Editor’s Letter: The Wider World of Wealth Management

This issue’s cover story looks at the widening scope of how financial advisors approach their work. Many are becoming financial therapists for their clients, trying to first understand their attitudes and beliefs around money and then helping them build a “life plan” well suited to an individual’s unique situation and mindset.

For some, I’m sure the approach works. For others, there are financial planners that prioritize different facets of the business and different levels of client engagement. I’m constantly learning there is an advisor for every type of client, and vice versa. Wealth management is a wide tent.

In that spirit, there is an additional section included in this magazine, which we think reflects that expansive nature of the business. Our sister publication, Wealth Management Real Estate (formerly National Real Estate Investor), which previously published its own quarterly magazine, will now have dedicated pages here. Some of you may be getting this magazine instead of WMRE, and now you know why. Welcome, and we hope you find the other sections of the magazine useful.

In truth, many readers of WMRE are commercial real estate managers and developers who, at first glance, may not have much in common with a financial advisor. But according to our own research, a surprising number of its readers are financial advisors looking for a deep dive on real estate investments. Expect to see more of that kind of thing here, as well as an expansion into other classes of “alternative” investments that are becoming a more important part of client portfolios.

The best part of the move is bringing WMRE Editorial Director David Bodamer and Executive Editor Elaine Misonzhnik closer to the Wealth Management team. Both are seasoned journalists in the specialist press and have a deep understanding of the different classes of real estate and investment options that advisors will find useful. They bring unique coverage that advisors would be hard-pressed to find in other publications.

This magazine will also reduce frequency from six issues a year to four. Partially, this is a concession to the economic realities of magazine publishing. It’s also a determination that our resources are best spent on other projects and distribution paths that don’t require rolls of newsprint and ink. Every article you read here in print also can be found on Wealthmanagement.com.

What are the other projects? Starting last year, we began making iterative moves to bring a lot of Informa Connect Wealth Management’s stable of projects under our own big tent. That includes a growing research business in WMIQ, a focus of which is the RIA Edge100, a list of advisory firms found in the magazine and on our site. To be clear, this is not a “best” advisor award. The list, put together with Discovery Data, is meant to examine, quantitatively, the different factors and levers of RIA firms that are growing into professionally run businesses with intent, and not just along market updrafts.

More on all of this to come. For now, as always, reach out with questions or suggestions to [email protected].

David Armstrong

Editor-In-Chief