Wealth Management Vs Financial Planning – What’s the Difference and What’s Best for You.

Money grows when you choose the right approach. In all these years of my practice, I have come across many instances where people cannot figure out where they belong, or whom they want to engage with, in order to satisfy their requirements, or is there any such requirement for me at all, in the first place.

Meaning of Wealth Management

Wealth management is a holistic approach, wherein, each and every aspect of the client’s financial requirement is studied, and a plethora of investment avenues that are available are utilized by a financial planner in order to fulfill those requirements. In other words, the client gets a bird’s eye view of all his financial activities, in addition to a worm’s eye view of each of the components of the financial requirements, under one roof. It is very useful for high net worth individuals.

Meaning of Financial Planning

Financial planning is an approach where the client gets to track his income, expenses, investments and savings on a regular basis, in order to meet his financial goals like wealth creation, child’s education, retirement planning and so on. Finances are employed in such a way, that the client has money at his disposal at the right time, to meet his financial needs.

Let’s look at the key features and differences between Wealth Management and Financial Planning.

Lots of inferences can be derived from the above chart.
What? Why? and for Whom? Wealth management and Financial planning are…
The Financial plan will mandatorily cover investment planning, which is also a wealth management exercise. Although, the unilateral focus on portfolio returns might be missing, as the core focus area is to reach the financial goals.

What looks obvious is that, Mr Jeetendra would require Financial Planning and Mr Gopal – Wealth management.
Few points to elaborate further – Mr Jeetendra would be best served for goal based investment planning and getting all his finances aligned to meet any risk as well as maximize returns and reach his goals.
On the other hand, for Mr Gopal, financial planning is required to properly segregate his business resources and family or personal finances. This becomes very necessary especially for business people as the direction where the cash flows go are not defined. It would be prudent if the personal family goals are defined and secured first and the residual cash flow can be directed towards wealth creation.
Thus, Wealth management is a specialization needed for a few but Financial Planning is needed for ALL.

Author: Nirmal Jain | Nirmal Jain is the Co-Founder at HappyWise Financial Services. He has helped over 100 Families over the last 15 years of his services in the Financial Planning Sector. He has been a mentor to several people to help them better understand investments, stocks, mutual funds, financial planning, personal finance and above all his favorite term “The Power Of Compounding!”.