation present and even middle school students, most of whom want eye jobs, surgeons say.

China’s regulatory system, by all accounts, has not kept up. At the conference in Beijing in November, Mr. Ma, the vice health minister, said the situation “can even be called neglect.”

Out of 11 clinics and hospitals offering cosmetic or plastic surgery that were inspected late last year, he said, fewer than half met national standards. Employees lacked professional credentials, he said; equipment and materials were subpar. Beauty parlors are flagrant violators, illegally administering Botox injections and performing eyelid surgery.

Mr. Ma likened the industry to a medical “disaster zone,” with frequent accidents. His point was underscored when a 24-year-old former contestant on the Chinese reality show “Super Girl” died after her windpipe filled with blood during an operation to reshape her jaw in Hubei Province.

Health officials demanded an inquiry. But Mr. Zhao, who also serves as the vice director of Beijing’s government-run Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery Hospital, said it was impossible to gather evidence because the body was quickly cremated — a common practice in China when hospitals privately settle malpractice claims.

“Personally speaking, I think this is pretty despicable,” he said. “We need to get to the bottom of such cases in order to protect people in the future.”

The shortcomings of China’s medical system are hardly limited to cosmetic and plastic surgery. But the industry now generates an estimated $2.3 billion in revenue, and the government has begun to take note. Officials say new regulations will probably be issued this year.

One implicit goal is to halt the flow of Chinese patients to better-established hospitals in South Korea. Mr. Ma estimates that Chinese make up 30 percent of cosmetic surgery patients in Seoul.

For now, many beauty salons, like one downtown Beijing branch of a major chain, are capitalizing on the lack of oversight. One recent afternoon, a 62-year-old woman in a white coat who described herself as an internist said she could summon a doctor who could give a visitor double eyelids in 20 minutes about $180, a fraction of the standard hospital fee.

“Immediately you will look different,” she said.

Shi Da, Li Bibo, Zhang Jing and Jonathan Kaiman contributed research.

 

Wealth Matters: Taking the Time to Pick the Right Financial Adviser

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

In the past, there have been few people to consult about whom to pick. Accountants and lawyers have played this role, warily. But they would typically present two or three advisers and leave the final decision up to the investor.

Now Douglas Black, a 30-year brokerage industry veteran, has started a firm called SpringReef Partners that will screen and select financial advisers for wealthy families. While the amount of wealth needed to receive his advice is high — from $5 million to $50 million — his approach can help those intent on evaluating an adviser to fit their needs. His advice may be aimed at the wealthy, but anyone with money to invest can adopt his practices.

“Firms don’t do a very good job of matching adviser capability with client complexity,” Mr. Black said. “They haven’t taken the focus away from the advisers in determining who is going to end up with whom.”

Mr. Black, who started his career as a financial adviser and stepped down as the chief operating officer of UBS Wealth Management in 2010, is entering this business at an opportune time. Investors are particularly insecure about making the wrong choice.

Charlotte B. Beyer, founder and chief executive of the Institute for Private Investors, said her members were now screening eight to 10 advisers when they used to meet with two or three.

“That’s an enormous difference and an enormous time commitment,” Ms. Beyer said.

While wealthy investors may have made a lot of money and surely understand how complex the world is, they are just as afraid as anyone else of getting this choice wrong. So how do you pick the right adviser without being overwhelmed by the process?

TYPICAL MISTAKES Regardless of wealth, people make the same mistakes in selecting advisers.

Listening to family and friends for suggestions on money management — or, worse, picking family and friends to do it — can be a bad idea. First, there is no correlation between your sense about a person and that person’s ability to do a good job. Remember all the people who felt such affection for Bernard L. Madoff? And second, hiring a friend or relative makes firing that person tough.

Rushing the process is another mistake. Picking a financial adviser can be as serious as selecting a doctor, and it certainly should require more time than picking a paint color. But for many investors, even those who had to make tough decisions in business, it is about as interesting as watching that paint dry.

“People don’t interview enough people on the front end,” said Jim Grubman, owner of FamilyWealth Consulting, which works with advisers. “They’ll take someone else’s recommendations. What works for your friend or your colleague may not be the best fit for you.”

