At Wealth Management Services, the job isn't only about managing money.
For its wealthiest clients, the investment adviser has negotiated car purchases, supervised a home construction project, paid cellular phone and other bills and even worked with young heirs to teach them the potential pitfalls of significant wealth.
Wealth Management Services partners Martin J. Eby, Timothy W. Chase and David M. Citron drew upon lessons from the 1800s, when American industrialist families such as the Carnegies, the Rockefellers and the Phippses would each create an in-house adviser known as the "family office" to manage everything from their investments to their social calendar.
Some of those family offices grew into large trust companies - the family office of Andrew Carnegie's steel partner Henry Phipps is now Bessemer Trust in New York - that continue to offer many of those same personal services to America's rich.
Now, financial institutions such as banks, brokerages, trust companies and money managers such as Wealth Management are getting into family affairs.
Money management in general has become a commodity business, forcing firms to compete for customers by slashing their rates - and their profit margins. But some, including Wealth Management, hope to dodge that bullet by emphasizing services such as those offered by family offices, Eby and other experts say.
There's plenty of wealth to manage, said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Economy.com in West Chester, Pa. The huge run-up in stock prices during the 1990s - even with the recent bear market - has combined with rising home values to supercharge the growth in household net worth.
Federal Reserve figures show that U.S. household net worth stood at $40.2 trillion in the first quarter, Zandi said. That's down from the all-time peak of $42.2 trillion in the third quarter of 2000 but almost double the $21.9 trillion of 10 years ago. And the rich got richer, he said.
"Much of the net-worth gains were concentrated among the very wealthy, because a large part of that group's net worth stems from the value of their stock holdings," Zandi said.
What's more, money managers are seeing the earliest trickles of a flood of wealth that over the rest of this decade is expected to be transferred from one generation to the next.
"We're just now really beginning to see that," said Zandi. "The population is getting a lot older ... is aging tremendously. Wealth managers are beginning to see an increase in household assets.
"This [trend] is one reason that financial management is the one part of the financial-services sector that's really held up [during the downturn in the U.S. economy] - along with mortgage banking."
Founded in 1992, Wealth Management got into the investment business right at the start of this most-recent explosion in U.S. wealth. But from the very beginning, the partners in the Towson firm viewed Bessemer Trust's highly personal approach to money management as the model for how they wanted to treat their own clients, Eby said.
"We wanted to be a baby Bessemer," Eby said of the firm's decision to offer family office services. "We wanted to out-Bessemer Bessemer."
True family offices have existed for centuries, first in Europe before popping up here. They managed family money, paid taxes and bills, set up estate plans, arranged vacations and even handled the correspondence of the very rich.
In the United States, the Chicago-based Family Office Exchange (FOX) advisory group estimates, there are 3,000 family offices. They often are started after a family business is sold, and serve several generations of the family at the same time.
According to one survey, slightly more than half of the family offices polled each managed $500 million or less.
Lynn Wintriss is vice president and managing director of the Baltimore family office that serves the family of Jacob Blaustein, the son of Louis Blaustein.
Louis Blaustein founded American Oil Co. (Amoco), lost control of it to Standard Oil of Indiana, but later bought Crown Central Petroleum. Jacob Blaustein invented the drive-through gasoline station and a meter motorists could use to better gauge their fuel purchases.
Now, as part of the American Trading and Production Corp., the family office Wintriss directs is a team of six. That's a relatively large staff for a private family office, she says.
The ATAPCO family office provides tax and accounting services, investment oversight and estate planning to the third and fourth generations of the family. It takes care of the payroll and payroll taxes for the domestic help. But it's in other, unconventional ways that Wintriss and her team are able to help, thereby transforming the family office into a "trusted adviser," she said.
Once, a family couple were in New York and found a time-share they wanted to purchase. They asked Wintriss, an attorney by training, to look at the contract.
"I raised some issues they hadn't thought about and advised them to consult with a New York real estate attorney," Wintriss said. "They then bought it with terms that were more favorable to them."
