Areas of Expertise
Albion offers a broad range of capabilities that we bring to bear based on a client’s specific situation. Following are some of the more common issues where we help our clients.
Wealth Management
Financial Planning
Net Worth and Cash Flow Analysis
Retirement Counseling
IRA, 401(k) & Pension Guidance
Estate Planning
Multigenerational Wealth Transfer
Corporate Trust Services
Tax Planning
Insurance Planning
Non-Profit Consulting
Philanthropic Investing
Charitable Gifting Strategies
Small Business Consulting
Family Office
Real Estate
Education Funding
Divorce Planning
Investment Management
Economic Analysis
In-House Research and Trading
Portfolio Management
Common & Preferred Stock
Fixed Income
Exchange Traded Funds (ETF)
Mutual Funds
Options Strategies
Private Equity
Venture Capital
Stock Option Valuation
Low-Basis Stock Diversification
Wealth Management Topics
Financial Planning
Working toward a secure financial future is obtained through clearly stated goals and attention to the many components of your financial life. While many of the services outlined below are the building blocks of a plan they must be addressed through an overriding view of what it is you are trying to accomplish. At the beginning of your relationship with Albion, and constantly throughout the process, Albion works to understand your personal financial and lifetime goals. An understanding of who you are and what you would like to accomplish provides the essential framework for our efforts on your behalf.
Net Worth and Cash Flow Analysis
With an initial understanding of your goals and objectives Albion turns to an assessment of your current financial situation. This entails an information-gathering exercise that helps you better understand your overall financial situation. We clarify your net worth and analyze your cash flows to help you better understand your current situation and plan appropriately for your future.
The information from these analyses is viewed from a variety of perspectives. For example, we may determine that your investment allocation should be changed to better match your stated goals. We may also decide that your annual savings rate should be changed or redirected.
Retirement Counseling
The primary financial goal for many of Albion's clients is achieving a comfortable retirement. We can help guide you toward financial independence and a secure retirement through planning that includes detailed analysis and forecasts of your pre- and post-retirement life.
Our professional team reviews your current retirement savings strategies, including 401(k), 403(b), IRA, pension, and social security plans and provides advice to help increase your chances of achieving financial independence.
Albion helps you maintain your standard of living through careful investment management focused on maximizing after-tax income throughout your retirement years.
IRA, 401(k) & Pension Guidance
Albion provides guidance in establishing and investing in IRAs, 401(k)s, pensions, and retirement plans. We work directly with clients advising them on how they should allocate dollars to retirement plans and what may be the best plan for them.
Estate Planning
Careful estate planning helps you ensure that the assets you have created continue to benefit the people and causes that are most important to you. Without such planning, your estate may be severely diminished by federal and state taxes, with the remainder distributed in ways you might not have chosen.
Albion reviews your current plan with specific attention to the stream of beneficiaries and potential tax consequences. We then recommend strategies, consistent with your goals, that may be implemented to transfer more to your heirs while providing financial advantages to you for your lifetime. Albion works with your estate planning attorney throughout this process.
Multigenerational Wealth Transfer
All too often the planning for children's and grandchildren's future ends when the estate planning process has been completed. While the estate planning process is excellent at moving assets between generations in a tax efficient manner it does little or nothing toward passing on the values and insights that are your true legacy. Albion consults with clients and beneficiaries on ways to pass the values as well as the monetary wealth, increasing the likelihood that future generations will truly benefit from your legacy.
Corporate Trust Services
When planning for an uncertain future many families take great comfort in knowing that the advice and counsel that benefitted them will be available for their children and grandchildren. A part of that is ensuring there is consistent investment management and financial advice for the heirs creating a stabilizing influence across time. When a corporate trustee is required for the optimal execution of an estate plan clients can be assured of continuity by using corporate trustee services available through Albion Financial Group.
Tax Planning
Your income and investment structure is analyzed with an eye toward uncovering any tax efficiencies that may enhance your financial situation. This may be simple, such as shifting from taxable to tax-exempt money market funds. A more complex recommendation might involve prepaying certain tax preference items to minimize the impact of the Alternative Minimum Tax or converting a portion of retirement assets to Roth IRAs.
In tax related issues Albion works with your Accountant to develop a balanced plan that is most suitable for you.
