2016 BEST Wealth Management Firm Private Ocean

"Employees and the owners of Private Ocean care very much about a client’s success." —Susan Dickson

“Customer effort.” That’s the term coined by Private Ocean, this year’s winner for Best Wealth Management Company, to describe the firm’s focus on streamlining how customers work with the firm. In short, how to make the experience better, more efficient and more valuable for clients.

“We consider customer effort in all we do, which essentially means, ‘How easy is it to do business with us?’” says Susan Dickson, chief operating officer of Private Ocean. “We do that both internally and externally. We look at how easy is it to work with each other by asking, ‘Are you creating processes that make it easier to work with you?’ We look at that as a huge value-add. The easier we can make it for clients to work with us—making things more efficient through Docusign or electronic signatures, for example—the better.”

Founded in 2009 by a merger of Marin County-based Salient Wealth Management (formed in 1983 by Richard Stone) and Friedman & Associates (started in 1991 by Greg Friedman), Private Ocean today is based in San Rafael but serves high net worth individuals across the greater Bay Area. By merging two of Marin County’s most innovative wealth advisories, the founders realized they could create a team stacked with the best talent in the industry, structure the organization to give clients direct access to brain power, and still maintain a familial closeness between clients and firm. Because in the end, it’s really about the relationships the company builds with its clients that’s played a significant role in its success.

“It’s really in the relationship,” says Dickson, “Employees and the owners of Private Ocean care very much about a client’s success, and it’s our aim to help clients meet their goals in life through great financial planning and the proper alignment of their investments. We’re not out there to ‘beat the market.’ We want to get the best risk-adjusted return we possibly can for our clients. The value-add is in the fact that we have very strong relationships with our clients.”

Private Ocean invests clients’ assets using an academic-based discipline, a sophisticated type of asset allocation designed to capture the market’s historically reliable movement. The fundamental principles the firm uses in investing include using thoughtful financial planning, basing investment strategy in rigorous academic research, investing for the long term, creating globally diversified portfolios, and minimizing costs, taxes and turnover. This strategy has historically created a portfolio intended to maximize growth and stability, while minimizing risk and emotion.

Today, Private Ocean is widely recognized as one of the most successful, progressive advisors in the country, managing $960 million in assets for 569 households. Measured in terms of thought leadership, prestigious awards and, most important, client satisfaction, the firm is hitting all its objectives and is creating a smarter, friendlier way to transform wealth into happiness and prosperity.

Just this past year, the firm has won the Investment News Best Practice award, Northbay Business Journal’s Women in Business Award (for Advisor Sarah Wotherspoon), Best Places to Work by Northbay Business Journal and San Francisco Business Times and Financial Advisor Magazine’s Top RIAs. And now it’s been voted Best by NorthBay biz readers.

www.privateocean.com