Team Name: The Willenbrock Group
Firm: UBS Wealth Management
Senior Members: Tad Willenbrock, Elizabeth Willenbrock, Scott Ansel
Location: Denver, CO
Team Custodied Assets: $770 million
Background: Tad Willenbrock’s introduction to wealth management came from next door. Growing up in Colorado Springs, he lived beside a Merrill Lynch advisor who told him, after Tad came home from college one day, “you’d be good at what I do.” Willenbrock says he loved the way his neighbor interacted with people—and it ultimately pushed him to interview with several firms and accept an offer from Dean Witter, a predecessor of Morgan Stanley. At Dean Witter Reynolds, the ticker symbol was DWR—and Willenbrock and his wife (and now senior partner) adopted it as an internal mantra: “Do what’s right.” “We do what is best for the clients,” he says, adding that the principle is not new: “If you didn’t treat clients correctly back over the last 30, 40 years, you wouldn’t be in business anyway.” The couple later moved the practice to UBS in 2009—“the absolute low point of the market”—after a longtime friend who managed the UBS Denver office persuaded them to make the switch.
Client Relationships: The Willenbrock Group works with about 200 households, and has no formal niche. Early on, many relationships came through golf—he played for the University of Colorado and still sees the sport as an “amazing jumpstart” for learning how to interact with adults, especially wealthy ones. Betsy’s early outreach leaned older, and together those paths helped the team build multiple four-generation family relationships. Education is a core theme. “I wanna make sure our clients not only know what they own, but why they own it,” Willenbrock says. The team also hosts events at least every other month—luncheons, guest speakers, wine tastings or cooking-school gatherings—keeping the practice personal even as clients have become more comfortable meeting virtually post-Covid.
Competitive Edge: Willenbrock views his husband-and-wife senior partnership as a differentiator. His wife, he says, has become a trusted resource for women navigating “divorce, death, widowed”—and other crisis moments—while he tends to focus on macro themes and alternatives. On the portfolio side, the group prefers a consistent playbook rather than “10 different methods” in the same category.
Investment Philosophy: Everything begins with planning. “All of our business starts with that roadmap,” Willenbrock says, adding that the team is “outcome-based” and builds portfolios around what clients are trying to accomplish over time. “If a client has a six-and-a-half or seven percent goal over the next decade, we work backward from that and build a portfolio designed to support it,” he says. The group relies heavily on separately managed accounts and UBS access models tied to firms such as Vanguard, American Funds and Dimensional to create broadly diversified portfolios. In fixed income, the team almost entirely uses separately managed accounts, with a core focus on municipal bonds and some nontraditional satellite exposure layered around that base. Equity allocations lean more toward dividend-paying stocks than pure growth, though Willenbrock says the team has “embraced the AI space,” while recognizing that parts of the trade have become “a little rich in the near term.” Alternatives also play a meaningful role for many clients. “Ninety percent of the companies in the world are private,” Willenbrock says. “The newer private-market vehicles have been a real watershed moment, because they allow clients to access private credit and private equity in a more diversified way.” The objective, he adds, is not to chase outsized returns. “We’re not trying to get alpha out of alternatives,” Willenbrock says. “We’re trying to reduce the beta and lower overall portfolio volatility.”
Market Outlook: “We tell clients to please turn off CNBC,” says Willenbrock. He leans on an analogy: “When driving, don’t stare at all the cracks in the highway—look toward the horizon.” He expects the trend toward lower rates to continue and says he remains constructive on equities with “a runway” for markets. Portfolio construction, he adds, typically balances equities, income-producing exposure and alternatives—tailored to each client.
Best Advice: Willenbrock’s favorite long-term lesson shows up in a birthday email every client receives, comparing the cost of a house, income and the Dow the year the client was born versus today. The point: equities have historically been a powerful engine for wealth accumulation over long horizons. He emphasizes “buy and hold,” diversification and making sure clients are comfortable enough not to “get off the roller coaster at the bottom.” He also encourages getting kids invested early—letting them pick brands they know, like Nike or Starbucks, as a starting point. For younger advisors, his advice is simple: trust is everything, and it’s hard to earn at 22. He suggests joining a “mature team,” paying dues, and persevering long enough to become the succession plan that so many practices still lack.
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