Insurance Planning
A review of financial risks is an important part of the planning process. While certain risks are difficult to mitigate insurance can be a useful tool for offsetting other risks. Albion helps you evaluate your life insurance needs, and compiles a summary of your other policies so the information is readily available in the event of an emergency.
We also evaluate various ownership structures for your insurance policies to help you and your family maximize the benefit that such products provide.
As your primary financial advisor, Albion works with you to maintain a comprehensive list of your personal financial information. Such a list may include investment assets, estate planning documents, insurance policies, safe deposit boxes, names of related parties, and instructions for those who may be required to manage your financial affairs if you are unable. Such information is priceless to those who are working to arrange a smooth transition during a difficult time.
Non Profit Consulting
The financial issues of a not-for profit entity are significantly different than those facing for profit enterprises. The professionals at Albion are familiar with these differences and work with not-for profits to help them succeed in their chosen mission.
Several Albion employees serve on non-profit boards throughout the Salt Lake valley ranging from Primary and Secondary Education institutions to Medical entities. Albion members have served various roles from contributing Board member to higher fiduciary responsibilities including Treasurer. The amount of cumulative years of Board of Trustee experience allows us to offer expertise in many non-profit areas.
Philanthropic Investing
Defining the investment objectives and implementing an investment plan is a key component to the long-term financial viability of a philanthropic enterprise. Albion works with several philanthropic organizations helping guide the discussion and implement the agreed upon policy.
Charitable Gifting Strategies
Once they have sufficient wealth to ensure their own financial stability, many people take great pleasure in supporting charitable causes.
Albion's team has the knowledge and experience to address how charitable giving impacts both your charitable and non-charitable goals. We can guide you through the broad spectrum of philanthropic strategies in an effort to find the most appropriate tools for your situation. Such guidance includes how charitable giving may impact your current and future cash flows, your current and future income taxes, your favored charitable causes, and the estate to be passed on to your heirs.
Small Business Consulting
We have tremendous respect for our entrepreneurial clients who have created successful small businesses as creating and running a business is a challenging endeavor. Albion provides a sounding board and guidance for our entrepreneurial clients with a specific focus on the steps a business owner should take to “clean up” a business for eventual transfer to new ownership whether via gifting, internal or third party sale, or public offering.
Family Office
In addition to our professional investment management and financial advisory offerings we provide family office services for a select group of clients. Our family office team handles a variety of routine and specialty household tasks such as bill paying assistance, notary services, and U.S. mail management allowing you more flexibility and personal freedom. We also serve as a liaison between you and your affiliated advisors to help manage the complexity of your multifaceted personal financial situation. Our family office efforts result in you having greater clarity about where you stand and the peace of mind that comes with knowing many of your personal financial issues are being taken care of in a timely and professional manner.
Real Estate
Albion helps clients sort through many of the decisions involved in buying, managing and selling real estate assets. Our primary focus is on how real estate fits the client's overall financial situation and offer clarity regarding the risk created from the debt typically associated with real estate ownership. Our expertise ranges from financing strategies to exploring terms of a purchase or sale.
Education Funding
Many parents and grandparents, aware of the rapid escalation of costs for both secondary and higher education, wish to take the appropriate steps to meet education funding needs within their family.
We help you estimate future education expenses, determine reasonable rate of return assumptions, and explore various education funding alternatives including trusts, Education Savings Accounts, 529 plans, and Uniform Transfers to Minors Act accounts.
Albion analyzes education funding options in the context of your overall financial picture to assess its impact on your long-term financial plan.
Divorce Planning
In the course of several decades of work Albion has assisted a number of our clients though the difficult process of divorce. We offer assistance by providing clarity regarding what our client's financial life will look like after the divorce. This is completedby considering the different proposed settlement options. We then work to help our clients post-divorce to use their remaining assets as a foundation to move their life forward in a positive and meaningful way.
Illiquid Asset Issues
Many of Albion's clients have at least one asset of value that is relatively illiquid. It may be a closely-held business, a piece of real estate, or a collection of antique automobiles. We analyze the asset in the context of your overall financial picture and long-term goals in order to ensure that our overall planning advice is appropriate.
In many cases you may have specific desires for your illiquid asset which must be taken into account. For example you may wish to have the closely-held company pass directly to your children, or the automobile collection donated to a specific museum. We work with you to create a sound plan for seeing your wishes through to fruition.
