Direction of the Firm: 2012

Contributed by Michael J. Chasnoff

On behalf of Truepoint, I’d like to thank our loyal clients for their continued support and welcome our new clients. As our client base has grown, it has allowed us to invest in additional resources and capabilities to enhance the experience of all clients.

As we look back on 2011, adding new talent to our team and expanding our office space has been exciting – but we are even more inspired by the high ratings received in this year’s satisfaction survey. For the category of overall satisfaction, over 99% of responses indicated we were either meeting or exceeding expectations. Of those clients, 48% specified we were exceeding expectations. (For more detailed survey results, view the summary.)

What do these results mean to you? Your feedback is essential to our strategic planning process and the direction of our firm. Although we were very pleased to learn we are doing a great job, we realize that our biggest challenge will be to continue to live up to this standard. Our focus in 2012 will be to ensure that our continued growth serves to further enhance the client experience.

In 2011, we experienced an increase in prospective clients who sought out Truepoint. In part, we can attribute this improvement to the success of our disciplined investment approach and personalized advisory services, but we have also benefited from a financial services industry which continues to underserve consumers. We are thankful to those clients who made referrals, as well as to the press, who found Truepoint’s message worth telling.

Going forward, we are narrowing our focus on the type of growth we are seeking. This means that we will be careful to bring the right clients on board who are best suited for our expertise. A specific example is P&G employees. Over the years, we have developed deep expertise in the tax and financial planning opportunities unique to P&G employees. Similarly, we have become particularly proficient in serving an emerging base of new business such as rising professionals, business owners and female investors. By leveraging our expertise to focus on these niche client groups, we are able to optimize our growth.

Two specific areas of focus that will help balance our growth lie in operational efficiency and the development of our team. In 2012, with the help of our technology and client services committees, we are working to ensure that our business processes are running as efficiently and optimally as possible. And by sharpening our hiring process and actively filling our talent pool pipeline, we are able to increase the expertise available to our clients.

We are grateful for the continued trust and confidence our clients place in our firm and will move forward deliberately to ensure that client service levels continue to increase as we grow. Thank you for providing us guidance through our survey process, and as always, we welcome feedback and insights throughout the year, not only at survey time.

You can also listen to Michael give his update here.

For more information, please contact Lisa Reynolds at 513.792.6648 or l.reynolds@truepointinc.com.

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