Liz Miller on leadership, women in wealth management, and the future of financial planning

Greg Greenberg  00:00:10 

Welcome to the Investment News series, where we feature exceptional firms and professionals in the wealth industry. Joining us today is Liz Miller, who is named in this year's Hot List. Liz is the Founder and President of Summit Place Financial Advisors and the incoming 2025 Chair of the CFP Board. Liz launched her firm in 2008 right in the middle of the financial crisis, a bold move that emphasized a vision for holistic wealth management focused on serving multi generational families. Today, she leads a growing firm and is preparing to take on one of the most prominent leadership roles in the financial planning industry. Liz, thanks for being here.  

Liz Miller  00:00:47 

Thank you.  

Greg Greenberg  00:00:49 

Your firm has won several awards this year. What drives your commitment to excellence in leading your firm? 

Liz Miller  00:00:56 

Thank you. We are so proud and humbled that we have been named by money one of the top financial planners for 2024 and RIA Intel named me the industry Advocate of the Year. But these are outcomes of all the work we do. These don't define who we are. We really lead the firm right from the start with this view of a comprehensive approach. When I launched this firm, nobody was talking about a full 360 degree look at someone's wealth and someone's complexities. I had been at a firm where we were doing Investment Management only, and I increasingly had clients coming to me with questions about all different parts of their work, wealth and sharing with me that none of their other professionals could offer a coordinated view. So when I launched the firm, it was with a complete commitment to comprehensive excellence to do that, and today we have the expertise and the experience to give that type of advice, find opportunities and proactively seek the challenges that clients are going to face. 

Greg Greenberg  00:02:07 

And what specific strategies have you implemented to develop your team and cultivate this culture? 

Liz Miller  00:02:15 

Right from the start, we established core values, and over the years, the team together keeps revisiting them, and I'm really proud that we've always reconfirmed the exact same core values they're embraced by everyone and starts with our commitment to a trusting, genuine relationship with our clients. Now we know that real relationships take time, so it's easy for firms to say we build relationships, but we really commit to the long term to get to know our clients and their families for years to come. Our next core value is expertise, and our team constantly is working to develop their expertise with ongoing professional learning. Personally, I have the CFP certification, and I also have earned my CFA designation. Our leadership team all has at least one of those designations, if not both of them. And our final core value is that we are constantly trying to seek excellence and internally for us, that means working with a limited number of clients per advisor, so that we can always be thinking proactively about what may be the upcoming challenges or what are the best opportunities to help our clients grow and protect their wealth and do it from a position of comfort and confidence. 

Greg Greenberg  00:03:37 

And you've been a vocal advocate for bringing more women into wealth management and preparing the next generation of talent. What advice would you give to women considering a career in this industry, and how do you see the profession evolving to meet future challenges? 

Liz Miller  00:03:53 

We are so committed to women in this industry, I know the path I took, and I have several women that I've brought on to the firm, and I tell every woman interested in this industry, it is a great career. It is almost a perfect career. If you enjoy helping people and seeing a difference being made, you will work hard in this career, but it also allows flexibility to approach the parts of your life that you might like, I'm a mother and a wife, and I've been able to meet those roles to the extent I've wanted to throughout my career. Women are somewhat naturally inclined to be great at this career. More and more clients want someone who will really listen to them, and it is typical that as women, we're slightly better listeners than some of the male advisors that we see out there. Now, I see the profession really evolving to embrace this. We all know. The research tells us over $30 trillion will pass to women by 2030 so the industry is anxious, for lack of a better word, to bring on more and more women and. That does mean that more firms are going to focus on, how do we properly bring in support and develop women? How do we give them the flexibility they need, as well as the confidence right from the start to realize what great advisors they will be over time. 

Greg Greenberg  00:05:16 

You've mentioned that your career path wasn't linear, but allowed you to balance personal and professional aspirations. How can the industry better support women with similar goals? 

