By Josh Gottlieb
I don’t know how to not focus on the future. That’s not ignoring the past, rather it’s drawing from the past and looking back on what’s happened. What’s worked? What’s failed? How do we make the future better?
The first 65 years of my work and that of my father in this industry - what I’ll call the insurance and pension industry - historically has focused around sales. I don’t see that as the future. We’ve built several amazing support mechanisms to actualize promises that we made three and 35 years ago and I think there’s an immensely valuable opportunity to expand upon this work.
Part of the next generation, the next 65 years, is taking these things that we’ve done and developing specific companies that are engineered to support these initiatives.
The last decade created a large pool of clients, assets and activities that we support for a program we launched called the Tandem Financial Strategy℠(TFS). This is a levered life insurance program that is funded by both cash equity and third-party debt. The opportunity for the future is to expand this program. As we launch the company PF Partners to support the premium finance aspects of TFS℠, we can ensure the brokers and advisors have the support they need to make sure the program delivers what is promised to their clients. We’ve been building a team for the last eight years to monitor the results, to improve the success, to lower costs and to improve returns because we’re in these strategies for the long haul.
I’ve been doing this a very long time and I’ve been quite fortunate to have some incredible relationships with people who have been supportive through the years. Many people who find us have connected through advisors, brokers or other clients — they hear of something we’ve done for another client and want to learn more. One of the brilliant people with whom I’ve worked with in the last 15 years is an economist and a mathematician. One of the things he does for fun is to study the U.S. tax code. He approached me about three years ago with this concept he found that is this unique convergence of a couple of different ideas and regulations that exist within U.S. tax regulations, but has hardly been utilized.
Maybe there are 100 of these programs that have been done in the world, and it is unbelievable.
The program has these amazing attributes and we named this program WATER℠ — Wealth Accumulation Trust Enhancing Returns℠. At the end of the day, it’s a pension plan, but it has some attributes you can’t find anywhere else. I believe WATER℠ may be the most important wealth management strategy I’m going to see in my entire career.
As we have built relationships, I have made a commitment for The Gottlieb Organization to be THE source, THE center of knowledge for unique wealth protection programs in the world. We offer something that I can’t find elsewhere for our wealthy and ultra-wealthy clients. This is a great opportunity for us to make another mark — a dot — in the distance for our team to sail into the future.
Joshua A. Gottlieb is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Gottlieb Organization.