Since our founding in 1982, Sand Hill has persistently sought to provide our clients and their families with the best practices, tools and technology offered by the wealth management industry. Today, as we scan the horizon and assess the needs of our clients, we strongly feel that the demand for security and personal privacy, mobile accessibility, and curating a highly efficient, fully integrated financial life is the new normal. As a result, Sand Hill is launching a new on-line Client Center that will allow our clients to securely communicate and collaborate with family members and their trusted advisors, along with organizing, storing and sharing important documents in a private cloud environment.

The security of client assets and personal information have been, and continue to be, a paramount concern for us. Recently, we have witnessed a noticeable uptick in client e-mail accounts being hacked and cautionary tales of digital documents being unknowingly altered in transit abound. Unquestionably the threat of financial theft via digital means is real. The proliferation of free e-mail, storage and sharing services has also, unfortunately, not been met with an equal emphasis on individual privacy. In fact, the business models of many digital solution providers seemingly hinge on the sale and exploitation of personal information. While troubled by some of these aforementioned developments, Sand Hill is an advocate for highly secure cloud computing, digital interactions and accessibility via mobile devices. In our estimation, the internet offers our clients and business benefits that far outweigh the challenges.

It is this perspective that has informed the construction of our Client Center. We have taken considerable measures, including multi-factor authorization, private cloud hosting, data encryption (at rest and in transit), private messaging and enhanced privacy controls to provide a useful and convenient tool without compromising on security. We, no doubt, are also living in the age of specialists. While our clients certainly benefit from the collective wisdom of their wealth, tax, legal, insurance, banking and real estate team, the increased need for coordination and collaboration between specialists can be exhausting. Lengthy e-mail chains, unsecured attachments, multiple document versions and notification delays pose both efficiency and security challenges. With its shared virtual workspace, extensive document storage, robust permissions, versioning capabilities, encrypted and password-protected file transfers and a customizable notification system, the Client Center empowers our clients to control their financial lives without making it their full-time job.

Additionally, we think that there is, and will increasingly be, a need for multi-generational families to share financial information as well as house copies of crucial documents like powers of attorney, medical directives, wills and estate plans, even passports. Tragically, we know that some will be afflicted with diminished mental capacities in their latter years and that family, often from a geographic distance, will require on-demand access to large swaths of investment, tax and legal information to provide support for a loved one. To prepare for these circumstances, the Client Center has been built for interested parties to have some, or full, access to files and folders, if you so elect. With customizable permissions, clients can determine how much, or how little, they’d like to share and with whom. 

Finally, while many of our industry brethren seek to employ technology as a means to mass produce and distribute their product, Sand Hill views technology as a way to further tailor your client experience. We choose to believe that great technology, thoughtfully employed, can accentuate personal relationships rather than reduce them to a dehumanizing algorithmic score.  Our sincere hope is our clients, working together with their Sand Hill team, will use their Client Center in a way that uniquely fits their family’s wealth and lifestyle needs both today – and in the years to come.