READ: Road to Exchange With Frazer Rice
This article was originally published on ETFTrends.com.
There are fewer than fifteen days until advisors and financial services professionals all head to Fontainebleau Miami Beach, Florida for the 2024 Exchange Conference. In preparation for the event, set to take place on February 11-14, VettaFi’s CMO, Jon Fee, sat down with Frazer Rice, the Head of Family Office Services at Next Capital, to discuss why Rice is on the “Road to Exchange.”
Road to Exchange With Frazer Rice
Jon Fee: Frazer Rice, head of Family Office Services at Next Capital. Thank you for joining me on the road to Exchange. How are you doing today?
Frazer Rice: Terrific, John. Thanks for having me.
Jon Fee: It's absolutely my pleasure. I've got a couple of topics I want to talk to talk to you about Frazer. I want to know about your background. You know, life before you got to Next Capital. But then I also want to learn about Next Capital. I want to hear about issues you guys are solving in the marketplace. And then I got a few questions about what you're looking forward to the most with joining us down at the Exchange Conference in Miami Beach from February 11th through the 14th.
Okay. So tell us about yourself, Frazer. Give me the one or two-minute summary of your background before you got to Next Capital.
Frazer Rice: Oh, gosh. So one to two minutes. We'll do the best we can given my long-in-the-tooth status. Essentially, I'm a reformed lawyer. I practiced for a couple of years and then I moved over to wealth management. I worked for a large trust company where I took on a variety of assignments in asset management, estate planning, trust, and administration. Pretty much everything you can think of that you might ponder would happen to a multi-generational family.
And I did that for approximately 16 years. I had a podcast and book in me, so I wrote that and sort of executed on that front. I was able to take that and move on to an administrative trust company. I'm going to be speaking with Betsy Brown at Pendleton. We continue to have a very close relationship in terms of providing trust and administrative services.
But then I found Next Capital. Which is a $1.5 billion RIA that focuses on clients between 20 million and 300 million in size. And it's my job to kind of help make the wheels turn for these families. So my role, in a sense, is serving as a half chief operating officer, half wealth strategist for clients that have a lot of complexity and size associated with them.
Jon Fee: I like it. It sounds like you've spent a career wearing a lot of hats and you still wear a few today at Next Capital, which is great. It gives you a broader view throughout your organization. How long have you been in Next Capital?
Frazer Rice: I have been here for around a year and a half so far, and I started just recently. It's been a great situation. And, you know, a lot of that gets involved with complicated clients, which can take a lot of time and making sure that you understand their situation and understanding where we're strong. We can provide that structure and complement what their needs are.
Jon Fee: Cool. And you mentioned a podcast and a book. I'm giving you a platform right now. Tell us about that podcast and how folks can find your book.
Frazer Rice: Sure. Both are called Wealth, Actually. So if you Google that, you should be able to find both pretty easily. The podcast really tries to deal with wealth management and wealth management adjacent topics, everything from estate planning, including high-end tactics, and accounting situations. But also business succession stories and trying to learn about different situations related to family businesses. The transition of wealth from one from one generation to the next, the transfer of values from one generation to the next.
One of the things that I wrote about in the book was that one of the great threats to wealth oftentimes isn't investment management or tax planning or the technical side of things. It's the damage that can be caused with a lack of communication, the lack of consensus and the lack of understanding how things work. And you end up with a situation where a lack of communication can compound a lot of different problems that may be avoidable.
Jon Fee: Very true. Very true. We are humans at the end of the day. Frazer, I kid you not there's nothing I love more than mountain biking and listening to your podcast. All the topics that you just mentioned that you cover on your podcast and in your book, but more importantly on the podcast really resonate with me. So you got yourself a new listener.
When you think about your seat at Next Capital and issues in your market that you're helping clients with, aside from just better communication, what else is top of mind for you at the start of 2024?
Frazer Rice: Well, so from the start of 2024, obviously the different changes in tax laws for those folks who have taxable estates. That's something that needs to be dealt with. Now for those who aren't really clued into it, at the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, the law is scheduled to change and the exemptions for the estate and gift tax are at all-time highs.
Combine that with a still competitive interest rate environment and it is still one of the most unbelievable environments with which to do estate planning on an after-tax basis for your family. So that's something that we continue to broadcast to the world. And to the families that we work with, that they want to take advantage of. But to that end, also know, one of the things that I worry about with a lot of families is they not only know of the tax implications, but also are making sure that people not only understand what they have in place. And they understand what the different roles are that are responsible for implementing and directing these structures.
Oftentimes, people halfway down the pike, maybe two years, five years down from executing an estate plan, they've put it in a drawer. They don't understand what's going on or the notions are foggy. Or more importantly, the rest of the family has no idea what is in place. And that can lead to a lot of uncertainty and bruised feelings later on.
Jon Fee: It's almost as if there needs to be an estate planning gym, to keep you fit on on the topic. I've personally experienced this and did a lot of work. And it is a lot of work to get the plan together. But life changes and life certainly has changed a lot for folks over the last three and five years.
So everything you're saying is resonating with me. I got one final question for you. I know you're joining us February 11th through the 14th down in Miami Beach at the Exchange Conference. It'll be you and I and 2,000 other experts that really cover the entire ecosystem and community across wealth management, especially the financial advisor community. I feel like 2024 is the is the year that conferences are really back.
People are really comfortable getting back in person. Frazer, what do you hope to get out of the Exchange Conference where you're while you're down in Miami Beach?
Frazer Rice: A few things. First of which is, you know, I spend a lot of time on social media, media in general. And I've built a lot of digital relationships with people. The conference, to me, is a unique chance to have actual handshakes with people and to break bread or have an eye-to-eye, face-to-face conversation on a lot of different topics.
And that to me is what helps graduate these digital relationships that have been built up over the last three years in a COVID, work-from-home, Zoom experience and turn that into something that I think could be a great way to expand my ecosystem and really, more specifically, deepen it. That's on one level. The second level is really getting a better fix on what's happening in the market.
It's really easy for me in my perch here in Manhattan to think things are a certain way across different types of wealth, different types of ways of doing things. I think it's always useful to find out what other people are doing. Not just in different geographies but in different niches as well.
Jon Fee: I think conferences are a goldmine for networking that benefits both your personal life and your professional life. And it's certainly something that we know a lot of folks get out of coming to the Exchange Conference. Frazer, I'm grateful for our time together. I kid you not, I will be on my mountain bike as soon as the sun comes out here in California listening to your podcast.
I appreciate you putting the content out there and I look forward to seeing you down in Miami Beach at the Exchange Conference from February 11th through the 14th. Folks join us. It's going to be a good one. Thanks again, Frazier.
Frazer Rice: Jon, Thanks for having me on and look forward to talking with everybody at the conference.
Register for Exchange 2024 today.
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