As a CPA, the quality of the advice that you provide to your clients is of the highest importance, and establishing systems for maintaining that quality is the conduit to achieving that goal. Just as you are held to a fiduciary standard in your accounting, advisory, or attestation practice, 4Thought is held to the same standard as an independent SEC Registered Investment Adviser (RIA). In addition, we’ve been very careful to structure our firm and its programs to ensure the alignment of our incentives with the goals of your clients and to minimize and fully disclose any potential conflicts of interest. We are an independent firm that is not owned by or affiliated with any other company that might require us to sell a certain quota of their proprietary products. Also, we work on a fee basis (not a commission basis) and we do not have production requirements for our advisors (so there is no sales pressure on your clients). Furthermore, we can establish our own firm-to-firm agreements with vendors and providers, which allows us to seek out and deliver what we believe are the best financial solutions or products available throughout the universe of available resources. We believe that this infrastructure and the intensive specialized training we provide to our constituents make us a little more objective and a little less biased in dealing with your clientele, helping to make you more confident in the relationships you create with us.

When you partner with a financial services provider that you are entrusting with your client relationships, it’s important they will be able to deliver the high level services your clients require. The problem with partnering with a sole practitioner or a wirehouse group in the financial services industry is that they will either not be able to provide you with level of service you’re seeking with your clients (because no one person can do everything), or you’ll get lost in the shuffle of a huge bureaucracy that is not particularly interested in catering to your needs, but may be more interested in selling a proprietarily underwritten financial product to your clients. Our solution is to give you the opportunity to establish a firm-to-firm relationship with an independent boutique that uses a team approach to deliver white-glove services to you and your clientele, and while providing you with a primary point of contact, will also offer you the ability to select from team members as you deem appropriate. The benefit of the firm/team approach (as opposed to having a relationship with a single individual provider) is that you are not dependent on the whims of any one person, so that you can access the expertise and the personalities you need, when and where you need them.

In addition to client relationship managers and generalist financial planners that typically work directly with clientele, we maintain a stable of specialists in various areas of financial planning and wealth management so that you can tap into our resources on demand, to simply pick the brain of an expert, attend our remote-access training sessions, or use our fee planning department to generate documents and recommendations for delivery to your client. Our four primary areas of financial planning expertise are:

• Investment Planning
• Estate Planning
• Business Succession
• Fringe Benefits

When it comes to actually implementing your clients’ financial plans, we provide an investment management platform for these purposes that was built with the practical day-to-day needs of CPAs and their firms in mind. 4Thought Financial Group claims compliance with the Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS®)*. But while a transparent, razor sharp focus on portfolio performance is always important, providing adaptable resources and services to the CPA and his/her firm are paramount.

• Multiple investment methods in one shop: to create all-weather portfolios prepared for Bull, Bear, Wolf, and Eagle markets
• Separately Managed Accounts: with a unique “Think Outside the Style Box” mindset for institutions, or a hands-on advisor/firm
• Turnkey total portfolio management: for those that want simplicity for their business and their clients
• Flexible modular design: including wrap pricing, low investment minimums, custom portfolios, and consolidated web-based reporting