Working with Rapport Financial follows a structured five-step process, from our initial conversation through onboarding and the development of your financial plan and investment strategy. The process is designed to understand your full financial picture before recommendations are made.
Rapport Financial is a fee-based registered investment advisory firm based in San Francisco and serving clients across the country. Our coordinated approach is designed to build a vetted team of professionals around you. This team typically includes a CPA, estate planning attorney, insurance professionals covering property and casualty, life, health, and disability, as well as bankers, lenders, and other service professionals.
We chose Rapport for our firm name after reflecting upon the relationships we've sought to build in both our professional and personal lives. We believe that building Rapport is paramount to the successful and long-lasting relationships we strive to build with our clients to help them achieve all of their financial goals.
We start with a 30-minute introductory call, a chance to get acquainted without any commitment. You'll learn how Rapport Financial works, who we serve, and what working with us looks like in practice. We'll learn about your situation, your goals, and the questions on your mind.
If there's mutual interest, we schedule a Discovery Meeting.
This is a deeper conversation, typically 60 to 90 minutes, where we explore your full financial picture. We discuss your goals, concerns, current investments, tax situation, insurance, estate planning, and any major life events on the horizon.
This meeting gives us what we need to assess the planning opportunities worth pursuing together, and gives you a clear sense of how we think and work.
If we're aligned on fit and ready to move forward, we deliver a personalized Scope of Engagement Letter outlining the specific planning deliverables you can expect from us, and the fee.
Once you've reviewed and decided to proceed, you sign our Investment Management Agreement and custodial paperwork digitally via DocuSign.
Once you've signed on, we move into a structured onboarding process designed to get everything in order, and get to work.
Welcome to Rapport Financial. You'll receive a personalized New Client Welcome Letter that walks you through our operational practices, the technology platforms we use, and how we communicate with clients throughout the year.
You'll be invited to our planning portal and given access to the tools and resources that will support your financial life going forward, so that when we dive into your strategy, we're starting from a solid foundation.
With the administrative foundation in place, we shift into the substance of the planning relationship. We share our Financial Planning Discovery Checklist, a structured document-gathering guide covering investments, tax returns, insurance policies, estate documents, employee benefits, and more.
From there, we explore your risk tolerance, investment history, and financial goals in depth. We formalize your Investment Policy Statement (IPS), a written framework that governs how your portfolio is constructed and managed, and begin building your comprehensive Financial Plan.
The process doesn't end at onboarding; it evolves. Here's what the ongoing relationship looks like for Rapport Financial clients.
Four times a year, we meet to review your portfolio performance, revisit your goals, and address anything that's changed in your financial life or the broader market. These meetings keep the relationship active and the strategy current.
Each November or December, we send clients a comprehensive Year-End Planning Questionnaire covering tax strategy, savings opportunities, benefits, gifting, and life changes. Your responses help us identify and prioritize planning opportunities to consider before year-end.
Because we keep our firm deliberately boutique, clients have direct access to our team and can book time on our calendar when questions or financial decisions arise.
Every Monday morning, we send a brief recap of the prior week's market events and what they may mean for your financial picture. It's our way of keeping you informed, clearly and concisely, every week.
Each quarter, you receive a detailed performance report on your portfolio, clear, contextualized, and easy to read alongside your client portal access.
Between quarterly reports, we send regular email updates on current events and how they may affect your investments, helping you understand what is happening and why it matters.
Our process is coordinated by design. We have built relationships with vetted outside professionals across the areas that frequently intersect with our clients' financial lives. When outside expertise is needed, we help identify an appropriate professional and coordinate their work with the broader financial plan.
The first step is a 30-minute introductory call to learn more about your goals and determine whether our approach is a good fit for you.