Glenn G. Kautt

Glenn G. Kautt

The founder and chief investment officer of The Monitor Group, Inc., Glenn G. Kautt, is a fierce believer in systems, business education and career preparation. His focus in those key areas has helped shape his company and define the kinds of clients he attracts and serves. A graduate of Harvard Business School, Kautt has applied enterprise analysis to his business, a $500 million entity that consists of two distinct firms: The Monitor Group, Inc., which has a $1 million investment minimum, and TMG Investment Advisory Company for less affluent clients.

The comprehensive service offering that Kautt provides for clients of The Monitor Group is built around wealth management. This highly successful firm provides feeonly wealth management and advanced financial planning services—including estate, tax and retirement planning—to affluent families across the United States. Kautt's use of wealth management was sparked by his desire to incorporate best practices for professional success in a competitive marketplace, its logical approach and ease of systematization to solve professional business challenges, and its compelling advantages to clients.

Kautt's clients, who include physicians and high-level executives at major corporations, appreciate his systematic expertise when it comes to wealth management. Kautt says that a wealth management approach that positions financial resources tosupport values and provides passive asset-class investment techniques rooted in the proven method of modern portfolio theory is appreciated by those who employ business systems themselves and seek a rational approach to building and maintaining their wealth. Kautt himself comes by his belief in systems and strong management skills innately—he admits to a certain level of discipline and toughness from childhood—and by way of a high-finance background. His education, experience and designations are both impressive and broad-reaching. A sample: He received his MBA from Harvard Business School and graduated as a President's Distinguished Scholar from Purdue University. Kautt is a member of the Financial Planning Association and former chair of the National Capital Area FPA Chapter and the National Association of Enrolled Agents; is a Graduate Fellow of the National Tax Practice Institute; is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Financial Planning; and has been named by Worth, Mutual Fund and Medical Economicsmagazines as one of the nation's top investment advisors.

A deeper look at Kautt's background helps explain how he would be drawn to the kinds of best practices that are embodied in wealth management and asset-class investing. The son of an engineer who placed a good deal of emphasis on "discipline and logical thinking," Kautt enlisted in the U.S. Navy when he was 21. His skills were soon evident to his superiors, who placed him in charge of running a nuclear reactor on a submarine before he was even commissioned an officer. He left the U.S. Navy with the rank of lieutenant.

Back in civilian life, Kautt was accepted at Harvard Business School. After graduating, he became a strategic management consultant, which led him to observe that the upand- coming business discipline of financial advisory work might offer professional opportunities not easily available in more mature fields. By 1987, Kautt was a Certified Financial Planner™ professional. By 1990, he'd started his second financial planning firm. And by 1999, he had reinvented his approach to planning using the latest techniques and formed The Monitor Group, Inc., which today has $480 million in assets.

Meanwhile, TMG Investment Advisory Company (with $20 million in assets) holds the funds of those clients that Kautt shifted from The Monitor Group when he decided to focus the larger firm on wealth management solutions in the early 2000s. While certain strategic approaches to small-client wealth suggest that advisors are better off simply divesting such assets, Kautt set up TMG Investment Advisory Company to develop a feeder mechanism for his larger business, one that he believed his larger clients would appreciate. "Many of my clients' children are invested there," says Kautt. "That means we aren't muddying the waters with smallclient solutions at The Monitor Group, which might confuse things from a best-practice investing standpoint. Additionally, we've had clients graduate to our larger firm from the small-client company, as it provides a step-up that allows small but growing clients to get comfortable with us and vice versa."

Kautt's focus on successful business processes caused him to be an early adopter of wealth management techniques. As such, he relied on wealth management coaching firm CEG Worldwide for feedback and support. "CEG Worldwide was enormously helpful as a sounding board for what we were trying to do and helped validate a lot of our conclusions and activities," Kautt said. "I pride myself on being ahead of the curve, but CEG Worldwide's vision and business savvy is second to none."

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