Who is your extended team?

It’s tax season, and lots of advisors are coordinating with accounting professionals to provide added value to top-tier clients. This is just one part of a larger concept adopted by countless firms who successfully target high-net-worth individuals: the extended team.

Even if your organization doesn’t feature a large in-house or arm’s-length group of specialists, the idea of the extended team should still figure prominently in your brand if you’re looking to become more entrenched in high-net-worth markets.

That’s because the complexity of significant wealth necessitates multiple professionals with defined areas of expertise. These clients have pre-existing professional relationships—with accountants, attorneys and the like—that need to be coordinated, and they often have additional needs that are best addressed by niche service providers. So the more extensive and experienced your extended team is, the more value you can offer to this group. 

But even without a lengthy list of experts at hand, you can still position your practice to serve this need. Consider documenting the process you use to communicate with your clients’ tax and legal advisors, outlining the resources available to you through your bank or broker-dealer, or presenting your own network of external relationships and contacts that you’re continuing to build. In any case, your version of an extended team should be defined and communicated to potential clients.

It’s also important that the advantages of your particular approach are clear. Having an extended team is one thing, but what makes yours superior? Is it more credentialed, more objective, more convenient? How does it lead to better outcomes or make your clients’ lives easier?

No one person has all the capabilities needed to serve high-net-worth individuals and families. So as much as you can talk about your own expertise, the more compelling story will include all the other experts around you.