There are so many messages coming out of the financial advising industry these days it’s impossible to condense them all down to a coherent unified theme. That may be because the first decade of the 21st century was troubling for financial or investment experts around the globe.
Even as the Russian economy heads toward recession and collapse the US economy is still fighting to recover from the ‘Great Recession of 2008-9’. These two great economic engines are driven, in part, by the collective choices of investment fund managers and professional advisers.
But it is these very people whom the public at large has learned not to trust. We gave them trillions of dollars of wealth to manage and much of it vanished. Nonetheless, as wealth inequality increases the wealthiest families have begun turning to new financial advisers to assist in the inevitable transition of their assets to new generations.
The atmosphere is ripe for a bit of sensationalism in the media regarding how wealth is managed and invested, and that will lead to greater scrutiny of the custodians of wealth creation and strategic thinking. In response to this pressure for dependable performance, Markas Gilmartin of Epoch Wealth Management is racking up chartered status for the firm he-cofounded and certification and fellowship for himself in the financial planning industry.
Dr. Gilmartin (he started out as a chartered microbiologist before changing to financial services) has been a staunch advocate of certified professionalism in the financial planning field. Through professionalism Dr. Gilmartin and like-minded colleagues seek to establish a high threshold for ethical behavior among financial planners and their support teams. Ethical behavior, they believe, should help prevent any more follies like those which resulted in the 2008-9 recession.
Although no single factor created the recession, all the contributing factors were indeed closely associated with a reduction in ethical behavior among those individuals tasked with the responsibility for managing wealth on behalf of banks, investment funds, and financial planning institutions. The industry has seen a considerable shakeout on both sides of the Atlantic as jobs have vanished and, in some cases, people have been imprisoned for felonious activity.
In the wake of the global recession governments and financial strategists alike have sought to rebuild wealth at a rapid clip. Although consumer advocates warn that the common families are being left behind, economists point out that without a significant wealth stake to invest the upper economic strata cannot play a significant role in the creation of new jobs.
That role occurs primarily through investment, and investment planning is structured to reward those who take risks with their wealth. Epoch Wealth Management is only one of several companies to respond to growing consumer pessimism about wealth creation and management. They work with a broad range of clients from individuals to non-profit organizations.
It is, perhaps, a sign of things to come that a financial planning services provider uses its own Website to warn consumers of scams and other pitfalls for investing. Wary investors are looking for indications of quality and ethical behavior. Ethicists may become the most influential of wealth strategists over the next decade as everyone watches each other in a Mexican standoff of distrust and low expectation.