New multi-family office takes high-touch service to low-tier millionaires. VisionQuest Wealth Management is on a mission. The Morrisville, N.C.-based wealth firm wants not merely to advise its high-net-worth clients on financial and other wealth-related matters, it also wants to help them come to a better understanding of the values they want to espouse and uphold as wealth owners. And it says it can take this high-touch service to low-tier millionaires, thanks to its nimble infrastructure and its access to an extensive network of outside asset managers and wealth professionals.

“As independent advisors, we’re here to help people make smart decisions,” says VisionQuest CEO Steve Peters. “And I believe wholeheartedly that the best way to do that is to help clients put wealth planning in the context of their values, visions and goals.”

Alone in the wilderness

The firm’s name captures something of that. In several Native American cultures “vision quest” refers to a ritual of spiritual cleansing centered on the individual’s search for a guiding principal in life or a solution to a particular dilemma. Though generally undertaken in isolation, a vision-quest “seeker” is prepared for the ritual – which can culminate in several sleepless and foodless days – by a traditional priest or priestess, whose role, primarily, is that of an advisor.

VisionQuest differs from other wealth managers in its highly personal orientation, according to Peters. “No one else has established a privately-held, independent multi-family office that provides the breadth of expertise and service that our firm does,” he says. “We’re dedicated to earning our clients’ trust by becoming emotionally involved with them, their families and their businesses.”

Despite its promise of high-touch service, VisionQuest sees clients with between $1 million and $5 million in investable assets as its mainstay. Peters says his firm can serve such clients in cost effective manner because of its system, people and technology.

Peters and his VisionQuest colleagues Jarrod Rotella and Steven Kreider had a leg up in establishing some of those connections because of their shared experience at SEI Investments, a pioneering manager of managers. “We know who the specialists are,” he says. “We have no need to go through a third-party platform.”

In addition to investment services, Peters says VisionQuest provides business consulting and business-succession planning, risk management, lending services, estate and trust planning, education planning, and strategies around philanthropy, creative financing and venture funding.

Oaks in the distance

VisionQuest’s roots in SEI are evident in its commitment to delivering a highly personal wealth-management “experience.” Peters was one of the first SEI executives assigned to help establish the Oaks, Pa.-based company’s Wealth Network.

Aimed at well-to-do baby boomers, the Wealth Network includes an investment platform that blends proprietary and outside investments, a lead-generation system, wealth-advice modules and business-assessment tools. It’s further supported by SEI’s in-house strategy team and a roster of outside experts.

The Wealth Network works in three channels. It has a direct-to-client channel for the ultra-wealthy, a franchise system for registered investment advisors, and a plug-and-play version for bank-based wealth-managers.

Like SEI’s Wealth Network, VisionQuest says it’s dedicated to providing “holistic” wealth management. But where SEI takes that to mean providing advice and strategies to help clients realize their goals, VisionQuest brings values into the equation as a means of getting a deeper understanding of its clients' wants and needs, and as a means, it hopes, of establishing close, long-lasting relationships with those clients.

Peters – who describes SEI as a “great company” – emphasizes another difference between VisionQuest and the Wealth Network. “We don’t have any proprietary product,” he says. “We are purely wealth consultants getting paid on advice, not proprietary products.”

Paul Lonergan, who runs SEI’s Wealth Network multi-family office in Boston, says VisionQuest’s values-based planning model gives it “a huge opportunity” in the wealth-management marketplace.

“Steve is a good guy with a lot of integrity,” Lonergan adds. “He had a good run at SEI, and maybe that helped prepare him to start something on his own.”

In fact, says Peters, SEI’s entrepreneurial culture inspired him to undertake his own venture.

A process of discovery

VisionQuest’s wealth-management process begins with a “discovery” phase designed to help clients clarify their visions, values and goals. In practice that boils down to in-depth discussions between the advisor and the client aimed at developing a comprehensive picture of the client’s current situation. From there, clients are encouraged to share with the advisor their aspirations and invited, in effect, to visualize what they hope to accomplish with their wealth in the short, medium and long run.

That disclosure leads to an “assessment” phase. That amounts to a blueprint or action plan as VisionQuest organizes its resources around the client in ways calculated to uphold or realize the client’s values and goals. The “execution” phase is the practical application of the client’s “vision.” This phase brings a team of in-house and outside specialists in to help turn the plan into reality and to keep it running smoothly.

In a final, on-going phase of the process VisionQuest keeps tabs on the client with a view to changes in the client’s goals and values. When events warrant, VisionQuest will re-assess the client’s needs, goals and values and design a new action plan to support them.

Though headquartered in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, VisionQuest bills itself as a national wealth-management firm. It advises clients on assets of about $25 million. –FWR

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