Relying on a name brand firm can be just as bad as going with someone you know. But selecting a boutique firm in the belief that smaller size means more attention for clients can be equally problematic.

“Our belief is there are exceptional advisers spread across all different types of platforms, but there are no great firms,” Mr. Black said.

QUESTIONS TO ASK Picking an adviser is an awful lot like choosing a spouse: you really want the relationship to last forever, to be rewarding and fulfilling, but if it happens to fall apart, you don’t want that to destroy you.

Mr. Black, whose firm is paid either a fixed fee or a percentage of assets for continuing monitoring, said he asked 18 questions of all firms and 17 of advisers. For firms, some of the major questions involve how the organization functions, its experience and risk-management practices and how it handles problems that arise.

For advisers, the criteria are a mix of set standards and questions. He will not work with any adviser who has fewer than seven years’ experience. One thing he found when he worked at UBS was that it generally took at least seven years for any financial malfeasance to surface. He said he also wanted to make sure that the adviser’s firm had broad experience with clients whose wealth levels were similar to his own client’s.

Yet, he said, the value his firm will bring to the selection process may be in the questions that do not have simple yes or no answers. The 17 criteria for advisers are listed on the firm’s Web site.

One simple statistic he looks at is how much additional money an adviser’s existing clients are asking him or her to manage. Mr. Black said most very wealthy people had several advisers from various stages in their lives. But the one who is doing the best job — as opposed to the friend from high school — is the one who gets the new money they are making.

Yet even lawyers and accountants who take the typical approach of making introductions to wealth advisers are aware that the complexity of both individual investments and the global economy requires more voices, not fewer.

View the original article here

Wealth Matters: Taking the Time to Pick the Right Financial Adviser

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

In the past, there have been few people to consult about whom to pick. Accountants and lawyers have played this role, warily. But they would typically present two or three advisers and leave the final decision up to the investor.

Now Douglas Black, a 30-year brokerage industry veteran, has started a firm called SpringReef Partners that will screen and select financial advisers for wealthy families. While the amount of wealth needed to receive his advice is high — from $5 million to $50 million — his approach can help those intent on evaluating an adviser to fit their needs. His advice may be aimed at the wealthy, but anyone with money to invest can adopt his practices.

“Firms don’t do a very good job of matching adviser capability with client complexity,” Mr. Black said. “They haven’t taken the focus away from the advisers in determining who is going to end up with whom.”

Mr. Black, who started his career as a financial adviser and stepped down as the chief operating officer of UBS Wealth Management in 2010, is entering this business at an opportune time. Investors are particularly insecure about making the wrong choice.

Charlotte B. Beyer, founder and chief executive of the Institute for Private Investors, said her members were now screening eight to 10 advisers when they used to meet with two or three.

“That’s an enormous difference and an enormous time commitment,” Ms. Beyer said.

While wealthy investors may have made a lot of money and surely understand how complex the world is, they are just as afraid as anyone else of getting this choice wrong. So how do you pick the right adviser without being overwhelmed by the process?

TYPICAL MISTAKES Regardless of wealth, people make the same mistakes in selecting advisers.

Listening to family and friends for suggestions on money management — or, worse, picking family and friends to do it — can be a bad idea. First, there is no correlation between your sense about a person and that person’s ability to do a good job. Remember all the people who felt such affection for Bernard L. Madoff? And second, hiring a friend or relative makes firing that person tough.

Rushing the process is another mistake. Picking a financial adviser can be as serious as selecting a doctor, and it certainly should require more time than picking a paint color. But for many investors, even those who had to make tough decisions in business, it is about as interesting as watching that paint dry.

“People don’t interview enough people on the front end,” said Jim Grubman, owner of FamilyWealth Consulting, which works with advisers. “They’ll take someone else’s recommendations. What works for your friend or your colleague may not be the best fit for you.”

Relying on a name brand firm can be just as bad as going with someone you know. But selecting a boutique firm in the belief that smaller size means more attention for clients can be equally problematic.

“Our belief is there are exceptional advisers spread across all different types of platforms, but there are no great firms,” Mr. Black said.

QUESTIONS TO ASK Picking an adviser is an awful lot like choosing a spouse: you really want the relationship to last forever, to be rewarding and fulfilling, but if it happens to fall apart, you don’t want that to destroy you.

