Client Relationships & Held Away Assets

Do you really know how much held-away cash and assets your clients have?

As a wealth-manager or financial advisor, you understand the importance of a complete financial picture. You monitor portfolios, track performance, review tax strategies, and reflect your clients’ goals. But ask yourself: do you know all the assets your clients hold — especially the ones outside your direct oversight? That blind spot may be your firm’s Achilles’ heel.

Why held-away assets matter

Why is this important? Because if you don’t have a fully detailed and current picture of your client’s total financial landscape — including held-away assets and held-away cash — you may struggle to:

1. Validate your investment strategy and goals.

2. Build the “wallet share” and the long-term, proactive relationship that high-net-worth clients expect.

   
   

Statistics that illustrate the gap

Consider these findings:

• According to a recent study from Bank of America Private Bank, nearly two-thirds of wealthy individuals work with multiple advisors—including financial advisors and planners, accountants, estate attorneys, and private bankers—who manage their investments and financial landscape.

• While Advisors on average responded that their clients are retaining 1-2% of portfolio in cash, in actuality, people with at least $1 million in investable assets keep 20% of their net worth in cash, according to a Capgemini World Wealth report

• As of July 2025, Capitalize & the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College estimate that there are 31.9 million left-behind or forgotten 401(k) accounts holding approximately $2.1 trillion in assets, up almost 30% from mid-2023.

  
  

These data points confirm there is significant wealth outside the typical managed asset base — and more importantly, advisors often under-estimate the scale of the opportunity (and risk) that held-away assets represent.

Why this is an Achilles-heel for your model

When you don’t incorporate held-away assets into your view, you’re essentially operating with one hand tied behind your back. Here’s how:

1. Validating investment strategy & goals becomes harder. The article from SmartAsset states: “If you don’t know the full extent of their financial situation, that can tie your hands to a degree when it comes to offering the best advice for their needs and goals.” SmartAsset

2. You forgo proactive relationship-expansion as your clients’ lives evolve. Your clients’ personal and professional lives change: job transitions, business exits, inheritances, property acquisitions, cash windfalls, benefits changes (e.g., HSAs, company equity) and more. If you don’t regularly surface held-away assets/cash and integrate them into your view, you miss opportunities to deepen the engagement, expand into new service areas and reinforce your role as their trusted financial chief.

Enter the Personal CFO model — filling the gap

This is where the “Personal CFO” proposition comes into play.

As a wealth-management firm, when you position yourself not just as an investment manager but as the client’s financial operations hub, you can address held-away assets, cash management, household/benefits oversight, and ongoing life-event transitions.

By partnering with a specialist firm like Tight Ship Advisors that acts as a natural extension of your advisory practice, you gain:

• Real-time visibility into held-away assets and client cash positions.

• Concierge-level services around client health/benefits, household oversight, cash-flow monitoring, and other “above-and-beyond” services for high-net-worth clients.

• A loop of engagement: as held-away accounts and cash are surfaced, they inform investment strategy, tax planning, estate-planning and service offerings. The client sees you as their Personal CFO — coordinating every aspect of their financial life.

  
  

Final thought

In today’s competitive wealth-management environment — where client loyalty is precious, fee pressure persists, and new platforms are encroaching into “financial operations” — being aware of, and proactively managing, held-away assets and client cash is not optional. It is essential.

If you do not ask about held-away assets, you risk:

• Misaligned investment strategy.

• Missed service opportunities.

• A competitor stepping in and offering what you overlooked.

  
  

On the other hand, by embracing the Personal CFO model, by explicitly adding held-away visibility and cash-management into your service suite (and working with partners to expand your offerings), you strengthen client trust, deepen relationships, and position your firm for long-term growth.

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Ready to elevate your firm to the Personal CFO standard and capture the full financial picture your clients depend on? Let’s talk about how integrating held-away asset visibility and cash-flow coordination into your advisory model can unlock new growth — while delivering deeper value to your clients. info@tight-ship.com