Family Wealth Report is holding the inaugural North America and Canadian awards for outstanding performance - at the institutional and individual level - in wealth management in March 2014 (see full details here).

A crucial part of the process of course is having a panel of expert judges with the experience and knowledge to assess the entries. We will therefore be profiling the judges taking part in coming weeks.

Here is Michael Woocher, head of client development at GenSpring and also a member of the firm's executive committee. Before this, Woocher was a member of the firm's senior leadership team from 2008 to 2011, during which time he served as president of the Atlanta-Buckhead family office. He later had responsibility for GenSpring’s business development efforts throughout SunTrust Bank.

“Let me highlight two issues that impact the industry and the clients we serve.  The first is focused on the way in which wealth owners make decisions and the second relates to how wealth managers advise their clients,” Woocher said.

“Today, in my opinion too many wealth owners make important decisions surrounding their wealth without a broad understanding of the solution that has been recommended or the impact (good or bad) it will have on their financial life. Wealth management is a technical and complex field that requires numerous disciplines be considered to address each family’s unique circumstances.  These elements are vast and can span from trust planning and administration to income tax planning to family governance and preparing heirs. Because of the complexity of the subject matter, wealth owners, even financially sophisticated ones, often make decisions without fully understanding the intricacies of the recommendation that has been made to them. And wealth owners even more often make decisions without considering the implications that this one recommendation will have on their overall wealth enterprise.” 

Woocher added: “Moreover, wealth advisors often fail to integrate the advice they deliver across the wealth management disciplines that it impacts.  Advisors are too often siloed in their advice - focusing exclusively on an investment recommendation or estate planning recommendation - and too rarely evaluating the impact their recommendation has on the many wealth management topics it touches.  As an industry we can better serve clients by taking steps to educate on wealth management issues that affect them and by integrating the advice we deliver so that our clients have a better understanding of its broader impact today and into the future.”