Third View Private Wealth co-founder Frank McKiernan says advisors need to offer wealthy clients access to private investments as well as integrated planning services.

Managing portfolios of publicly traded assets has become table stakes for financial advisors, according to Frank McKiernan. “Investments have been largely commoditized. Anyone can go out and pick an S&P 500 index fund,” says McKiernan, the co-founder and managing partner of Third View Private Wealth. To stand out, advisors need to offer clients access to private investments as well as a spectrum of planning services, according to McKiernan, whose firm manages $1.3 billion in client assets. On our latest The Way Forward: Next Generation podcast, McKiernan discusses how he got into wealth management, what he learned from transitioning from wirehouses to the independent space, and how he helps clients invest in private markets.

Planning is a differentiator. McKiernan says that he knows investments like the back of his hand but that he integrates them with a planning-oriented process to address the long-term anxieties and concerns of the wealthy. “We’re taking the investments,” he says. “We’re pairing that with the trust and estate advice, the tax advice, because a lot of times that ultimately is what drives a lot of the pain and the fear and all those negative emotions with clients…‘What if I were to pass away today? What would happen with my kids?’”

Private markets access with parameters. McKiernan sees private markets as one area where advisors can add meaningful value. But access alone isn’t enough. Private investments introduce complexity, illiquidity, and information risk. He believes advisors should only venture into private markets when they can rely on institutional-quality partners with deep expertise, disciplined underwriting, and robust due-diligence processes. “Our view is that risk varies inversely with knowledge…the more you know about an investment, the inherently less risk you’re taking.” Third View has forged relationships with private investment managers over the years that have enabled it to put its clients in companies such as Open AI, Databricks, and Anduril, says McKiernan.

Treating families like institutions. McKiernan insists that the traditional divide between retail and institutional clients needs to be eliminated. In his view, a “client is a client,” and all deserve the same rigor, discipline, and transparency. At Third View, this means applying institutional-grade research, due diligence, portfolio construction, and reporting to individual families. The firm’s investment process mirrors how an endowment or pension fund would operate, and even its reporting infrastructure is designed through the lens of a single-family office. The client portal is custom designed to provide a single-family office view including trust and estate plans, tax documents, investments, and performance, according to McKiernan.

Starting early on trust and estate planning. McKiernan challenges the assumption that estate planning is primarily a concern for the ultrawealthy with assets in the eight figures. “We generally recommend that clients with an excess of $2 million should probably have some sort of trust document in place—at a minimum, a basic estate plan,” he says. That plan should include structures such as healthcare directives and powers of attorney. Advisors who raise these topics earlier not only improve outcomes but also demonstrate a deeper understanding of clients’ real priorities—security, continuity, and clarity for the next generation, according to McKiernan.