Message to Clients

We started Accretive to build a firm that reflects our values and with the mission of creating and preserving wealth for our clients. Since December 2018, our business has grown and evolved, as all companies do. However, our core purpose and mission remain unchanged.

What does creating value for clients mean and how does that happen? In our opinion it begins with trust.

We are fiduciaries in a trust-based business. Our goal is to both earn trust and be deserving of it. We expect to earn trust by being honest, genuine, and dependable. We hope to deserve your trust by putting your financial interests ahead of our own, bringing our best thinking and analysis to each client situation, saying “I don’t know” when we don’t know, finding the right domain experts and professionals when necessary, and continually working to improve our skillset and expertise.

Financial advisors can create value in various ways, manifesting differently for each client. We also understand that personal circumstances, goals, and priorities change over time, as does the tax code and market environment. A high degree of trust allows us to know and understand our clients better. We believe this enhances our ability to proactively create value for clients over time.

Accretive is different than most financial advisory practices. We believe there are very few independent, owner-operated firms that have principal owners with both our collective experience and expected retirement dates decades away. We are also trying to think and behave differently than most firms. Our independence allows us to do that, which we value highly.

Our investing mindset differs from many peers in ways that should matter to clients. The two most important attributes are embracing a philosophy that remains open to learning and is grounded in humility. Times change, and markets evolve. We believe that in investing, zealotry and overconfidence can be detrimental to your wealth. It is ok to have strong beliefs, but they should be held with flexibility.

From an owner’s perspective, we aim to keep our own costs low through the use of technology. This helps us do more with less, build our business to optimal scale, and then share the economies of scale with clients.

This mindset created our Client Alignment Program™, which you can learn more about here. In summary, as Accretive grows, our clients get a better deal (in the form of lower advisory fees paid). No one asked for this or needed to do anything to opt in; we did it because we think it is the right way to treat our clients.  

Our initial years as a firm have been exciting, demanding, and gratifying while facing an ever-changing landscape that has been even more fickle than we ever imagined. Even so, we are excited about the future. We aim to keep thinking independently, behaving differently, and searching for ways to proactively create value for clients.