Every firm in wealth management describes itself as independent. The word has been stretched so thin it barely holds meaning anymore.
What I mean when I say independent is simpler and harder. It means that my first obligation is to the person sitting across the table from me. Neither to a product, nor to a structure that provides custody or generates a fee. Independence, in that sense, is not a legal category. It is a daily decision.
In practice, it means recommending the custodian or manager who is right for the client, and that is not necessarily the one with whom I have a relationship. It means telling a principal that their current structure is working, even when restructuring it would mean more work and more revenue for their advisors. It means walking away from mandates that cannot be served properly.
The wealth management industry has built an entire vocabulary around independence: autonomous, open architecture, conflict-free, fiduciary. Most of it describes processes. Very little of it describes a posture.
The posture is the following: the only thing I am optimising for is the outcome for the client. This is not a marketing claim. It is the only reason a client should ever work with an outsourced advisor in the first place.
Entrepreneurs, families and institutions who ask the right questions about their advisors already know the answer to this one.