FFP Wealth Management is pleased to announce that we have partnered with Schwab Institutional as an additional custodian of the funds under the management of our firm. Schwab Institutional is a division of Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. and has served investment managers for more than a decade. Currently, over 6000 advisors entrust over $700 billion dollars of their clients’ assets to Schwab Institutional.

In November and December, we identified a group of our clients and asked them to help us with this process. As those clients involved know, the transfer of these accounts is well underway. We would like to thank those of you within this group for the timely review and return of necessary documents.

Some have asked our reasoning behind making such a move. Quite simply, we are adding optional custodians to fulfill our goal of business succession planning.  Succession planning simply means having the resources in place in case of an emergency, either natural or unnatural, to continue business as usual.

Investment company business succession requirements were elevated after the first attack of the World Trade Center in 1994. Succession requirements increased after 9/11 and again as a result of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. For this reason, management of FFP has investigated adding custodians in the past. While having multiple custodians is highly recommended, to this date there is no regulatory requirement to take this action.

These changes are entirely precautionary and do not reflect any cause for concern with our current custodian. We look forward to our continued relationship with National Advisors Trust Company and are highly satisfied with the service they have and will continue to provide.

 We are currently investigating the addition of Fidelity Institutional as yet another custodian. Please send an email if you are interested in moving funds to Schwab or to another custodian. We will contact you to tell you the pros and cons of each.

Roger Kruse, ChFC, CFP