Earlier this month, Robb Report Worth magazine hit the newsstands, its cover proclaiming, “The Nation’s 100 Most Exclusive Wealth Advisors.” Chad Tramp, director of wealth management services for RSM McGladrey in Des Moines, was the only Iowan to make the list.

Wealth advisers help their clients with retirement, investment, estate and risk-management planning. It is a relationship of trust: Clients trust their advisers with their money and their reputations.

“Confidentiality is as important as competency,” Tramp said. Worth gives a numeric telling of his client roster: His largest client’s net worth is $40 million. His median client’s net worth with real estate is $2.4 million, and his mean client’s net worth with real estate is $4.6 million.

It was not on numbers alone that Tramp was selected. The magazine’s researchers pored over references, questionnaires, sample financial plans and more references, and conducted a background check, consulting with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Tramp passed each step and made the cut. He gives credit to the standards set by RSM McGladrey and his commitment to “reduce risk first, then provide a decent rate of return.”

Tramp grew up just two miles over the Nebraska border in an area nicknamed South Yankton due to its proximity to Yankton, S.D. He got his undergraduate degree from Mount Marty College in Yankton in 1991, then joined a small CPA firm in that town. A few years later, he realized that he had very little opportunity to advance there. He and his wife, Tricia, considered moving to Omaha or Des Moines, and her family was here. Tramp found a job with McGladrey and Pullen as a tax staffer. Eventually he became a tax manager. In 1996, however, Tramp decided to move into wealth management. An Omaha-based family hired him to manage their fortune, which he did for two years.

“Then McGladrey called, saying they were going to formalize their wealth management department,” Tramp said. “They asked me to come back and lead it in Des Moines.”

When not guarding and growing million-dollar accounts, Tramp can be found watching Nebraska Cornhusker football and spending time with his wife and three children, “the munchkins.”