As wealth management continues to evolve, high-net-worth individuals and families face an increasingly complex decision: should they work with a traditional wealth management firm or seek the personalized approach of a family office? At PCM Encore we represent a unique hybrid. Our firm was born from the single-family office of our founder, Michael Paulus, and now extends those same sophisticated strategies and white-glove service to our clients.
Having operated as Michael's personal family office before expanding our services to external clientele, we have experienced firsthand the distinct advantages that family office-level attention can provide. From accessing proprietary direct investment opportunities, leveraging innovative financial technology, to receiving truly personalized wealth management roadmaps, we provide services which set us apart from traditional wealth management.
Understanding the Landscape
What is a Family Office?
A family office is a private organization dedicated to managing the comprehensive wealth needs of high-net-worth individuals or families. These entities typically handle everything from investment strategies and estate planning to philanthropic initiatives and day-to-day financial coordination. Family offices can serve either a single family or multiple families under one structure, with the primary distinction being the level of customization and personal attention provided.
What is Traditional Wealth Management?
Traditional wealth management firms are third-party organizations that provide financial advisory services to multiple clients simultaneously. While many offer sophisticated investment strategies and comprehensive planning services, they typically operate within standardized frameworks designed to efficiently serve numerous clients across different wealth levels, delivering service less personalized than what a family office can offer.
PCM Encore’s Key Differentiators
1. Access to Exclusive Investment Opportunities
PCM Encore's Family Office Heritage: Our foundation as Michael Paulus's personal family office provides unique access to proprietary direct investment opportunities that are unavailable through traditional channels. This investment platform is run with the help of Bradford Lin, who was previously a private equity investor at KKR.
Today, our clients1 can invest directly in specialized deals across private equity, venture capital, private credit, and real estate. Michael is actively involved in these investments, including serving on the board of directors with several of our partners. He has insight into all of our investments, each of which are reviewed through our diligent underwriting process. These proprietary deals are typically available at family offices with direct investment arms built out. Now qualifying PCM Encore clients may have access to the same deal flow and pipeline as Michael himself.
Traditional Wealth Management: Many firms focus on providing access to public markets, REITs, and established investment funds. Opportunities for direct participation in private equity or venture capital are typically less common and may come with additional layers of complexities and considerations.
2. Your Personal CFO: Comprehensive Tax and Entity Management
PCM Encore's Holistic Solution: As part of our holistic approach, we coordinate directly with PCM Tax, LLC, a commonly owned affiliate, so that your financial planning and tax planning work together seamlessly. Our tax advisor, Joe Hendrickson, previously served as a Family Office Advisor at Berkshire Partners, one of the top private equity funds in the country, where he provided tax guidance to managing directors and partners.
We can offer what many RIAs do not: integrated tax planning that is coordinated directly with your investment strategy, estate planning, and overall wealth management goals. Through our partner entity PCM Tax, we can help our clients file taxes directly and provide sophisticated tax strategies typically available to institutional investors and family offices.
Our aim is to optimize every investment decision, wealth transfer strategy, and financial plan is optimized from a tax perspective, as we recognize that tax considerations are an integral part of the wealth management process.
Traditional Wealth Management: Many traditional firms refer clients to external tax professionals, potentially creating coordination challenges and often resulting in investment strategies that are not fully optimized for tax efficiency. They typically cannot provide entity formation services or direct tax preparation, leaving clients to manage multiple relationships and coordination themselves.
3. White-Glove Team with Institutional Expertise
PCM Encore's Experienced Advisory Team: Our family office heritage means you work directly with an experienced team including professionals recruited from leading institutions like KKR, Berkshire Partners, Morgan Stanley, and Vanguard. Michael Paulus takes an active approach to advising and our firm takes pride in ensuring direct access to senior leadership when it matters most.
Our team-based approach ensures that certified financial professionals, investment management specialists, and our leadership team collaborate directly on each client's unique situation. We are nimble and aim to adapt to changing client needs, making us a dynamic partner for your family.
Traditional Wealth Management: Many traditional firms operate through hierarchical structures where clients primarily interact with relationship managers or junior advisors, with limited access to senior leadership or the type of expertise that comes from leading private equity and investment management backgrounds.
4. Institutional Scale with Personalized Service
PCM Encore's Scale Advantages: While maintaining the personalized attention of a family office, our significant assets under management, including Michael's own substantial balance sheet, typically allow us to negotiate favorable pricing and access with leading providers. Our clients may benefit from scale discounts at premier platforms like Parametric for direct indexing and other providers that would typically require much larger individual commitments. It is the best of both worlds: family office customization married with economies of scale.
Traditional Wealth Management: While large traditional firms and wirehouses may offer similar scale advantages, they may not always pass those benefits directly to clients in the same way.
5. Comprehensive Wealth Orchestration
PCM Encore's Holistic Approach: Our family office heritage means we think beyond just investment management. We coordinate estate planning, tax strategies, philanthropic initiatives, and even personal financial services—all while maintaining the fiduciary standard that puts client interests above all else.
Our specialized teams intentionally separate wealth management components, allowing for deep expertise in retirement planning, tax and estate planning, risk management, and investment management, while maintaining seamless coordination across all areas.
Traditional Wealth Management: While many traditional firms offer comprehensive services, they often operate within more standardized frameworks and may not provide the same level of coordination across all aspects of a client's financial life.
6. Aligned Interests and Fee Structure
PCM Encore's Client-First Model: As a 100% employee-owned registered investment advisor that operated as our founder's personal family office first, our interests are aligned with our clients. We carefully structured the firm to eliminate conflicts of interest wherever possible. We do not receive commissions for product or investment recommendations, and our fee structure is designed to be transparent.
Traditional Wealth Management: While many traditional firms operate as fiduciaries, they may have different fee structures, potential conflicts of interest related to product sales, or business models that prioritize firm profitability over client outcomes.
Who Should Consider PCM Encore's Family Office Approach?
The decision between traditional wealth management and family office services ultimately comes down to your specific needs, goals, and resources. If you are seeking personalized attention, proprietary investment access, and comprehensive wealth coordination that comes from family office heritage combined with the accessibility and transparency of a registered investment advisor, PCM Encore offers a unique solution.
Our evolution from Michael Paulus's personal family office to a firm serving select high-net-worth clients means we bring family office sophistication with a client-first approach that has been refined through years of managing significant personal wealth. We don't just understand family office services theoretically; we've lived them, improved them, and now extend them to clients who value the highest level of attention and opportunity access.
The question is not whether you need family office services, but whether you want to work with a firm with years of success and experience serving its Founder before expanding to external clients.
Reference
- 1. Subject to necessary qualifications and accreditations
