A Defined Process Drives More Predictable Results

Flick Financial clients benefit from methods and strategies that have been tested and improved over multiple generations. When you meet with one of our advisors, you’ll know we’ve done this before.

Clarity-Section

Wealth Management Process

Information Gathering
We’ll talk about your income, assets, insurance, liabilities, and expenses and ask a few questions to help us understand your feelings about risk and investing. It’s helpful to provide copies of account statements and last year’s tax return during this step.
30-45 minutes

Preliminary Draft of Financial Plan
We will review your stated needs and initial projections for your goals to verify the assumptions and supporting data are correct. This is an opportunity to adjust the priority, time frame, or other details of your goals, if needed. Initial recommendations are occasionally made at this time.
30-45 minutes

Review Plan and Recommendations
We’ll go over any changes to projections since the draft meeting and provide detailed recommendations, a suggested time frame for action items, and an outline of responsibilities, including support from our team. Credentials will be provided to easily manage your accounts and view your financial plan online.
45-90 minutes

Annual Review
Each year we’ll address any questions or concerns you have and provide a progress update on your goals. You’ll get updated recommendations based on your situation and any relevant tax or legislative changes.
45-60 minutes

Investment Management Process

Portfolio-Construction-icon

Portfolio Construction

Our models seek exposure to securities throughout developed and emerging economies to achieve the desired level of diversification and risk, using strategic asset allocation as defined by Modern Portfolio Theory as the foundation of the models. It is common for the strategic allocation to be complemented with one or more tactical components intended to reduce risk or enhance potential returns by adding exposure to a specific asset class or sector of the market while certain economic conditions exist.

Security-Selection-icon

Security Selection

Choosing investments for each piece of the portfolio starts with a rigorous screening process powered by technology that tracks historical and current market data that is updated daily or intraday depending on the security. Pre-determined qualitative and quantitative criteria must be met before an investment can be considered for inclusion in one of our models. After the initial screening process, further due diligence is performed, incorporating information from multiple third-party research providers.

Monitoring-icon

Monitoring

Relevant news, price movements and trading volume are monitored daily for individual stocks and ETFs. Qualitative and quantitative data are updated weekly for stocks to inform our hold or sell discipline. Data such as fund flows and relative performance against peers and benchmarks are tracked monthly for mutual funds and ETFs, and detailed screening against alternative investment options occurs quarterly.

Discretionary-Trading-icon

Discretionary Trading

Sophisticated software facilitates transactions within and across investment models, ensuring equal price execution when we buy or sell the same security for a group of clients simultaneously. Limit orders are used instead of market orders when applicable to set a desired purchase or sale price. We periodically rebalance models to maintain the desired risk level, and we can use discretion to selectively sell securities in varying market conditions to raise cash for planned distributions.

Tax-Management-icon

Tax Management

For clients in high tax brackets that have taxable investment accounts, we use a combination of tax-free and tax-efficient securities to reduce potential taxable income. When possible, we also use an asset location strategy* to reduce taxable income by holding less tax-efficient investments in a tax-deferred account.

 

 

*Asset location strategies are typically for clients with more than $1 million in investments.