Irene:

Hi everyone. Thank you for joining today's special edition of Office Hours titled an Advisor's Recipe for Regaining Time, Saving Money, and Achieving Higher Client Satisfaction. Where you'll hear from WisdomTree's Kara Dombroski, Director, Client and Product Solutions, Justin Hagner, Associate Director and Ryan Krystopowicz, Director of Client and Product Solutions. And with that let me turn it over to Ryan for some opening remarks.

Ryan Krystopowicz:

Well, thank you very much Irene, and thank you everyone for tuning in today, for what I honestly believe is the most exciting launch of a program that I've personally ever been a part of. So just like the title of this Office Hours indicates, Kara, Justin, and myself are going to be providing you advisors a recipe for regaining time, saving money, and achieving higher client satisfaction.

So this recipe that we're talking about is a program we created called WisdomTree's Portfolio and Growth Solutions. You can see that at the top of a slide here. And that's been designed for you to collaborate with us to build, manage, and trade customized model portfolios for your practice. Really an extremely differentiated offering that speaks to our core competency of really empowering advisors with modern solutions. And so these modern solutions can help you, once again, regain time, save money, and achieve higher client satisfaction. So let's dig into it. I'm going to pass it off to Kara to talk about WisdomTree. I'm going to be going over the advisor value pyramid. We'll have Justin introducing the Portfolio and Growth Solutions program. I'll briefly talk about how this is a collaborative process and ways to get started, and then we'll wrap it up. So it's going to be a pretty quick session for you here, but we're going to be going through a lot of exciting stuff. With that, Kara, let me pass it over to you.

Kara Dombroski:

Okay, thanks Ryan. And happy to be here to discuss our new and exciting portfolio and growth solutions, as Ryan had mentioned. So to start, let's focus on who is WisdomTree? And if you can go to the next slide, Ryan. This is a high level overview of our company, but to distill it all, WisdomTree's a global asset management firm with over 70 billion in assets in exchange traded products. We first launched back in 2006 with the belief that a fundamentally weighted approach can produce better risk adjusted returns, and today we have a wide array of ETFs across all asset classes and geographies. In addition to our ETFs, we also have evolved into the model portfolio business, which you can see on the next slide. Back in 2013, we heard from advisors that they needed help developing sound asset allocation mixes. So we actually started, in 2013, publishing model allocations on our website to help advisors achieve various investment objectives for their clients.

Then in 2016, we fully developed our model lineup and a couple years later we began offering these models on various model portfolio platforms that make it easy for advisors like you to easily trade and rebalance WisdomTree's model portfolios. A few years ago we actually partnered with Professor Jeremy Siegel, who's been an integral part of the start and development of WisdomTree to construct portfolios designed to challenge a traditional 60-40 portfolio. And since then today we actually have a wide array of model portfolios and categories of strategic outcome focus, collaborative and most recently custom models. Which brings us to today, why we're talking about this all.

So let's get it a little into why WisdomTree is well positioned to be your model provider. We offer three main advantages. First, we have an institutional quality and model portfolio management, where we have a model portfolio investment committee and a global research team whose sole job is to manage WisdomTree's model portfolios. This team, we'll go into a little bit in the next slide, but it's over 30 plus individuals that have designations such as CFAs, PhDs, et cetera. So very well equipped to focus their efforts on managing our model portfolios.

The second advantage to WisdomTree is the fact that we offer our modern alpha ETFs. As I mentioned, our initial launch in 2006 was for fundamentally weighted ETFs and we have developed across all asset classes and geographies. So we have a wide array of ETFs that we can use in our WisdomTree model portfolios. We also use third party outside providers in our model so that we have an open architecture approach. And this allows the combination of WisdomTree, modern alpha and non WisdomTree ETFs. It provides you the ability to outperform without the costs associated with active management or strategist.

And third, and probably most importantly, we have a very strong emphasis on the advisor experience here at WisdomTree. We want to make it as easy as possible for you, the advisor, to invest and communicate in WisdomTree’s Model Portfolios and communicate those benefits and the rebalance changes, et cetera to your end clients very easily. So as mentioned, we have a model portfolio investment committee with decades of experience managing multi-asset model portfolios. These five individuals here are the voting members of the model portfolio investment committee, and they in turn are supported by our broader global research team. As I had mentioned over 30 plus individuals. And our model portfolio business, as I had mentioned earlier, we really started commercializing it in 2017, 2018.