Mr. Black, whose firm is paid either a fixed fee or a percentage of assets for continuing monitoring, said he asked 18 questions of all firms and 17 of advisers. For firms, some of the major questions involve how the organization functions, its experience and risk-management practices and how it handles problems that arise.

For advisers, the criteria are a mix of set standards and questions. He will not work with any adviser who has fewer than seven years’ experience. One thing he found when he worked at UBS was that it generally took at least seven years for any financial malfeasance to surface. He said he also wanted to make sure that the adviser’s firm had broad experience with clients whose wealth levels were similar to his own client’s.

Yet, he said, the value his firm will bring to the selection process may be in the questions that do not have simple yes or no answers. The 17 criteria for advisers are listed on the firm’s Web site.

One simple statistic he looks at is how much additional money an adviser’s existing clients are asking him or her to manage. Mr. Black said most very wealthy people had several advisers from various stages in their lives. But the one who is doing the best job — as opposed to the friend from high school — is the one who gets the new money they are making.

Yet even lawyers and accountants who take the typical approach of making introductions to wealth advisers are aware that the complexity of both individual investments and the global economy requires more voices, not fewer.

View the original article here

Wealth Matters: Taking the Time to Pick the Right Financial Adviser

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

In the past, there have been few people to consult about whom to pick. Accountants and lawyers have played this role, warily. But they would typically present two or three advisers and leave the final decision up to the investor.

Now Douglas Black, a 30-year brokerage industry veteran, has started a firm called SpringReef Partners that will screen and select financial advisers for wealthy families. While the amount of wealth needed to receive his advice is high — from $5 million to $50 million — his approach can help those intent on evaluating an adviser to fit their needs. His advice may be aimed at the wealthy, but anyone with money to invest can adopt his practices.

“Firms don’t do a very good job of matching adviser capability with client complexity,” Mr. Black said. “They haven’t taken the focus away from the advisers in determining who is going to end up with whom.”

Mr. Black, who started his career as a financial adviser and stepped down as the chief operating officer of UBS Wealth Management in 2010, is entering this business at an opportune time. Investors are particularly insecure about making the wrong choice.

Charlotte B. Beyer, founder and chief executive of the Institute for Private Investors, said her members were now screening eight to 10 advisers when they used to meet with two or three.

“That’s an enormous difference and an enormous time commitment,” Ms. Beyer said.

While wealthy investors may have made a lot of money and surely understand how complex the world is, they are just as afraid as anyone else of getting this choice wrong. So how do you pick the right adviser without being overwhelmed by the process?

TYPICAL MISTAKES Regardless of wealth, people make the same mistakes in selecting advisers.

Listening to family and friends for suggestions on money management — or, worse, picking family and friends to do it — can be a bad idea. First, there is no correlation between your sense about a person and that person’s ability to do a good job. Remember all the people who felt such affection for Bernard L. Madoff? And second, hiring a friend or relative makes firing that person tough.

Rushing the process is another mistake. Picking a financial adviser can be as serious as selecting a doctor, and it certainly should require more time than picking a paint color. But for many investors, even those who had to make tough decisions in business, it is about as interesting as watching that paint dry.

“People don’t interview enough people on the front end,” said Jim Grubman, owner of FamilyWealth Consulting, which works with advisers. “They’ll take someone else’s recommendations. What works for your friend or your colleague may not be the best fit for you.”

Relying on a name brand firm can be just as bad as going with someone you know. But selecting a boutique firm in the belief that smaller size means more attention for clients can be equally problematic.

“Our belief is there are exceptional advisers spread across all different types of platforms, but there are no great firms,” Mr. Black said.

QUESTIONS TO ASK Picking an adviser is an awful lot like choosing a spouse: you really want the relationship to last forever, to be rewarding and fulfilling, but if it happens to fall apart, you don’t want that to destroy you.

Mr. Black, whose firm is paid either a fixed fee or a percentage of assets for continuing monitoring, said he asked 18 questions of all firms and 17 of advisers. For firms, some of the major questions involve how the organization functions, its experience and risk-management practices and how it handles problems that arise.