Wintriss thinks it would be difficult for a money-management firm to create a commercial family office, because it would serve a multitude of clients - perhaps too many.
"Clients are reluctant to disclose everything to one adviser," Wintriss said. "We understand our clients' entire financial picture. Do you tell your stockbroker everything about you? We can fully integrate their financial plan. We really have the full picture."
But banks, brokerages, trust companies and money-management firms are trying, nevertheless. They make their money on the basis of assets under management, typically bundling all of their services together at a cost to the client of about 1 percent.
It's a sliding scale, however: Clients around a firm's "threshold" - the minimum amount of money needed to enter the world of individually managed money - are typically charged 1 percent to 2 percent, while those with large amounts to invest can often negotiate their fee down to as low as three-quarters of a percent.
Competition for assets has squeezed the profit margins of money managers, forcing them to fish constantly for new clients. Family office services are part of the bait.
How wealthy one must be to take advantage these services varies.
At Wealth Management, which has about $375 million invested for clients, the minimum to invest for individual money management services is $1 million. Legg Mason Trust, which controls $5.1 billion, also commands a $1 million minimum. So does Allfirst Bank, which manages $3.8 billion. And at Bessemer Trust, which holds $36 billion, the minimum is $10 million, though the average is $23 million, said Robert C. Elliott, a Bessemer senior managing director.
For family office services, the nest egg must be even bigger: About $5 million at Allfirst Bank, $10 million at Wealth Management, and $10 million at Legg Mason Trust. Most firms bundle the cost for the family office services into the per-assets charge.
"Clients are only looking to pay one fee," said Lynn Sassin, managing director of wealth management services for Legg Mason Trust. "It's much more palatable that way."
The services vary slightly from firm to firm. Wealth Management offers electronic bill paying and will manage a client's mail.
All offer accounting and tax-preparation services, investment management, estate planning, guidance on philanthropic endeavors such as donations and the formation of foundations, to list a few examples.
But it's often the "off-the-menu" services that create the most loyal customers.
Leon J. "Lee" Podles became a Wealth Management Services client about five years ago and later started building a $500,000 house. But, with six children and family spread among six households, Podles said he had no interest in riding herd over the homebuilding project.
Fortunately for him, Edward Eby, brother of Wealth Management co-founder Martin Eby and a real estate expert himself, works at the firm. Edward Eby not only managed the project, but he discovered $70,000 in double billings.
"He saved me more than 10 percent on the cost of my house," Podles said. "I'll never complain to Martin [Eby] about his fees. As far as I'm concerned, he saved me enough money [to have] earned his fees for the rest of my life."
Wealth Management has provided other, similar services. The firm has purchased cars for clients and has helped them buy houses. A few weeks from now, partner Citron will fly to Florida and spend several days counseling the children of a wealthy client on the responsibilities and potential pitfalls of being rich.
He and the client also will spend time deciding how much money to leave to the children: Most of the money from the client's estate will go into a foundation, with the children serving on the board. That way, says Citron, they'll rub shoulders with the wealthy and the movers and shakers in their region, a strategy both sides hope will instill in the children a strong work ethic and sense of responsibility.
"The only way you can do something like that is if you really know the client, and where they are in life," Citron said.
The cost of all this work? Nothing beyond the per-asset fee a client would pay anyway. That's philosophically in line with the family office concept, says Chase, the Wealth Management partner.
"We want to be on the same side of the table as the client. That's how we have to operate," Chase said.
At Allfirst, advisers have arranged vacations, and once helped a client find the same year and model Austin Healy sports car that he'd had during his younger years.
They also helped a woman - confined to a wheelchair because of multiple sclerosis - realize her dream of a Caribbean cruise. It found a cruise line that accommodated the handicapped, made airline reservations and recruited a companion to help the client on her trip, said William J. McCarthy, director of wealth management services at Allfirst.
Said McCarthy: "In the end, it's not about the money; it's about meeting the needs of the client."