Jack Monteith

Jack Monteith

Jack Monteith, founder of Oregon-based Empirical Wealth Management, approaches financial services with discipline and creativity—and the result is a financial advisory firm that has $500 million in assets and is growing rapidly.

The discipline is something that Monteith, a CPA, has always had. The creativity is hard-won and comes from the application of wealth management best practices. The result: a suite of serv­ices that identifies and supports what a client believes is most important in his or her life, and that aligns finances with the investor’s value system.

This structured and value-added approach seems natural to Monteith now, but it’s a long way from where he started—as an accountant working for several large firms before setting out on his own, first in accounting and then as an investment advisor.
He jumped into investment man­agement services in 1992 and has steadily accumulated knowledge and implemented best practices ever since.

Recently, for example, a physician client approached Monteith about finding an optimal disability policy. The doctor had switched from an active practice to an administrative role and needed a thorough review of his coverage. “We were able to solve the problem for our client in short order,” Monteith says. “He was grateful because we provided a one-stop shop­ping experience for him, in which he could ask for a variety of services and be confident that we can provide them.”

This example, as much as any, illustrates the broad gamut of financial services that Monteith can now offer. The creativity that he can bring to the business as the result of orienting it around wealth management is both stimulating and satisfying. He calls the accounting industry, where he started, a “satisfying sequence of services” but also a “grind.” And while he took satisfaction in a job well done, the day-in, day-out predictability of the business was not to his liking. A desire to do more for clients prompted his entrée into financial services.

Like many in the industry, his investment wisdom increased gradually. Back in 1992, his business focused on specific investments and objectives. The shift to financial planning had begun, but to some degree those in the investment field were still what they always had been: customers’ men, providing specific equity recommendations based on the availability of their firms’ investment banking product.

This approach would change starting in the 1980s, and Monteith’s business profile would change with it. Thanks largely to developments in technology, advisors found themselves able to move beyond simply finding a “hot stock” and started implementing such services as financial planning, including risk/reward-based asset allocation for clients. The various services first coalesced around the term “financial planning” and later morphed into “wealth management.”

“Wealth management allows us to provide almost any service that the customer wants from a financial point of view,” explains Monteith. “While financial planning provided various kinds of financial services, wealth management expands our role so that we have the broadest possible financial brief. We can help purchase a car or home, or even provide help with a wedding or funeral.”

As a CPA for almost 14 years before beginning his investment career, Monteith finds wealth management liberating. “I really love it,” he says. “From the interview process that isolates a client’s life values to the plan that leaves a legacy to the children, we’re working with a broad canvas and grappling with the challenges of unique clients. Wealth management allows us to do much more than solve financial problems. It lets us help the client identify goals and values, which is a most life-affirming prospect.”

Monteith also emphasizes that working with clients within a wealth management context reinforces the viability of the relationship and creates stronger advisor-client bonds than could be realized within a product-centric context. Not surprisingly, those bonds have helped generate plenty of business. “When I started this business, it probably took two or three years to grow to $20 million in assets under management,” says Monteith. “But today my group manages $500 million and we’re on track for much more.”

To maintain the client-centric focus that true wealth management requires, Empirical Wealth Management outsources its investment process. This enables the firm to concentrate on client communication and maintain an emphasis on values and personal satisfaction within a financial context. He believes that CEG Worldwide has been instrumental in the evolution of the firm’s current success. “We started learning more about wealth management with CEG Worldwide back in 2006,” he recalls. “It took a bit of a leap of faith to give it a try, because inevitably you shed clients with this process, as you cannot be everything to everybody.”

That leap, says Monteith, has paid off. The company now has three separate offices, several other wealth managers and nearly 500 clients. Professional relationships have been enhanced, client relationships have been strengthened and about $100 million has been added to the firm’s asset management bottom line since 2006.

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