At McKinley Carter, we embrace the opportunity to continually evaluate what it means to differentiate ourselves from other advisors in the marketplace and to deliver uncommon and high-quality service to clients by helping them take care of the things they care about most — family, community, retirement, legacy planning, etc.

This is the first in a series of articles about our standards of care. This edition provides a glimpse into the kinds of things we think about when developing and refining service standards and processes to ensure we have the right professionals and systems in place to add value for our wealth management, nonprofit, and retirement plan service clients.

One example of a McKinley Carter standard of care is what we call SMART Assessments. Through our uncommon approach to wealth management, we continually work with clients to learn all we can about their total situation, exploring and discussing their family, community and charitable passions, and financial challenges and dreams, to name a few. Using the SMART Assessment we can then identify issues and opportunities across all domains of concern important to that client, such as liquid assets , illiquid assets, tax planning, estate/legacy planning, career/business, and share that information with the client to determine a plan for his/her financial future.

If you haven’t heard the term SMART Assessments yet, ask your advisor during an upcoming meeting how this tool is making a difference for you and the things you care about most.

An article by financial planner and commentator Michael Kitces, “How Financial Advisors Can Differentiate on Great Service with a Client Service Standard”, reminds us that “great” client service is defined individually. What may be perceived as “going above and beyond” for one is simply “a part of what is expected” for another.

At McKinley Carter, we recognize and appreciate that each client is different. Therefore, we have implemented minimum standards of care for what is expected of our advisory team in providing exceptional care to our clients, with the flexibility to work with each client individually to address their specific needs and concerns.

Stay tuned for the next issue of Huddle where we will further explore McKinley Carter Advisory Service Standards and how they make a difference for you.