Creating value and living our values for our clients
Over our four decades in business, we have been blessed with some clients for many, many years. In fact, we are honored to be serving some client families in their 2nd and 3rd generations. We thought this might be a good time for a reminder of the value and values FSG offers legacy and new clients.
When evaluating the cost for the value created by FSG as your planning partner, there are many considerations.
Naturally, there are the obvious, such as the value of the extensive advisory related advice and services you receive. Then there are the critical and necessary costs of doing business your fees help support. Vital functions like staffing (to make doing business with us easier, having someone answer the phone when you call or immediately address some of your most pressing questions or handle requests), infrastructure (maintaining the physical environment that represents our stability and commitment to clients and community), technologies and licenses (to enhance your user experience, access, information, and provide security for your confidential information), and continuous learning (to ensure advisors and staff remain current and up-to-date on the latest industry knowledge through conferences, workshops and other opportunities). These things and many others help ensure that all aspects of your financial well-being are being properly attended to year after year.
Then there are the things that happen behind the scenes that you don’t see. During your onboarding you’re paired with a specific advisor so you can develop a trusting relationship and have a single point of contact. However, as clients of our firm, you’re actually benefitting from nearly 100 years of collective and diverse experience representing advising, operations, and support from our entire team.
Our advisor team meets frequently to share client cases and review strategies and tactics that are being deployed to ensure that a particular client’s financial well-being and great life objectives are on track. This provides an opportunity for other advisors to contribute additional knowledge and insights to the assigned advisor for the benefit of the client. For example, Mike often shares his expertise and insights in elder-life planning or Career Asset Management with other advisors so they can add further value to clients in areas where they might not have as much direct experience. The advisors share examples of client risks or cyber fraud attempts that help alert the rest of the team to a new or emerging threat or vulnerability. The industry experience gained from Vince’s years at Vanguard and Tom’s history in insurance add even more value to our team discussions and client case reviews. This client case sharing approach helps ensure continuity and smoother transitions when pairing with a different advisor becomes necessary.
Our full team meets weekly to provide quick client updates (illnesses, milestones, job changes, etc.), check-in on outstanding tasks, and generally make sure we’re aligned and focused for the week ahead. Quarterly, we spend an entire day together reviewing the previous quarter and setting goals for the upcoming. Our annual strategy planning session in January with our management team establishes the long-term goals and budget for the year, identifies client experience improvements, and sets the major objectives for our team in support of adding value to our clients.
At FSG, we truly take a team approach to living our value of continuous learning and sharpening our saws so we can be our best selves for you and for each other.
Living our values
Acting on our values every day in demonstrable ways is difficult to quantify in terms of dollar amount, but priceless in terms of adding value to our clients. We defer to our values as our benchmark for how we show up for our clients and with each other. From the words we choose, to the ways we act, we believe in and stand by our values.
- We do everything with heart.
- We honor our commitments.
- We are transparent.
- We are collaborative.
- We never stop learning.
These values continue to be our compass – helping us stay grounded, focused, and committed to doing our best for our clients and our team.
We even try to add value in the ways we show appreciation to our clients. Through things like our referral program in which we make donations to client causes to offering complimentary learning events, free books from our interest library, document shredding and notary services. We host special gatherings and outings to include your family and friends as a way to bring our extended FSG family together.
We believe in being responsible citizens and in 2008 decided to build our office in Racine to demonstrate our long-term commitment to our community. We support individual and shared organizations through our employee donation program and other charitable contributions of time, talent, and treasure throughout the year.
In strategic decisions we make, technology upgrades, procedure changes we implement, or hires we make, we do so with one thought in mind. “What will this mean for our clients,” isn’t an afterthought; it’s the first thought.
We’re proud to defend the intrinsic and extrinsic value we strive to create in your relationship with us. For 43 years FSG has been honored to serve as your partner through your life transitions. As that partner, our team takes care of your financial well-being so you can focus on all the other important aspects of your life.
And every day, in every way, we’re dedicated to helping you live your Great Life as you define it and want it to be.
