Wealthspire's Chad Tischer: partner, not build, family-office services

Wealthspire's Chad Tischer told RIAs at RIA Edge Austin to partner with outside specialists rather than build family-office services in-house, WealthManagement.com reported.

Tax, trust and estate planning require paying experts $150,000 to $250,000 or more to serve what may be only a handful of clients with balance sheets large enough to justify the overhead, the panelists said. "Those are expensive hires," Tischer said, adding that hiring a CPA or a JD in-house "is uneconomical for many firms." Mark DeLotto of the $22 billion Simon Quick Advisors also spoke on the panel.

For an RIA without the budget for in-house CPAs or JDs, the panel's arithmetic favors a single accounting-firm relationship over a services build-out, though it leaves tax and estate work in another firm's hands. Tischer's test for such a partnership is that both sides put something into it: "A partnership is a real partnership, not a crapshoot," he said.

Tischer said one strong partner may be better than 20 separate referrals, citing a billion-dollar RIA in the Midwest that works with one accounting firm for all its clients. Those clients come into the firm's offices for a couple of days during tax season, which he said helps the RIA's clients and generates referrals from the CPAs. The growth that firm gets through the arrangement, "from what I've seen," far outweighs what 20 accounting-firm referrals would deliver, Tischer said. Wealthspire Family Office launched under a new brand name in March and has since added a $2.88 billion sports and entertainment practice, as Private Wealth Daily previously reported.