GenSpring is a very different kind of wealth management firm.

Hap and Ellen Perry, along with a handful of legacy families, founded GenSpring in 1989 as a multifamily office to provide wealth management advice to wealthy families across all aspects of their wealth. They were driven in no small part to create GenSpring by their intense dissatisfaction with traditional wealth management providers: private banks, financial services firms, trust companies, etc. Though great advisors existed within those institutions, the institutions themselves had grown into a hub for the distribution of financial and investment products sold under the guise of advice.

When you talk to these advisors, some of whom we've hired, they consistently describe situations of having had to protect their clients from their prior institution’s insatiable appetite for selling. Although we believe a profit motivation can be beneficial, these institutions used their size and market power for their own self-interest—to gain access to investment managers or build products that they could sell to their clients or otherwise generate more income per client, such as through trading or the sale of derivatives. In these situations, the institutions benefitted from their growth, not their clients.

Conversely, GenSpring does not earn any incremental revenue as a result of the advice we give or the solutions we utilize. GenSpring’s growth translates into more choices, market power and resources for our client families because we use our size only for their benefit.