FAQ
Only Registered Investment Advisors or RIAs (such as Jose Silva) are required to act as fiduciaries at all times with their clients and are held to the fiduciary standard. This means these advisors must put their clients’ best interest first and above any personal interest. Fiduciary advisors are fee-only and receive compensation solely from clients. They do not receive commissions from investments, products, or services. What’s more, a fiduciary advisor must disclose any conflicts of interest that arise or could arise in the client-advisor relationship. On the other hand, non-fiduciaries are only held to a “suitability” standard to ensure that the investments are appropriate, but not necessarily in the best interest of the client.
It depends on each client’s preferences and on the objectives of the meeting. In general, I meet with all clients in person or via Zoom once or twice a year for a complete review of their accounts, check up on their progress with their financial plan, and discuss any relevant changes in their personal finances or life. Apart from the reviews, ongoing communication is actively maintained throughout the year through telephone calls, email, and informal meetings whenever the client desires. We also reach out to clients periodically to discuss significant events that could impact their finances, provide perspective in times of market turbulence, or congratulate them for any milestones achieved.
We count on one of the largest, most secure and respected custodians in the country, Charles Schwab, to safeguard all our clients’ assets and accounts held with Silva Fiduciary. Charles Schwab's comprehensive experience, powerful resources, and account security are some of the most important reasons that we chose them as our custodian.
No, there are no specific, minimum assets required to become our client. What’s most important, is that we see the opportunity to make a significant difference in their financial situation and that the advisor-client relationship be a good fit. All our clients are a pleasure to work with, they are coachable, and they value and appreciate professional guidance. They seek us as advisors because they understand that they do not have the expertise, or the time or the desire to create their own financial plans, select and manage investments, and navigate through the myriad details involved in keeping their financial picture in clear focus.
All of our services and advice – investments, financial planning, tax planning, retirement planning, estate planning, risk management, cash management, private equity real estate – are covered by one single fee. The single fee is a percentage amount of the assets under our care, what’s in the investment account, and the percentage declines as the amount of assets under care increases. There are no commissions and no nuisance fees such as annual IRA account fees, wire fees, or any other fine print expenses. We exclude any commissions to avoid conflicts of interest. This way we can safeguard and put your interests first.
A self-directed IRA or SDIRA, is a type of traditional or Roth IRA with the same tax-advantaged savings but which offers many more investment options. With a SDIRA you can invest in real estate, undeveloped or raw land, private equity, gold, silver and other precious metals, cryptocurrency, and many other types of investments prohibited in regular IRA’s. The SDIRA is available as either a traditional IRA to which you make tax deductible contributions or a Roth IRA from which you take tax-free distributions.
I've set up a process to construct portfolios that align with each investor’s comfort with risk. First, I numerically calculate the investor’s risk score from 1 to 100, with 1 being ultra-conservative and 100 being ultra-aggressive and 50 being moderate. The investor completes a special questionnaire with different investing scenarios and questions including potential gains and losses and investment time horizons. Once the personal risk score is determined then I use it to build a new portfolio with a similar risk score. Although it’s impossible to predict what the market will do in the future, with the personal risk score, I can build a portfolio that is likely to move up or down with respect to the market that is acceptable to the client. In other words, the client can have reasonably accurate expectations on what their portfolio is likely to do if the market does X, Y or Z.