Our Process
Personalized Advice
At Gitterman Wealth Management, we blend industry best practices, powerful technological tools, and straightforward investment models with customized financial guidance to create flexible services and sustainable solutions. Our team of advisors is dedicated to building an investment strategy you can be proud of by asking important and sometimes challenging questions to understand your objectives and values.
Gitterman Wealth Management is a leader in sustainable investing, offering access to world-class investment managers who incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) datasets with accessible minimums. Check out our SMART Investing Solutions to learn more.
Step 1: Identify
In the discovery phase, your advisor will aim to understand your unique circumstances, goals, values and objectives. Typically, this process is completed together or at your convenience through our secure online tool. The data-gathering phase is intensive but essential to developing your personalized financial strategy and investment analysis.
Meet with an AdvisorStep 2: Analyze
This phase aims to identify any inconsistencies or opportunities to improve your new or existing financial plan. Your advisor will consolidate the information from the data-gathering session to determine your financial progress, including a detailed analysis of the ESG metrics from your investments.
Meet with an AdvisorStep 3: Develop
In this phase, your advisor will develop a customized financial plan that expresses your values and, when possible, improves your ESG metrics—collaborating with your financial professionals, when necessary, to ensure adequate estate, tax, and legacy planning.
Meet with an AdvisorStep 4: Implement
At this stage, we have coordinated with all your financial professionals and implemented your new personalized financial strategy focused on your investment values and objectives. You and your advisor will meet regularly to monitor your progress, and you will always have convenient and secure access to information about your investments.
Meet with an AdvisorStep 5: Monitor
Over time our lives change, and so do our financial objectives. Your Advisor is here to be a resource throughout your journey, helping to ensure your goals are met by continuously evaluating any deviations to your plan and making adjustments where necessary. Review meetings with your Advisor will occur at least annually, depending on the complexity and proximity of your defined goal.
Meet with an AdvisorSMART Solutions
Customizable investments centered on sustainability.
Gitterman Wealth Management’s SMART (Sustainability Metrics Applied to Risk Tolerance)® Investing Solutions are climate-aware, incorporate ESG data, are designed to be core holdings, and aim to deliver above-average risk-adjusted returns. Our investment team has vetted every investment manager and strategy within our solutions according to our rigorous, institutional quality investment methodology. Wherever possible, we allocate to managers exploring climate risk scenarios defined below and the potential for broader socioeconomic impacts:
TRANSITION RISK: these risks include changes in policy, regulation, litigation, etc., from moving to a low carbon economy. Companies and investors meet these risks with greater understanding, reflected in ratings and index creation.
PHYSICAL RISK: these risks include first- and second-order effects from increased heat, drought, wildfires, hurricanes, etc. There is no standardized method to assess Physical risks, and they are consequently less likely to be included in ESG data. Therefore less likely to be priced into current investment valuations. However, new data sets and analytics are being developed across asset classes, making information more transparent and accessible.
Gitterman Wealth Management believes that changing climate is a catalyst for The Great Repricing of capital markets. Whatever your position on climate change, there have been more frequent heatwaves, more severe droughts, and more devastating storms throughout the globe, signaling that climate is a significant risk to capital markets and our future. As fiduciaries and stewards of wealth, these risks drove us to include non-financial datasets that were material to asset pricing in the next evolution of our SMART portfolios.
We have designed our investment offerings to fit the needs of individual investors, family foundations, endowments, and family offices.