WE Family Offices Impacts Industry With Prestigious Rankings

July 31, 2014

WE Family Offices impacts industry and celebrates its 18th month anniversary as an independent, family-focused wealth management firm with numerous industry recognitions and accolades. Since January 2013, the firm has doubled its assets under advisement, growing from $1.6B to more than $3.2B, and has added significant new U.S.-based and international clients.

In 2014, the firm has received numerous awards from prestigious publications, including: Forbes Top 50 Wealth Managers; the Financial Times Top 300 wealth advisers; and Financial Advisor magazine Top RIAs and Fastest Growing RIAs. In addition, the firm has been short-listed for three industry awards for best multi-family office (including one from the prestigious Society of Estate and Trust Practitioners (STEP)).

Firms included in these rankings must be Registered Independent Advisors (RIAs). The data presented in the rankings demonstrates a continuing upward trend in which the independent advisory space continues to grow, attesting to the market’s desire for unbiased and independent wealth advice. The commentary accompanying the Forbes ranking states, “Recent research from Cerulli Associates shows advisors in the RIA space are reaping the benefits of this shift in the industry. Assets in the registered investment advisor (RIA) channel have grown 8.8% annually over the five years ending in 2012. Total RIA assets stand at $1.5 trillion, according to Cerulli. The number of financial advisors in RIA space is also on the rise with an annual growth at a rate of 8%.

All that growth is coming at the expense of…more traditional brokerage firms. Though traditional brokerage firms still control most of the industry’s retail assets, Cerulli expects its market share and its total number of advisors to decline.”

Founding partners and industry pioneers Maria Elena Lagomasino, Michael Zeuner and Santiago Ulloa are committed to providing their firm’s clients with transparency, which can be very difficult to find in the wealth management industry. “We recognize what clients what is honesty, plain and simple,” Lagomasino says. “Even though families deserve to know they can trust their advisor, and that the advice they are receiving is in their best interests, that is an unfortunately rare state of affairs in today’s financial industy.”

“WE Family Offices helps families view WE stands for Wealth Enterprise^®. The company’s core beliefs and business practices are designed to offer comprehensive, family-focused wealth management services to ultra-high net worth clients.