A Des Moines-based firm has combined its financial advisory and tax consulting arms into a single operation to provide wealth management services for high-net-worth individuals and their families.

ONE Wealth Partners, a service offered by Hamilton + Juffer & Associates LLP and HJN Advisors LLP,  seeks to tap a growing market made up of families who want to preserve their wealth under a service generically called multifamily offices.

Hamilton + Juffer was created in January 2006 by Randall Hamilton and Matt Juffer, who left the Des Moines operation of KPMG LLP to form the tax and accounting firm. The following year, Ken Noyce joined them to form the financial management firm, HJN Advisors.

ONE Wealth Partners was created last year to give the firm’s more affluent clients a one-stop shop for their financial planning, Hamilton said.

According to the WealthInsight Intelligence Center Database, there were 2,700 single-family offices and 2,300 multifamily offices worldwide managing $2.5 trillion in assets, with the majority of the offices located in the United States.

Family offices typically are geared toward the superrich. Think Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, rolling his business and personal finances under one management umbrella.

The typical client for ONE Wealth Partners would be a family with a net worth of at least $5 million. The focus is on helping affluent families, successful entrepreneurs and C-suite clients as well as multigenerational businesses with their financial, tax and business needs. ONE Wealth Partners serves as the umbrella for a suite of premium services tailored to this audience.

Hamilton said that by combining the specialties of Hamilton + Juffer and HJN Advisors, ONE Wealth Partners can provide all of the services of a multifamily office under one roof.

Those services also include risk management, charitable giving analysis, asset and portfolio management, family governance and private placements, or securities that are not sold through public offerings. 

Clients are primarily concerned about bequeathing their wealth to later generations, said Noyce.

“People with wealth, once you get to a certain point, start realizing that you’re never going to get rid of it,” he said. “The biggest worry is the impact that the money is going to have on their family.”

For Steve Harms, retired CEO of Rain and Hail Insurance Services Inc. in Urbandale, financial planning is a matter of give and take. He might take some advice or ignore it. It is the kind of relationship he has developed with ONE Wealth Partners.

“Relationships are the name of the game,” Harms said. He has five children and he wants every one of them involved in nurturing and preserving the wealth that he and his wife have amassed.

His ties to ONE Wealth Partners predate even the formation of its parent companies. He worked with Tim Pratt, a certified financial planner with more than 20 years of experience in wealth management, when Harms was CEO of Rain and Hail. He retired after the company was sold in 2010 to Zurich-based Ace Ltd.

Harms followed Pratt to HJN Advisors. Now, Harms, his wife, his five children and their spouses meet several times a year with Pratt and Noyce.

One investment Harms made after leaving Rain and Hail was a farm in Poweshiek County. Noyce said the firm encourages investments in hard assets, and he is particularly partial to farmland and agricultural businesses because of their growth potential.

Harms said the relationship with Noyce, Pratt and ONE Wealth Partners is close enough that he can take their advice or leave it.

Another of Harms’ investments is in Mason City-based Moss Buster LLC, which is marketing a fungicide formulated primarily from monarda oil, an extract from plants in the mint family. 

“They keep telling me that maybe I’ve helped out the company a little too much,” Harms said.

Harms also set up a company called Harms Family Farms LLC that manages about 5,600 acres of agricultural land for the entire family.

Another client is Nick Henderson, chief operating officer for Holmes Murphy & Associates Inc., who said that before he started working with ONE Wealth Partners, he used several wealth planning advisers. “All of the parts had been broken among different people and different companies. … A lot of times, they are not very well coordinated,” he said.

Now “everything you need is under one roof. When we meet, everybody is together in one room. All of the parts fit together,” Henderson said.

Henderson also likes that the firm is trying to bring wealth management services to families that might not be considered super-affluent.

“This is the first (family office) I’m aware of that is trying to bring the family office concept to a lower level of net worth individual,” he said.