Case Study: Individuals With Past Employer Retirement Accounts

Client Summary

Robert Halberg is a Baby Boomer with a past. This Sales Manager with a successful pharmaceutical company has lived the American Dream. That dream today means an average of 10.8 jobs over one’s lifetime.

At age 40, Robert is now with his sixth company either through merger, job advancement or the natural expansion & contraction of companies in his industry. Robert is like most sales guys, they are not investment guys. Therefore he has focused on his interests such as golf, family and continued career development to the exclusion of this investment accounts.

Right now Robert has retirement accounts with four former employers. Each plan has a different set of investment options. None of those options include the opportunity to invest for a declining market (inverse); they are costly and difficult to manage.

Our Solution

Robert’s friend Ed referred him to InTrust Advisors. After an initial Discovery Meeting and a subsequent Investment Planning Meeting with our investment advisors, Robert decided that InTrust Advisors could best help him to plan and move towards his goals and objectives.

As part of the Investment Planning Meeting, our advisors reviewed a cash flow forecast with him that give him peace of mind that he would be able to achieve his desired financial goals. The advisor also helped Robert understand downside of leaving his financial assets (i.e., retirement accounts) as is.

Our advisor helped Robert understand that the markets were currently in a Bearish Secular Cycle. He explained how certain strategies worked better in certain cycles. Finally, he outlined a recommendation that the client consolidate his retirement accounts and utilize InTrust’s actively managed strategies in this consolidated IRA rollover account. Like many individuals Robert had an advisor for his taxable account and our advisor suggested that Robert keep him in place since he was generally happy with him.

The advisor showed Robert that our more active investment strategies could possibly allow him to outperform the overall markets over a complete market cycle. He also showed him how these strategies made beautiful music when combined with more traditional investment strategies, like those his current advisor utilized.

Our advisor did not stop with cash flow and investment plans. He also made a number of recommendations with regard to his insurance, estate and tax planning. He promised that he would help him address the latter items over the balance of the succeeding year by introducing Robert to the appropriate unrelated, third party experts to help him with these recommendations. He also assured Robert that he would help them manage this process.

Not only did Robert feel better about his situation, but he now had a plan, a chance for better, smoother investment returns and a lower overall cost structure for his investments. He was more confident of his future and had true peace of mind!

Note – The aforementioned client is fictitious, any similarities to current or prospective clients is purely coincidental.