Today we have over 2 billion in model portfolio assets with nine plus years of a gifts track record. So we are very happy with what we've done in our model portfolio business. We've built a very strong foundation and I'm actually going to pass it off to Ryan who's going to cover the advisor value pyramid as he mentioned, and get into a little bit more on specifically portfolio and growth solutions. So off to you Ryan.

Ryan Krystopowicz:

Yeah, and thank you so much. And just looking at this slide, the fact that when we say a hundred percent focus on the model portfolio investment team and generally a lot of asset managers are entering the space, but we don't just enter it as a part-time job. It's really been a huge focus for what we've done as a firm and as a really a standalone business. And part of what we've been able to do, really a proof point, was developing, within our industry, the most comprehensive research study on model portfolio adoption and perception both on advisors and then your clients. So individual investors. And one of the things that came out of that study was what we call the advisor value pyramid. And this study found that what clients, your end clients, value the most from the financial services that you provide can generally be separated into three distinct levels just like Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

So as you can see here at the bottom of the slide, at the very base of it is the functional level of needs. I like to think of these needs as basic services like the table stakes such as access to investments, trading, really just basic services. But when you move up on the hierarchy, that is satisfying the emotional needs of clients and that's referring to improving the financial health of your end clients such as reducing their anxiety and stresses over finances, extremely relevant in today's market volatility. But then you can go to the top tier, and that's life changing right there. And those needs include helping clients reach their life goals and attain their financial dreams. So based off of our research, investors absolutely care about all three levels of this pyramid, but one of the biggest decisions you need to make as an advisor is how do you cover all three of those levels with with your time, right?

Because, time is definitely finite. And the research would suggest that the answer is to leverage expertise at the functional level. That's the bottom level, because that's the key to maximizing time. Only you, the advisor, can deliver those life changing and the emotional needs, not a computer, certainly not wisdom trade. You're intimate knowledge of your client, that human connection that exists, that's your biggest advantage as advisor and really where you want to be spending most of your time maximizing your impact of the value you bring. And ultimately, asking, well why is this a big deal? This absolutely goes to the title, the Office Hours that we have, the really three important benefits of delegating that functional level of tax, which is regaining time, saving money and achieving higher client satisfaction. So we went out to different asset manager research studies and things like that just so you're not seeing all of WisdomTree's viewpoints.

And you could see here, time being that key factor that key benefit. Advisors who outsource at least 90% of their assets save an average of 8.4 hours a week on investment management. And to spare anyone here that might be taking out their calculator, if you extrapolate that to a year, it's about 450 hours you can save. Money. Everyone likes to save money, right? More than 50% of advisors currently outsourcing their investment management reported a decrease in operational costs since they began outsourcing. And 40% of those have seen a decline in cost, at least 5% or more, which could really be material. And then lastly, the client satisfaction. So that's a adhesion, we got the information from there and over 80% of advisors reported both stronger client relationships and increased client retention as a direct result of outsourcing and a majority of all advisors increased the number of client referrals. So with that I'm going to pass it off to Justin.

Justin Hagner:

Awesome, thank you Ryan. So you've all heard a lot about portfolio and growth solutions here so far, but really when it comes down to what is portfolio and growth solutions? What exactly does this all entail? So Ryan, let's go to the next slide here, and we can kind of dive into it. So the program that we rolled out, Portfolio and Growth Solution allows you to collaborate with WisdomTree and Ryan had alluded to another firm, Adhesion, which is one of our partners. We have strategic partnership that allows us to manage your models and trade them for you as well. So when it comes down to it, there are three pillars of the portfolio and growth solutions platform. Build, manage, and grow. When I say build, we co-create with you the advisor models that suit your client's needs. And then through that partner adhesion, we actually manage them and are able to trade and rebalance them on behalf of your clients.

And with that, you then gain access to the grow portion, which is our advisor solutions platform, which are the academic and industry experts out there that help you and enable you to grow your business. You can go to the next one. Then we'll dive into the crux of the platform here. And when I said we co-create, we collaborate with you the advisor, we actually do. We take your views and our team's thinkings to build your model portfolios. So you can send us your models. You can say, hey, I need to keep these certain strategies in there, or here's certain mandates that we need to meet. And our team will work around that with you. So we both have your reviews and our thinking in there to best meet the needs of your clients. The in-depth portfolio review that you see there, you could send that in, our team will run analytics on it and then show you a before and after and see if we might be able to meet the needs of your clients, the customized portfolios that's us collaborating with you, whether it's one off or multi-scale.

