Sunny Wang • Santa Clara, CA
Essence Wealth & Insurance Services
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I have a statement on our firm’s website that I have taken great care in writing and think is a good reflection of my personal mission in working with clients. It is quite different from the typical advisor “mission statement.” I encourage anyone considering working with our firm to read it.

As an independent financial advisor, I’ve been helping people for nearly 20 years and strive to educate them on how to save, grow, protect, and enjoy their money. It’s absolutely my passion and my purpose in life to help people achieve their financial dreams. I always feel so fortunate to be able to build a great career based on how many people I have helped. This is also why I chose to be independent—my efforts are not driven by sales quotas or incentive bonuses. I’m proud to say that my advice is truly objective. I want to always serve clients in an honest, independent, experienced, creative, and caring fashion, and have worked hard to become highly knowledgeable in the many diverse areas that are critical to holistic financial planning and execution.

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I want to develop relationships with clients that go far beyond a transactional nature. I think clients deserve to know what kind of person I am, what is important to me in my life and values, and how my thought process works. I want to learn the same about them. Being a financial advisor means more than traditional financial planning and being adept with a spreadsheet. I do not believe in a one-size-fits-all approach—the lives of individuals and families are rich and complicated and deserve a highly personalized approach. I want to take as much time as necessary to get to know my clients before addressing the recommendation phase of financial or investment planning. Psychology tells us that people often struggle with identifying what they truly want for themselves in both their finances and their lives. I want to help guide clients in their journey of figuring that out.

I work with a diverse client base and have clients across the demographic spectrum, from various occupations, and with different levels of income and assets. However, being a relatively young advisor based in the Silicon Valley area, it is not surprising that the majority of my clients are younger in age, work in the technology field, tend to be well-educated and affluent, and are focused on their careers. I work with a good number of engineers and technology specialists who are employed by some of the most well-known technology companies. Many are married, have children, and are part of dual-income households. They are far more likely to be looking at many years of wealth accumulation than being close to entering the distribution phase.

I started in the financial-services industry on the insurance side for a large national firm and have a strong grounding there. Over time, I acquired my investment licenses and have a deep professional interest in and knowledge of the financial markets and investment theory. Investment planning and implementation is a very important part of my practice. However, I am passionate about comprehensive financial planning—not just the dimensions of insurance and investments. Our firm offers a wide spectrum of services to clients: financial planning, investment solutions, insurance services, planning for funding education, retirement-income planning, risk-management strategies, business planning, tax strategies as they relate to overall financial strategies, and other consultative services.

I find it very satisfying on both a professional and personal level to have clients feel they can consult with me on just about any aspect of their financial life. I love working with smart people, being challenged to perform, and seeing clients also become my friends. I am often asked to advise on major purchases or investments from a planning perspective, such as real estate, or to help clients make well-informed benefit plan choices or implement sound debt-reduction strategies.

Just about everyone I work with is a financial-planning client, and I offer several different ways to engage with clients from a compensation perspective. I want to serve the client in the way that best fits their needs.

As I mentioned, perhaps the most important phase in the planning process occurs in our initial meeting, as we get to know each other, discover what is truly important in each other’s lives, and talk about goals and aspirations on a more philosophical level. I love to ask the simple question, “Why did you decide to come see me—what are you looking for from a financial advisor?” That usually opens the door to a wide-ranging discussion.

In terms of formal process, there are five core steps to my financial-planning process, which I explain to clients in this fashion:

• Step 1: Getting to know you and the most important people in your life. Without knowing you and what’s important to you, how can I make sound suggestions on your financial future?
• Step 2: Setting goals. If you don’t know where you are going, how will you ever get anywhere? Let’s figure out where you want to be first.
• Step 3: Prioritize your goals. There are a lot of different things we’d like to accomplish in our lives. It’s impossible to achieve all of them at once. We have to prioritize what’s most important first and then develop a written action plan to attack other priorities in the future.
• Step 4: Initiate a plan of action. Having a plan without taking action is a waste of everyone’s time. My job is to make sure that you implement the plan within a reasonable period of time.
• Step 5: Review and improve. Planning should be an ongoing process. Like anything in life, plans and priorities change. I want to be there with you when they do and help you to create a sound financial life for you and your loved ones.

Risk management is at the heart of my financial-planning process, and that crosses all areas: investments, insurance strategies, tax strategies, retirement planning, college funding, and business planning. Throughout the planning process, I use comprehensive planning software that is modular, goals-based, efficient to use, and offers an educational component for clients that helps them better understand key planning, financial, and investment concepts. I am very focused on planning for unforeseen circumstances and making sure families have adequate protection in case of personal life-changing events or major changes in the market and economic environment.

I am an advocate for the use of third-party investment management for clients, for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, the appropriate managers can provide a level of experience, constant vigilance, and research and strategic-development capabilities that would be impossible for me to replicate on my own. Second, my focus is on handling the wide-ranging holistic financial needs of clients, and I cannot monitor day-to-day market developments or conduct exhaustive research the way investment managers can. Third, working with several money managers allows me to have exposure to sophisticated investment philosophies and different strategic approaches, all developed by some very experienced and capable people. That is, in my opinion, a way for me to add value for clients.

I take charge of the asset-allocation process with clients, based on a goals- and risk-based assessment flowing from their financial plan. I work closely with clients in presenting options, discussing pros and cons, and arriving at decisions we jointly believe are suitable and that are going to work hard toward helping them achieve their objectives. I have no pre-set conceptions about what any specific client’s investment plan will look like going into the process. But I usually recommend for clients a multiple-strategy, multiple-asset-class approach that can blend active, tactical strategies with more strategic or passive elements within the investment plan.