Need a "Personal" CFO?

ASCAP is partnering with a wealth advisory firm, Lenox Advisors, to offer members and their financial managers an innovative and exclusive new benefit: a comprehensive online financial management service at a substantial discount.

Rick Van Benschoten

In ASCAP's continuing efforts to help members simplify, expedite and manage their financial lives as music professionals, the Society has partnered with a nationwide wealth advisory firm, Lenox Advisors, who have developed an innovative technology platform – the Lenox CFO – that serves as a "personal CFO" to help members manage all aspects of their finances. Playback Editor in Chief Erik Philbrook here interviews Lenox Advisors' Rick Van Benschoten and ASCAP Senior Vice President, Domestic Membership Randy Grimmett about the new benefit.

Playback: Who are Lenox Advisors?
Rick Van Benschoten: Lenox Advisors are a wealth advisory firm based in New York with offices in San Francisco, Chicago, and Stamford, CT. The majority of our clients engage us to be their "personal CFO." We coordinate all aspects of their financial lives including retirement, asset management, risk management, estate planning, insurance, children's college funding, and so on. For our corporate clients, we advise them on different types of benefit programs and qualified plans for their employees, including customized carve-out programs for senior executives.

What is the Lenox CFO?
Rick Van Benschoten: In order to better serve our clients as their financial situations became increasingly complex with their continued financial success, we built the Lenox CFO™ to provide a powerful management tool. The program, which is accessible via a secure website, allows our planners to respond to any questions a client has based on up-to-date information and also facilitates proactive planning.

Is Lenox a technology company?
Rick Van Benschoten: No. But Lenox affords its individual and corporate clients a series of service and technology platforms (like the Lenox CFO Program) that allow us to be smarter managers and keep clients better informed. Technology also allows us to be faster managers–information travels virtually rather than by paper–and therefore more efficient managers, freeing us to do the work our clients require. Lenox's technology simply allows us to better oversee client situations and to give more proactive planning advice.

How does the Lenox CFO work?
Rick Van Benschoten: There are two basic components to the technology. First is an Account Aggregation technology, which consolidates all of your accounts and holdings. Basically, any account that has an online password, whether it's at Fidelity, Merrill, Schwab, or a Chase or National City bank account, or a Northwestern insurance policy...it doesn't matter. Any account that has online access is scraped every night into our system, including the cost basis information, so that we are always looking at an up-to-date asset allocation, balance sheet, cash flow, and retirement model. Every-thing is updated on a nightly basis. Any account that does not have online access, such as private equity or hedge funds with lack of transparency, we manually input them on a quarterly basis.

The second part of the technology is the Online Vault, where we scan in ALL of your personal documents. We scan in your contracts, wills, trusts, tax returns, deeds to your homes, private equity documents, passports, birth and marriage certificates. Anything you can possibly think of can be scanned into one place.

How are the financial projections generated?
Rick Van Benschoten: A client will say, "I want to hang it up in 5 years.... I think I'm in good shape but I'm just not sure." We build out a cash flow and retirement model for each client to test whether or not they are on the right path. Once the model is built, they can play any "What If" scenario that they want to see the impact it would have on the client's long-term cash flow.

What is the vault and who has access to it?
Rick Van Benschoten: The Online Vault is a secure repository for all of a client's personal financial documents such as property deeds, recording and other contracts, passports, birth certificates, etc. Accessible from the secure website, each of the documents are organized into folders for quick and easy access with a few clicks of the mouse. For example, if a mortgage broker needs your last few tax returns, with the client's okay, they can be accessed and delivered via fax or secure e-mail within minutes to facilitate the transaction.

How does the Lenox CFO help financial managers?
Rick Van Benschoten: Instead of using limited human resources generating reports, managers are better equipped to utilize their resources more proactively, better serving their clients' needs.

How does the Lenox CFO improve financial managers' productivity?
Rick Van Benschoten: Lenox developed the Lenox CFO platform in order to improve our service level to meet an expanding clientele and maintain the outsized level of service for which we are known. By leveraging technology, we have been able to be more proactive with our clients in their planning and especially in the execution of those plans. Now, through the ASCAP/Lenox partnership, business managers and others have access to that technology.

How does the Lenox CFO™ work with existing financial managers' systems?
Rick Van Benschoten: The Lenox CFO works seamlessly with managers' current accounting systems and allows a bolt-on planning resource improving proactive planning opportunities. Lenox has developed and used the system for the past eight years and has realized incredible success in its own operations, and now is offering this valuable resource to ASCAP.

What's the benefit for ASCAP members?
Randy Grimmett: ASCAP and Lenox have teamed up to make the Lenox CFO platform available to business managers of ASCAP members at a substantially reduced rate. Business managers have to develop cash flow models, balance sheets, and other valuable decision-making reports for each individual client, which is complex and very time consuming. With the Lenox CFO platform, those important reports are available at the click of a button for managers and clients to review and use for decision making.

What is the alliance between ASCAP and Lenox Advisors?
Randy Grimmett: Lenox Advisors has agreed to provide their technology services to ASCAP members at a substantially reduced rate. In fact, the Lenox CFO is not available as a stand-alone technology component except through this ASCAP partnership. In order for business managers to incorporate the technology into their operations, they should contact Joseph Hanson at Lenox Advisors or their Membership Rep at ASCAP. Individual member inquiries are also welcome.

Why did ASCAP choose Lenox Advisors?
Randy Grimmett: After a thorough due diligence process, ASCAP selected Lenox Advisors as a way to offer additional, outsized benefits to its membership beginning with a select group of their financial managers. Ultimately, Lenox was selected because of their professionalism, integrity, and exclusive technology resources.

What is the benefit to ASCAP for the Lenox CFO™?
Randy Grimmett: ASCAP members and their managers are being granted access to this incredible technology exclusively with a threefold goal: First, to offer unique technology solutions that will help ASCAP members better manage their finances, alleviating some of the anxiety that eats away at creativity; secondly, to improve financial managers' operational efficiencies and provide a powerful planning tool; and finally, to provide a unique membership benefit to ASCAP's most important, VIP members.


For more about Lenox, contact:
Joseph Hanson: 212-536-6155 or
jhanson@lenoxadvisors.com



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