Liz Miller  00:05:27 

I started my career in mergers and acquisitions. I was working seven days a week, over 100 hours, nothing flexible in that. And then from there, I became a portfolio manager. And the path of those two jobs was really one in which I found that in objective roles where my outcome, a performance or an analysis, really could be measured, I wasn't in that difficult position sometimes of trying to show someone that my approach, while different, was equally good. And that's been a challenge for women throughout industry as I moved into my own firm and into advising, I see the strengths women bring, and I think the industry is evolving, the things we can do better is to meet women very early on, my firm has a mentoring program where we're regularly reading meeting with local universities and letting young women and men know about the career opportunities, what the role looks like. The only vision a lot of people have of a financial planner is Wolf of Wall Street, and we need to show what a great career it is. I also advocate that what women need in the industry, often is two things, someone who looks like them, so they know what they're trying to be, and someone who is their advocate. We talk about mentoring, but we need even more than that. If each of us in the industry, male or female, can take on a developing female professional and be their advocate, we can move so many more women up through the industry, build CFP certificates as women and build more financial planning professionals. 

Greg Greenberg  00:07:08 

And summit place financial advisors has been women led since its inception, which was uncommon in the industry at the time. How has this shaped your firm's identity and what unique perspectives Do you believe women bring to wealth management. 

Liz Miller  00:07:23 

In my career, I was involved with the New York CFA society in starting to define what is private wealth management, and this was an amazing group that came together and started realizing clients wanted more than just core investment management, and it was just typical, particularly that time, that as women, we listened better and we were more attuned to the comprehensive approach. And so when I launched my firm as a woman, that was core to it, and I often found that couples would come to me, particularly those in which both the men and the women wanted to be heard and wanted to feel that the advisor was talking fully to both of them about all their concerns. I've continued to build my firm with several women advisors, and I think what sets us apart is that just early on, we embrace this idea of understanding concerns, building a partnership together and educating our clients on what path should we take together, what is the ultimate financial goal? What we do here, time and time again, is that women are not interested in a canned report that leads with investments has complicated statistics that are just asserted to them. Women can understand those pages fully, but women do want to understand they want to understand the detail of their investments. They want to know what has driven the decisions, and then they want to look at the outcomes that have come from it. And they are wonderful partners to be a part of those decisions. 

Greg Greenberg  00:09:03 

How has being women led impacted client relationships and trust building? 

Liz Miller  00:09:10 

I think that in our profession as financial planners and advice givers, the core of every relationship is trust, and men and women can equally build trust as women, we build trust and we build business differently. We tend to lead with the relationship. We tend to lead with a fair amount of honesty and open conversations, not with solutions and products. So we attract clients that are looking for that conversation. When I started the firm, I did wonder, will I attract clients? Will people respond to this approach? And of course, they did today, many, many firms take this approach, and I think it is an easier approach for women, because we tend to naturally start conversations this way. Okay, but more and more clients, men and women alike, are realizing they really do want to start conversations with that approach, with understanding, with sharing what keeps them up at night, with thinking about, Well, where do I want to go and how is your approach going to get me there? 

Greg Greenberg  00:10:19 

Lastly, as the incoming 2025 Chair of the CFP Board and a leader in wealth management, you emphasize cultivating a strong, self sustaining team culture. Can you share how this approach has influenced your firm's growth and your vision for the future of the industry? 

Liz Miller  00:10:36 

Thank you. I'm so excited for the leadership that I'm starting with CFP Board. We have some very exciting initiatives. We've talked a lot about women, and you will hear me in the next year very publicly, building that expectation. Right now, 23% of our 100,000 plus CFP certificates are women. And while that's not bad, it's similar to the industry as a whole, and there's a lot we want to do and can do to shine a light on that opportunity and change that. How do we lead that? And how do I lead the board? I was once told that the best leaders make everyone around them better and create an impact that lasts beyond them. In my CFP leadership next year, I certainly help hope to address the challenges of building women, as well as thinking about a lot of the innovation and technology in our industry with that same approach, let's bring people around us. Let's make them better for what we're leading and let's make sure we leave them with an impact that can carry on. 

Greg Greenberg  00:11:41 

Liz, as we wrap up, it's clear that your career has been defined by a dedication to not just your clients, but also the broader financial planning profession. You've spoken about the importance of evolving to meet growing client needs, and your work as a teacher, advocate and leader has left a significant mark in the industry. Thank you for sharing your perspectives, and congratulations again for being named in this year's Hot List award.  

Liz Miller  00:12:06 

Thank you  

Greg Greenberg  00:12:08 

And thank you all for watching Investment News TV. I'm Greg Greenberg.