Ep 328: Turning Senior Housing Guidance From A Non-Discretionary Value-Add To A Pay-For-Value Service With Thomas West

Financial Advisor Success

Michael Kitces

News, Business, Entrepreneurship, Business News

4.8 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2023

⏱️ 104 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Thomas West is a Senior Partner for Signature Estate & Investment Advisors, an independent RIA based out of Los Angeles that oversees nearly $16 billion in assets under management, with $570 million of those assets from 250 households being managed by Thomas’ practice. Thomas stands out for his innovative approach to supporting seniors who are searching for suitable housing and healthcare options while facing medical and cognitive challenges in their later years and has developed a unique offering called the Lifecare Affordability Plan, which has been tremendously successful in providing added value to his clients and their elderly parents.

Listen in as Thomas shares how he realized that "one-legger" senior couples, where one spouse is healthy and the other is not, face unique challenges in making healthcare decisions with significant financial ramifications and how this led him to create the Lifecare Affordability Plan to provide guidance to senior couples dealing with medical and cognitive issues. We also discuss why over 90% of the assets managed by his firm are held on a non-discretionary basis (which has increased client communication and portfolio customization), why his firm doesn't charge more for trading assets on a discretionary basis and charges less for clients who allow them to manage with discretion, and how his definition of success has shifted from focusing on production to the impact of his elder planning work, which in turn motivates him to work harder.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/328

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with
0:06.8	financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading
0:12.1	financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success
0:17.2	and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next
0:21.9	level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone.
0:28.7	Welcome to the 328th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is
0:34.9	Thomas West. Thomas is a senior partner for signature estate and investment advisors, an independent
0:39.7	RIA based in Los Angeles, California that oversees nearly 16 billion in assets, with
0:44.9	570 million of those managed by Thomas's practice serving more than 250 client households.
0:51.0	What's unique about Thomas, though, is how he is leverage, providing advice to seniors
0:55.1	looking for appropriate housing and health care as they deal with medical and cognitive issues
0:59.1	in their later years and turn it into a standalone offering, he calls the Life Care Affordability Plan,
1:04.3	which was so successful as a value add to his clients and their elder parents that he was
1:08.3	able to spin it out to a separate DBA under his firm and
1:10.8	begin charging for it as a standalone service.
1:14.2	In this episode, we talk in depth about how in the early stages of his career selling long-term care insurance,
1:19.2	Thomas realized that so-called one-legged or senior couples, where one spouse is healthy but the other
1:23.8	is not, such that if something happened to a healthy spouse, it would knock the legs out
1:27.4	from both of them.
1:28.6	Faced unique challenges as a couple because there are decisions about health care of significant
1:32.6	financial ramifications but are usually decided within the family and not with the financial
1:37.2	advisor.
	...

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