Ideas for providing cutting-edge service

Every financial adviser knows the key to success in the ultrahigh-net-worth market: Service, service, service. But after…

Every financial adviser knows the key to success in the ultrahigh-net-worth market: Service, service, service.
But after you have walked their dogs, bought them hedge funds and bailed their spoiled kids out of foreign jails, what can you do for wealthy clients that truly will set you apart? Here are some fresh ideas.
The Adviser Alert Pendant. If you want to be close to your wealthy client in the literal sense, give the ultimate retention tool, the AAP. It combines medical and adviser alert functions in a wearable necklace.
Should the wearer fall, the AAP calls for emergency assistance. But if a client is about to open an account at a rival provider, the AAP alerts you instantly, allowing you to speak through the device, dissuade the wearer from affixing their signature and warn the poaching adviser to keep their mitts off.
Alternatively, the AAP can be programmed to deliver a mild shock that causes the wearer to drop their pen, or it can send a prerecorded alarm and a message such as: “Stop. This transaction has not been professionally authorized.”
Collateralized Heir Obligations. Advisers who adopt this product solution, which harnesses Wall Street’s genius at financial engineering, will help solve a problem common among the über-wealthy: dissatisfaction with children. A wealthy lad or lass may hold a doctoral degree or be a winning athlete or a truly kind human being, but if the scion also is a dreamer, spacey about money or a klutz, rich dad will be unhappy.
Since those with ultrahigh net worth expect and can afford perfection, serve their needs with the CHO, a derivative security based on a pool of elite high performers ages 9 to 24. The superkids’ skills are stripped and repackaged into securities, which are priced by market demand.
Winning bidders receive digital photos of their composite “child” and other documentation proving they have the right to claim parentage of, say, an Intel Award-winning Dartmouth all-star/Rhodes Scholar who runs their own high-tech startup in their spare time.
Wealthy investors who want to fulfill both their parental and charitable obligations synthetically at low cost can buy rights to “stub” children — the subprime remainder kids who have been stripped of all talents and achievements in the securitization process.
Ultimate Time Share. Touring Lapp fishing holes? Ordinary. Surfing the Galapagos? Been there. Skiing Mt. Kilimanjaro? Done that.
There is no vacation concept that today’s ultrahigh-net-worth clients haven’t tried — except one: running a country.
Now, top-level advisers can arrange the ultimate power trip. The former French outpost of Cupidité, a remote island republic in the South Pacific, offers the country’s top job as a one-week time share to affluent Americans.
Officeholders have full powers during their limited reigns, being able to declare war, grant clemency, issue stamps bearing their likeness and wearing a uniform of their choosing. Most former premieres-temporaires say that their one-week absolute rule helped refresh their Type-A batteries.
The Tantalum Adviser Card. Have you ever noticed the mega-wealthy’s smug, self-satisfied grins when they whip out their titanium American Express Centurion cards and impress waiters, store clerks and poor schlub dinner companions? Go a step further by offering the Tantalum Adviser Card.
Crafted from a slab of a classy-sounding gray metal that Visa and MasterCard haven’t yet glommed onto — and free of plebeian account numbers — the sleek card costs $50,000 a year. For that sum, your clients receive absolutely nothing, but they are the only ones who know that.
And the value of that exclusive information, shared by a mere handful of status seekers? Priceless.