FAQ’s for a Registered Investment Advisor

The McGowanGroup’s (MGAM) most Frequently Asked Questions provides an educational tour of the advisory process for prospective clients.

McGowanGroup’s Investment Plan is a broad outline tailored to your unique circumstances and  includes:

  • A long term definition of client goals with realistic income and cash flow estimates
  • An Allocation Strategy including specific asset categories distinctive to your plan
  • Tax Planning and Estate Planning key facts
  • Highly customized insights and recommendations

The Investment plan is delivered by email during the initial fact finding appointment along with an in-person comprehensive educational notebook.

MGAM, under the Mission Tab, fully discloses the net results of all client accounts under our care since 2001.

Posting the overall results provides a realistic basis for each investment plan.  This also allows MGAM the ability to educate clients on fluctuations in the markets, values at risk of loss as well as effective recovery strategies.

Each account and household group are tracked and reported monthly including performance from inception as well as each quarter.
Client reviews are provided on a quarterly schedule and anytime upon request. Comprehensive performance reviews are uploaded to your document vault, along with your statements from our custodian on a monthly basis.
All MGAM client investment assets are held with Pershing Advisor Solutions*.
*Pershing Advisor Solutions LLC, member FINRA, SIPC, is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (BNY Mellon). Clearing, custody or other brokerage services may be provided by Pershing LLC, member FINRA, NYSE, SIPC. Pershing Advisor Solutions relies on its affiliate Pershing LLC to provide execution services. Bank custody and private banking solutions are provided by BNY Mellon, N.A., member FDIC, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation.
Pershing’s website provides a complete view each client’s assets under a secure log in for each household.   MGAM provides an additional secure document vault for your performance reports as well as tax information. Furthermore, we can add your CPA to have viewing capabilities for all your information. This is an additional service provided to save clients time and cost.
The McGowanGroup Asset Management, Inc. is a federally Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) firm and is considered a Fiduciary. This means we are held to a higher standard of care than ordinary commission based brokers.
We believe MGAM is ahead of the curve technologically since we’ve  adopted a secured cloud based internal structure with integrated features such as Salesforce and Modest Spark in addition to Pershing’s own website.

Our secure cloud based system allows us to be nimble enough to work from anywhere and have access/communication with our clients in real-time with real-time updates. Our Business Continuity Plan (BCP) includes technology platforms to insure client service, communication, and trading can be performed in the event of disruptions.

The firm embraces algorithm trading for our portfolios, via our custodian’s trading desk, to execute large orders to ensure we obtain best possible execution prices for our clients. Additionally, we rely on the human touch of our Investment Committee to vet and produce actionable trading intelligence for our client base.

“Limited Discretion” usually refers to the trading authority necessary to manage the allocations within an account. This authority allows for securities transaction to be completed and information to be given, but money movement such as a wire or check from an account, account detail changes, change of address or change in ownership is allowed only with an account owner’s  signature. MGAM, as an RIA firm, has discretionary trading over client accounts.