Family Wealth Report spoke to Atlantic Trust about the firm's recent Generation-to-Generation Impact Summit, and how the theme fits in with the industry's take on wealth planning today.

As highlighted by Dr Richard Orlando last year, one of the main reasons why families sometimes fail to successfully transfer wealth across generations is because the next generation is not prepared. He argued that, all too often, most planning focuses on preparing the assets for the family, instead of preparing the family for the assets.

Indeed, the concept of legacy planning is crucial for advisors and business owners, too. Earlier this month, it emerged that issues around leadership, talent and business legacy planning, for example, are top-of-mind among RIAs today (see here).

Here, Family Wealth Report talks to Linda Beerman, head of wealth strategies at Atlantic Trust Private Wealth Management, about the firm's recent family-focused Generation-to-Generation Impact Summit, and how this theme fits in with the industry's take on wealth planning today. Her insights also shed light on the ways advisors can leverage this important topic to add value to their client relationships and in turn boots their value proposition. 

What was the primary goal of Atlantic Trust’s recent G2G (Generation to Generation) Impact Summit?

This was Atlantic Trust’s second multi-generational family summit which was attended by more than 100 clients from across the US. This year’s summit focused on the growing importance of family legacy planning. A primary goal was to help our clients understand what their own family legacy was and how to pass that legacy down to future generations.  For many clients, legacy planning means using the family wealth to make a real difference, so a number of our summit workshops were designed to inspire families to make an impact on the world.

How does Atlantic Trust define legacy planning?

Legacy planning is not just about the money. It is defining, reflecting on and expressing what a family’s wealth really means. Legacy planning involves identifying the core values that make the family who it is. Expressing that family legacy, and finding ways to preserve and pass down what that legacy means, can be a challenge for many affluent families looking to guide the next generations as future stewards of the family’s wealth and values.

Where does legacy planning sit within the overall wealth management process today?

Although legacy planning goes “beyond the numbers,” it must be based on the foundation of the first-generation wealth owners’ financial security.  Once the strategy for asset protection is developed and tactics for moving wealth down to the generations in a tax-efficient manner have been implemented, then we can begin what we call the “holistic examination” of wealth.

Legacy planning helps many affluent families address their very real concerns about having wealth, and what wealth means to them. For example, how do we pass wealth on to our children while preserving their well-being? How do we articulate clear roles and responsibilities for owners and the development of future family leaders? How do we structure a philanthropic philosophy and a vehicle to carry forth the values we hope our children and grandchildren share? 

How does Atlantic Trust tailor its legacy planning strategy as it works with individual generations?

After addressing the issue of financial security, the next step in the legacy planning process is to develop a family mission or vision statement that spells out shared values and describes how the family’s wealth should be used to support and further the family’s legacy.

While vision is critical as a touchstone, legacy planning must include concrete outcomes. This can include a written family vision statement, an ethical will, a letter to trustee or a written family history. Traditional wills involve what you want your loved ones to have; ethical wills involve what you want them to know.  While a letter to trustees is not a binding legal document, it can be an extraordinarily meaningful piece of estate and legacy planning, bringing forth strong and deeply held feelings for the benefit of the client, the beneficiaries and the trustee.

And finally, for a multi-generational family, philanthropy is often a cornerstone of legacy. However a family structures its philanthropic intentions, philanthropy has a valuable place in legacy planning: a way to carry a family’s values forward—and with impact on others.

What were the main issues raised by attendees?

Our clients were most interested in the workshops on legacy issues—how do they get started on these types of projects, such as capturing the stories, writing an ethical will and coming up with a philanthropic idea that engages the family.  The workshops were a good first taste of actually engaging in these activities, and the comment was that they wanted more time and more of it.  They were also very interested in the cyber security sessions.

How do you think perceptions of legacy planning issues have changed in recent time – among both clients and advisors?

Legacy has been a lovely, but undefined, concept in generational transfer planning.  People really want some definition and some action steps.  Our workshop series attempts to address that.  We plan to do more of them.

What were the main “takeaways” from the summit for Atlantic Trust?

The clients who attended were engaged and interested throughout.  Many of the relationship managers who were there stated that they wished their clients could have attended, and those clients who attended alone or with only part of the family were sorry that more of the family could not have attended.  What we took away from all of that is that we need to take the summit "on the road" to other locations around the country, and we plan to do that in a half-day mini-summit format.

We also learned which topics the younger generations are most interested in, such as impact investing, social entrepreneurship, and new methods for advancing one’s career.  In 2015, we will host events in our local markets around the US specifically for these clients.