For advisers, the criteria are a mix of set standards and questions. He will not work with any adviser who has fewer than seven years’ experience. One thing he found when he worked at UBS was that it generally took at least seven years for any financial malfeasance to surface. He said he also wanted to make sure that the adviser’s firm had broad experience with clients whose wealth levels were similar to his own client’s.

Yet, he said, the value his firm will bring to the selection process may be in the questions that do not have simple yes or no answers. The 17 criteria for advisers are listed on the firm’s Web site.

One simple statistic he looks at is how much additional money an adviser’s existing clients are asking him or her to manage. Mr. Black said most very wealthy people had several advisers from various stages in their lives. But the one who is doing the best job — as opposed to the friend from high school — is the one who gets the new money they are making.

Yet even lawyers and accountants who take the typical approach of making introductions to wealth advisers are aware that the complexity of both individual investments and the global economy requires more voices, not fewer.

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Russian Officials Said to Reap Wealth in Tax Case

 

Mr. Magnitsky’s claims have never been fully investigated, and on Monday, a year and a half after his death, his former colleagues unveiled information that they said showed that the officials he implicated had become astonishingly wealthy.

The findings are the latest in a series of independent investigations into Russian officials by Mr. Magnitsky’s supporters, including William F. Browder, the owner of Hermitage Capital Management, the fund that Mr. Magnitsky represented. A $12 million country house outside Moscow and seaside villas in Dubai and Montenegro are some of the purchases made by the officials since Mr. Magnitsky made his accusations against them, according to the investigation.

Details about the inquiry appear on a Web site called Russian Untouchables and in a short documentary film released on YouTube on Monday.

Officials have not yet responded to the accusations, which, if true, could prove to be a major embarrassment for the Kremlin. President Dmitri A. Medvedev has made fighting corruption the focus of his presidency, and he has personally ordered an independent commission to investigate Mr. Magnitsky’s death, though the inquiry appears to have stalled.

Just before his arrest, Mr. Magnitsky accused Interior Ministry officials of having used three Hermitage subsidiaries in a scheme with tax officials to receive an illegal tax refund of $230 million.

The Interior Ministry has since said that Mr. Magnitsky masterminded the scheme. The police officials Mr. Magnitsky accused of devising the fraud have been promoted.

Officials from Hermitage and Mr. Magnitsky’s former law firm, Firestone Duncan, have called the charges absurd. The bureaucrats involved in the tax scheme, they say, have stashed millions of dollars away in offshore bank accounts and shell companies and spent millions more on luxury goods like cars and homes.

Among the officials they investigated is Olga Stepanova, the former head of Moscow’s 28th District Tax Inspectorate.

Three weeks after her office was said to have approved a portion of the tax refund in question, Ms. Stepanova put a $629,030 down payment on a luxury apartment in Dubai, according to financial documents gathered in the investigation and reviewed by The New York Times. The purchase, documented in a bank statement from Credit Suisse, was made under the name of Ms. Stepanova’s husband, Vladlen Stepanov, a construction worker.

Days later, two of Ms. Stepanova’s colleagues at the tax office also bought luxury apartments in the same elite Dubai neighborhood, taking money from the same account, according to the documents.

In addition to the Dubai apartment, Ms. Stepanova and her husband bought a large villa in Dubai and another in Montenegro, and built an 11,900-square-foot house outside of Moscow, according to the investigation. In total, Ms. Stepanova acquired nearly $39 million in assets and cash after her office authorized the tax refund.

According to tax returns available on the Untouchables Web site, Ms. Stepanova and her husband had been making a combined salary of just under $40,000 annually.

Reports from previous investigations by Mr. Magnitsky’s supporters have unveiled purchases of luxury cars and apartments in Moscow and elsewhere by the police officers involved in Mr. Magnitsky’s arrest.

It is unclear whether the new investigation will prompt a response from the authorities.

Earlier this year, Ms. Stepanova became the subject of a tax fraud investigation that the authorities said was unrelated to the Magnitsky case. She has since resigned as head of the 28th District Tax Inspectorate.

Mr. Magnitsky’s former employer, Jamison Firestone, wrote in an e-mail that he planned to file an official complaint with the Russian Investigative Committee this week, on the basis of the latest findings.

He wrote, “I fully expect it to be ignored,” because the Interior Ministry and prosecutor’s office “have been protecting Stepanova and the criminals who organized this fraud for years.”