Today's Plans Need More Dynamic Management; Say Goodbye to 'Set it and Forget it' Approach

NEW YORK, September 14, 2010 — The financial crisis produced an unprecedented seismic shift in the investing and planning landscape. To achieve their goals in the coming decade, high net worth investors must abandon some conventional ideas and accept the new realities of investing and planning, according to a new white paper released today by BNY Mellon Wealth Management.

2020 Vision: The Most Critical Decade(SM), the white paper describes a landscape that has been fundamentally changed, creating "unprecedented challenges – so many, in fact, that the decade ahead will, in many ways, be the most critical ever."

"Investors today are forced to deal with a profoundly different world that presents them with extreme uncertainty in terms of investing or constructing effective wealth and estate plans," said Larry Hughes, CEO of BNY Mellon Wealth Management. "The reality is that more investors are likely to fall short of their goals than in any time in the past 50 years," he said.

In addressing what it will take to succeed moving forward, 2020 Vision: The Most Critical Decade looks at the forces and causes that are shaping the new reality and prescribes what will be required for investors to successfully navigate a dynamic period of fundamental change. The paper explores the challenges of today's landscape across three principal dimensions:

Investment innovation and rigorous discipline. Unpredictability and volatility will call for a unique prescription that combines innovative thinking with a significantly heightened sense of discipline. Among the key trends driving this are an overabundance of rapidly changing information; sweeping policy changes and unpredictable economic headwinds; and hyper-sensitized market reactions.

Dynamic, seamless planning. The dislocation of the financial crisis made many investors abruptly aware of hidden shortcomings in their existing plans. Faced with the unexpected possibility of not having enough money for the rest of their lives or to leave legacies to children and philanthropic causes, investors must take a more dynamic, comprehensive and integrated approach to wealth planning.

A different quality of client-advisor engagement. Perhaps most far-reaching of the changes to investing wrought by the financial crisis is the degree to which investors must reconsider standard notions of the client-advisor engagement. In forging this new dynamic, investors will need to bring penetrating insights to their assessment of advisors, and advisors will need to use ways to communicate and construct client strategies.

"The key to navigating this new landscape is a holistic approach to investing and wealth planning which cuts across traditional silos," Hughes said. "In order to achieve this, there will be a need for increased communication between the client and advisor in a language that is free of jargon and industry speak and the establishment of trust that will allow advisors to adapt and react to a highly volatile and unpredictable investing environment."

BNY Mellon Wealth Management is among the nation's leading wealth managers, with more than two centuries of experience in providing investment management, wealth and estate planning, and private banking services to financially successful individuals and families, their family offices and business enterprises, charitable gift programs, and endowments and foundations. It is among the top 10 U.S. wealth managers with about $150 billion in private client assets and an extensive network of offices in the U.S. and internationally.

BNY Mellon is a global financial services company focused on helping clients manage and service their financial assets, operating in 36 countries and serving more than 100 markets. BNY Mellon is a leading provider of financial services for institutions, corporations and high-net-worth individuals, providing superior asset management and wealth management, asset servicing, issuer services, clearing services and treasury services through a worldwide client-focused team. It has $21.8 trillion in assets under custody and administration and $1.0 trillion in assets under management, services $11.6 trillion in outstanding debt and processes global payments averaging $1.5 trillion per day. BNY Mellon is the corporate brand of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (NYSE: BK). Additional information is available at www.bnymellon.com.