For more than 13 years, Harrison Till of Till Advisory and Capital Management has been identifying opportunities focused on adding value to high-net-worth business owners, corporate executives, entertainers, and professional athletes. He works extensively with accounting firms, employee benefit providers, and law firms to translate complexity to simplicity for all client relationships. Originally from northern New Jersey, Harrison graduated from Duke University (2005) in 3 years earning varsity letters in football and track & field. Under the NCAA eligibility rules, Harrison was one of the first student-athletes to ever use the NCAA Graduate Transfer Rule. “If you graduate from your undergraduate institution early with remaining eligibility to participate in NCAA athletics, you can retain all of your existing eligibility at another institution as long as you pursue a graduate school degree that was not offered at your previous university.” As a result of the opportunity, Harrison graduated with his Masters’ Degree from the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University (2007) earning a varsity letter in football and two Big Ten Championship rings. Over the last 17 years, thousands of student-athletes have now used what is referred to as the “NCAA Transfer Portal” and it is one of the hottest ongoing topics dictating the business of NCAA athletics.
Russ Alan Prince: Tell me about your firm.
Harrison Till: I founded Till Advisory and Capital Management in late 2019 after spending 10 years at a bank serving my clients as a fiduciary and trusted advisor. I built my firm with a vision of providing white glove service as a coordinator of specialists transparently helping clients manage their financial affairs.
Over the last 13 years, I have been focused on building consultative relationships to provide solutions to complex problems that my clients were looking to solve. In my humble experience, the most fulfilling relationships have always started by providing a solution and then building a relationship once a tangible value has been demonstrated.
Prince: What do you do for your clients?
Till: My expertise is to identify any area of a client’s financial life that they are not happy with, complete a due diligence process to explore solutions, architect, implement and then monitor those solutions. During each step, I confirm with the client and anyone else they consider important to the process that is included, and all options proposed are communicated verbally and in writing with complete transparency. For many clients, I am engineering tax minimization strategies, estate planning, business succession planning, charitable gifting, equity award analysis, and coordinating all external relationships for any other financial affairs.
Let me give you an example. I had a CPA firm contact me to help their business owner client explore options on how they could manage their business retirement plan more efficiently. After one discovery meeting with the prospect, I was able to explain that they were using separate third-party vendors for their defined benefit plan, 401(k) plan, and profit-sharing plan. All plans were over 10 years old and had not been benchmarked for fees, investment options, or record keeper platforms since inception. Separately, the business owner was experiencing cash flow issues and could not meet the funding requirements for the defined benefit plan so the owner was forced to freeze the plan as a temporary solution.
After presenting several options with the pros and cons of each listed, the client made the decision and I arranged the consolidation of the plans onto an integrated benefits platform with a single username and password sign-on. I was able to incorporate a user-friendly portal, mobile app, preferred pricing structure, enhanced investment options, and in-house third-party administrator/actuarial services. Separately, I brought in a dedicated specialist to design and implement a strategy to unfreeze the defined benefit plan and confirm its status to be in good order.
Prince: How do you see the private wealth industry changing?
Till: The industry is changing in several different ways. For example, there are do-it-yourself platforms such as Wealthfront and Robinhood which lead to fee compression and more commoditized investments, There are more pressures and regulations impacting banks, broker/dealers, and wirehouses that can limit the capabilities of their advisors.
My expertise enables me to navigate these changes and deliver exceptional value to my clients.
Just consider… no person has accumulated any level of wealth with complex financial planning needs that will choose a 1-800 number to a do-it-yourself platform over a well-coordinated team of professionals that will be an unlimited resource and extension of their family.
We are independent fiduciaries that view all client scenarios objectively. We follow very strict compliance guidelines always putting the interest of the clients that we are lucky to serve first. With all that being said, we can design and structure solutions that cost-effectively add significant value to our clients. Producing the results our clients want to see is what leads to our goal of 100% client retention. The current regulatory environment truly does not allow banks, broker/dealers, and wirehouses to deliver that kind of results.
RUSS ALAN PRINCE is the Executive Director of Private Wealth magazine (pw-mag.com) and Chief Content Officer for High-Net-Worth Genius (hnwgenius.com). He consults with family offices, the wealthy, fast-tracking entrepreneurs, and select professionals.