We've done this with many clients and many of them put together these models or work with us to put them together and collaborate there. And we can also perform different risk tolerances on each of the same models there, that are all run by the CIO led model investment committee that Ryan had alluded to. And then you're going to get the ongoing support, the ongoing investment technology and the business guidance to really help grow your business. You can go to the next slide there Ryan. And this is just a quick example here that is, actually obviously we blurred some stuff out here from one of our actual clients, the portfolio analysis. Ryan, will they get the deck after this. But you can see that the before and after of the analytics here showing where your current model is and then when our team implements our thinking there and our strategies, the differences of the before and after solutions.

And then we'll also go into the details of the sector, differences in benchmarks and all the analytics that can be found on our website as well. Then you can get the next one. And then here's the actual process. This is the actual operations aspect behind the portfolio and growth solutions. We will walk you through onboarding current and new clients as well to the platform. We're not just going to build the models for you and then say here, you're off on your own. We're going to walk you through the onboarding, we're going to show you how we do it and when we do the trades across all of your accounts. And we'll rebalance on the quarterly basis when our CIO model team meets and recommends those changes. And then you, the advisor, also gets to meet quarterly with our model CIO team. We're going to get together, we'll talk about your models, see what changes we might recommend, what you're thinking. That way we can kind of put our heads together really like I said, to meet your clients' needs.

And then lastly is the constant communication. I know Kara mentioned that the growth aspects before and which alludes us to the next section here on our advisor solutions page and some of the other growth opportunities that we have within the WisdomTree suite of those advisor solutions on growing your practice. So with that, Kara, I'll kick it over to you.

Kara Dombroski:

Great. Thanks Justin. So as Justin had gone through, what we're trying to help you is collaborate to create pretty custom model portfolios that you could use across your practice for all your different types of clients. Then we're going to help you actually implement these portfolios. As Justin had mentioned, we're going to help you onboard through our partner today, Adhesion. And you're going to take all that investment, all those operations aspects off your plate. As much as you want, you can keep any of them on your plate, you can collaborate with us a little bit more in depth if you'd like. But we really just want to make it very easy for you to become more efficient in your practice so you can get to this part of our portfolio and growth solutions where you can grow your practice, you can get more prospects in the door that turn into clients.

And we're able to offer these growth solutions in two ways. The first is what you see on the screen right now. These are a bunch of academic and industry experts that we partner with here at WisdomTree to focus on hot button topics that I'm sure you've heard with all your clients today, such as behavioral finance, legacy planning, improving your online presence, et cetera. We want to equip you all, the advisor, on how do you talk about these topics with your end clients. So we work with these experts to develop new content that we can share with you all, but we also, through this program, are able to offer more individualized workshops and presentations with a thought leader that might really jump out to you. So for instance, Matt Kress, he is one of our thought leaders, works here at WisdomTree. He helps advisors improve their online presence. And on top of that, he's also helping advisors with improving just marketing and different aspects of your business.

So you can help improve your online presence with Google search, with LinkedIn, with your website. You can work with Matt directly and he will help improve whatever you want to focus on and get more prospects in the door through this practice and then hopefully turn them into clients. Matt's worked with hundreds of financial advisors today. He's very well respected with all financial advisors that I've spoken with that he's worked with. So that's just one example of how we can use growth solutions to bring more prospects in the door for you and hopefully turn them into clients.

And the next slide you will see, as Ryan had mentioned, we completed a proprietary research study trying to figure out the perceptions model third party model portfolios for financial advisors as well as for end clients.

And what we found out in this research study is that financial advisors and end clients alike prefer third party model portfolios, but there are some hurdles that financial advisors face when trying to implement them. So the model adoption center, or as we like to call it, the MAC, is something that we developed here at WisdomTree to give you very convenient access to tools and content that you can use to understand, apply, tailor and communicate the benefits of WisdomTree models, third party models, WisdomTree in general, to your clients. And this really falls into a few buckets of what we're trying to achieve in the model adoption center. The first is we want to help you better understand WisdomTree model portfolios and the people that are developing these models.

