Client Engagement Guidelines

Short Version, © 2022 Open Window Financial Solutions, Ltd.

Although we will want to do a lot of the heavy lifting, achieving your financial intentions requires a commitment from both of us. Towards better understanding this commitment, please take some time to review the items below and to note any questions you may have. By setting clear expectations, we can seek the maximum benefit of our efforts together and pursue your best possible outcome from day one.

The right financial planner can provide:

What You Can Expect From Us:

• We help deliver a deliberately planned path to achieve your financial goals. We seek your total financial confidence and peace of mind as we work together in an ongoing partnership to implement, monitor, and update your integrated wealth advisory plan. 
  
  
• We are full-time fiduciaries. Our commitment to you is always active and exists under as many as seven different fiduciary codes.
  
  
• We practice an investment philosophy based strictly on evidence. Our actions are grounded in Nobel-prize winning academic research, not our own personal opinion. 
  
  
• We are compensated 100% by client fees, fully disclosed to you in advance. As a "Fee-Only" firm no one pays us to sell or recommend anything to you. 
  
  
• We have no hidden fees and our process is fully transparent. In advance, we want you to know what we are doing, why we are doing it, and what it costs. We believe that our cost – although at times significant – will be a small fraction of the benefit you can receive.
  
  
• You may terminate our relationship at any time without any “hooks” binding you to us. 
  
  
• We are available to meet for a detailed review of your financial life on an annual basis, including a review of the exact results and expenses of your investment portfolio, our advisory cost, and the progression of your net worth. Effective meetings take time to prepare, so we try to schedule most meetings in advance, on a Monday through Friday, with a start time between 8:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. 
  
  
• We do not ever take possession of your assets. Instead, we assist you in placing your accounts at Fidelity Investments, a large, national financial firm called a “custodian”. We are fully independent of Fidelity. Fidelity may sometimes be identified by their brokerage firm name “National Financial Services”, or “NFS”. 
  
  
• We encourage you to review and approve our federal regulatory documents, given to you near our initial consultation, and available online at www.adviserinfo.sec.gov.
  
  
• We maintain client information under strict standards of security and confidentiality. 
  
  
• We will encourage you as a client to maintain the alignment of your portfolio with your long-term goals and intentions. Therefore, throughout the year the most common activities in your portfolio are proactively (not reactively) rebalancing to your target risk exposure and managing for taxes.
  
  

What We Require From You To Be Successful:

• You are seeking assistance with your financial affairs. You are also equally willing to accept assistance. It may sound strange, but some want a rubber-stamp answer, not honest advice.
  
  
• You are willing to engage us because you have chosen to delegate the implementation and monitoring of your financial plan and investment portfolio to our professional team.
  
  
• You are willing to practice financial discipline and patience, the joint actions of:
  1) Disciplined saving; investing early and often; spending sustainably in retirement.
  2) Patience and faith in your preparedness. 
  
  
• You expect us to evaluate and manage all, or nearly all, of your investment assets within approved guidelines towards your most cherished lifetime and generational intentions.
  
  
• You are willing to proactively focus on a long-term, personalized, planned course of action, rather than reactively focus on short-term market conditions. 
  
  
• You are willing to accept the academic evidence which shows that the future of financial markets, countries, and companies cannot consistently be predicted or profitably timed. 
  
  
• You are willing to remain continuously involved in the process, understanding that each part of our process is interdependent. 
  
  
• You understand that if you act without our input or knowledge, or withhold information, this will affect our ability to provide effective advice. 
  
  
• You appreciate that we will only provide advice on investments selected through our own research. 
  
  
• You will try to make us aware of errors as they are discovered. While we make every effort to avoid them, we take full responsibility for them. If we make them, we want to correct them. 
  
  
• You should gain a level of trust that we are always looking out for your best interest.