The Kovitz Difference

Let's start with a huge difference: we eat our own cooking. Our partners and employees collectively have virtually all of their liquid investable net worth invested side by side with our clients. While this shouldn't be unique, it is. If you ask most advisors and wealth managers how much of their money is invested in what they are recommending to you, you would probably be surprised by the answer. When a manager's own funds are being deployed side by side with yours, he or she tends to be more thoughtful about it!

Second, the senior leadership at the firm has known each other for 10, 20 and even 30 years and most of the people that we have hired in recent years have been individuals that one or more of the partners knew well personally and professionally. This takes a lot of the risk out of our hiring decisions. The result of these factors is that the turnover of our staff is extremely low. Lack of turnover can be a huge advantage in this business as high turnover can be disruptive to both the investment research process and to client service. We have done our best to create an environment where our people will want to view KIG as their "last stop". So unlike many of the big firms in which personnel is a revolving door, often by design in that they don't want clients becoming too attached to any one person, we are working hard to allow our clients to build personal relationships with our people. This way our clients don't feel that they are starting over every couple of years with a new person assigned to their account.

Finally, KIG is run by investors, not marketers. KIG is not a marketing organization. Performance is central to everything we do, with our overriding concern being the continuation and protection of our investment track record. As a result, there is never a sales or marketing based decision that takes precedence over our investment decision making process. We believe this differs substantially from many of our peers, and furthers our ability to focus on the performance of our assets under management. It is our belief that the gathering of additional assets is merely a byproduct of superior investment performance.