As I've gone through earlier, there are five voting members in the model portfolio investment committee. You can certainly have access to speak to those individuals, but they're also publishing content constantly. So we are publishing that content on the model adoption center and you can reach out to them through that avenue as well.

In addition, we actually worked with one of the academic thought leaders that you saw on the slide before, Shlomo Benartzi who is a professor of behavioral finance at UCLA. We worked with him to develop a behavioral finance assessment tool. And the goal there is to help you, as the advisor, better understand your clients behavioral tendencies and help you develop an individualized portfolio that really reflects who that end client is and what they want to achieve out of their portfolios based on their behavioral tendencies.

Finally, as Ryan had mentioned, we've completed this model research study. We have a lot of content there. We want to spread this content as much as possible, really equip you as the advisor to better understand why your end clients are interested in third party model portfolios and the best way to communicate the benefits of third party model portfolios to them. We also offer very customized brochures where you can add your logo in there. We have fact sheets you can add your logo to. We really just want to make it as easy as possible to equip you the advisor with as much content as you need to go talk to your end clients and be confident in those conversations.

So the Model Adoption Center is the second part of our growth solutions. We have a lot of advisors using it today, and certainly you can go to WisdomTree's website right now and play around with it. But if you would love to have a demo with any of us or our sales individuals, feel free to reach out to your representative.

So on the next slide... Thanks. When you add up all these benefits, this is the title of this Office Hours. We are trying to help you regain time, save money, and achieve higher client satisfaction by helping you take the investment part off your plate, take the operations and trading part off your plate and helping you grow your client base and be more well versed in some hot button topics through our growth solutions. So adding up all these benefits, we're helping you empower you to run your business rather than your business running you. And with that, I'm going to pass it off to Ryan who's going to get into how do you get started with us today?

Ryan Krystopowicz:

Exactly. That's exactly what I want to talk about. Because we went over a lot of great content and material here. So I want to really stress it's a collaborative process and this is how it can get started. So we have four steps here that you can see on the slide. Number one being an introductory call. Well, we'll learn a little bit more about how we can work together with you, right? We'll get a better idea of your current portfolio, your expectations for this, and really the goals that you have for your clients. And to be honest with you, if you have 15 minutes, which you obviously already had so far on this call, being that we've been on here for a little bit over 20 minutes, you really have nothing to lose for this introductory call on just better understanding the resources that WisdomTree has no matter where the conversation ends up going.

The second step is this portfolio consultation and customization. So that's really where the collaboration and the customization comes into play. We're going to be discussing with you about the outcomes that you're trying to accomplish. The keyword here is collaborate. So we're definitely going to collaborate with you on building customized model portfolios. We're well aware of our competition within the industry. We think that we really go to a great level of detail on that, which differentiates us. And we're going to review open architecture suggestions. We have phenomenal lineup of ETFs, but there's nearly 3000, if not more, ETFs out there as well as mutual funds. Obviously that number is much, much larger. We will really incorporate not just WisdomTree, but third party solutions in there, which we know that clients love. And at the end of the day, you have a decision of how much involvement you want.

I like to think of it as your clients and our investment expertise, because you know what your clients want and we know how to construct multi-asset model portfolios. And honestly, I think a perfect example of what I was talking about is we created a target yield model, using a combination of five different asset managers as well as incorporating legacy holdings that the advisor had. And that was just a perfect example of this portfolio consultation and customization. Now, the third step you can see there at the bottom left is the onboarding, implementation and management. That's where we're going to actually talk about how we're implementing these newly customized models across our client accounts like Kara had mentioned, and the ability to rebalance them, understanding the trading capabilities, the account level options, and everything else that you can possibly imagine. And that concludes with the step four. Which is the ongoing support and growth guidance.

And it's really just an unparallel access to the resources and investment experts that we have here at WisdomTree. So we hope that everyone here at the audience is interested in learning more. You can schedule a introductory call today by simply emailing the email address that you see there. Once again, simple introductory call. We work with a lot of different advisors in multidimensions of this program.

So even if the trading may not work out because you're in an advisor with not the connectivity, we can absolutely work on portfolio guidance and provide a lot of different access to resources that we have. And so with that, I'll just like to end this slideshow that I'm sharing here. I want to thank everybody for their time and we would love the opportunity to work with you on this really, really exciting program.