Investment Management Topics
Economic Analysis
Our investment research process begins on the macroeconomic level. We monitor changes in statistics such as GDP growth rates, inflation, interest rates, the business cycle, productivity, and employment in order to identify trends, both obvious and subtle in our effort to find appropriate investment opportunities. Our understanding of these domestic and international economic indicators, as well as thoughtful analysis of world events, allow us to build client investment portfolios with a strong fundamental core.
In-House Research and Trading
Albion staffs its own in-house independent research and trading group. Comprised of qualified and experienced financial professionals, our research team observes and analyzes important economic variables that provide direction and discipline when choosing investments. From broad sweeping macro trends to corporate financial statements, Albion research provides insight into the complex global markets fostering sound investment choices.
Our trading team is responsible for the implementation of our investment strategy. By keeping our trading in house and utilizing top tier systems and software, we are able to move quickly and decisively with minimal impact on the underlying securities in which we invest.
Portfolio Management
Our portfolio managers are responsible for constructing and maintaining specific investment accounts based on a client's stated investment policy coupled with industry and economic trends. Portfolio managers determine, within stated guidelines, overall portfolio composition and specific security selection.
Common and Preferred Stock
Through the use of both common and preferred stock, Albion gives clients the ability to directly invest in healthy corporations, allowing for participation in the growth and financial prosperity of individual companies poised for continued success as well as exposure to the long-term growth of the global economic system.
Fixed Income
Albion applies our depth of knowledge in considering the micro and macro factors that will likely impact the fixed income markets and uses that data to construct and manage fixed income portfolios. Albion utilizes a variety of instruments including corporate bonds, municipal bonds, Treasuries and other Government backed securities, as well as foreign currency denominated bonds to fulfill the risk parameters of each specific portfolio.
Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)
Albion has been investing in Exchange Traded Funds since the early days of this type of tool. We have made it our business to understand how Exchange Traded Funds work, understand the differences between similar sounding funds, and understand where the risks and opportunities lie. While simple in concept Exchange Traded Funds contain an underlying complexity that, without specialized knowledge, could create unintended adverse consequences to an investor’s portfolio. Our research allows us to provide the benefits of these useful tools to Albion clients while avoiding the often misunderstood risks.
Mutual Funds
Albion’s team of analysts regularly analyzes Mutual Fund positions on behalf of our clients. Often these funds are held inside a company 401(k) and with our guidance, offered in the context of each client’s overriding financial goals, we help optimize the probability of long-term success.
Options Strategies
Options can be used in a variety of ways, ranging from hedging an existing security position to holding positions that offer the potential to profit from a rise or fall in an underlying market. The Albion investment team is well versed in the opportunities and risks available through the use of options and works with clients to determine if such strategies would be consistent with client objectives.
Private Equity/Venture Capital
Albion provides access to non-publicly traded investments through a separate partnership, called Albion Funds. The primary focus of Albion Funds is to provide exposure to attractive private equity and venture capital opportunities. Albion does this by pooling client funds as doing so provides clients the opportunity to diversify their holdings among several outside venture and private equity funds. Importantly, Albion Funds is large enough to attract the interest of fund managers where individual sized investments may not meet the fund's minimum investment requirements.
We seek funds that add value not by financial re-engineering but by providing operational assistance to help grow the portfolio companies. Albion Funds also invests directly in private equity and venture opportunities where Albion has insight into the company, the marketplace and/or the management team. Albion is widely viewed as a value added investor by both the management team at the portfolio company and by the venture partners that invite Albion to participate with them. With a fund size of under $25 million, Albion Funds fills a very attractive niche; adding value by providing unique insights and actionable advice but not so large that Albion's investment size materially reduces our partner's ability to deploy their desired capital.
Stock Option Valuation
Many mid and high level executives own stock options as a component of an overall compensation package. The complexity of these packages often makes it a challenge for the executive to understand the true value of the options and to then formulate a plan for maximizing the eventual value while minimizing risk. Albion works through these issues regularly and has a strong record of successfully guiding the discussion of what the options are worth and how they should be handled in the context of the executive’s overriding long-term financial goals.
Low-Basis Stock Diversification
Albion has decades of experience helping clients diversify their low basis stock.
Whether the low basis comes from inherited positions or long term holdings, we can help you to develop a strategy for diversifying these investments and locking in their gains while minimizing the risk such highly concentrated positions could have on your portfolio and long-term financial goals.
