Michael Gold, founder and CEO of Gold Family Wealth in Westport, Connecticut, says that claim has become close to meaningless for the wealthiest families, and he draws a hard line between customization and what he considers real personalization.
About 98% of advisors report that new high-net-worth portfolios include some level of tailoring, a figure Gold cites as proof that customization has turned into a baseline expectation rather than a differentiator. For families with more modest fortunes, he says that level of tailoring may be sufficient. For households above $30 million in net worth, he argues it falls well short of what the situation demands.
Beyond the Portfolio
Gold contends that customization typically refers to adjusting an investment mix or a fee structure to fit a client’s preferences. Personalization, in his framing, means something deeper: understanding a family’s legacy goals, its internal dynamics across generations and the tradeoffs embedded in decisions that cannot be undone. Michael Gold Westport calls the ability to walk clients through that full set of options before they commit “anticipatory judgment,” and describes it as the actual differentiator among firms serving the wealthiest households.
His Westport-based practice was structured around that distinction from the outset. Gold Family Wealth targets families with $20 million to $150 million in net worth, a segment he believes has been underserved by both broad retail platforms and family offices reserved for billionaires. Rather than building a large internal staff, the firm draws on a network of outside specialists engaged as specific needs arise, assembled around each client rather than kept on permanent retainer.
Gold maintains that as customization becomes standard across the industry, families able to access true personalization, backed by senior-level judgment and coordinated planning, will increasingly separate themselves from those settling for a merely tailored portfolio. He expects the gap between the two groups to widen as more firms adopt the language of customization without the depth of judgment, he says actually distinguishes strong advisory relationships from average ones. See related link for additional information.
More about Michael Gold Westport on https://priceofbusiness.com/westport-advisor-michael-gold-explains-the-role-of-discipline-in-long-term-financial-success/