Josh Bergman

Earlier in my career, I worked as a Trusts & Estates (T&E) attorney, advising ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) individuals. In this role, I had the privilege of discussing some of the most important and sensitive topics with individuals and families, including their family dynamics, legacy, charitable intentions, and, often, their succession plans for family businesses they had worked so hard to build.

While serving as legal counsel to my clients, I discovered my passion for working with people and helping them navigate and simplify some of life’s most complex and stressful moments. This led me to an introduction to Allen & Company’s Wealth Management division, where the focus was on providing financial advice and tax guidance to UHNW families and institutional investors. Initially, Allen & Company sought to bring me in to focus exclusively on T&E planning for their clients, but I expressed an interest in offering both T&E advice and financial guidance. They supported this ambition, in part because of my background in finance and accounting, which I studied during my undergraduate years, as well as my experience working at Wharton while attending the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

At Allen & Company, I earned the Chartered Financial Analyst® designation and worked closely with families and institutions on strategic and tactical asset allocation opportunities, tax guidance, and succession planning. Over time, I served on a team that collectively advised on approximately $4.5 billion in assets under management before ultimately launching my own firm, JNB Wealth.

I still work with UHNW families, though I am also expanding my client base to “everyday investors” who could use some help on their endeavors to retire sooner, or seek to buy a little more house, or send their children to a better school. One of the (many) reasons that I chose Savvy is that the platform provides me with the technology and operational efficiencies to work with a broader range of clients.

My expertise spans a few key areas that include tax and succession planning, concentrated position management, behavioral coaching, evidence-based portfolio management, sourcing alternative investments, and family communication. 

1. Tax and Legacy Planning - I was a practicing attorney and spent most of my legal career working with families to help them achieve their business and succession planning objectives in a structure that maximized their wealth, net of income, gift, and estate taxes.

2. Concentrated Position Management - I have significant experience guiding clients with respect to concentrated equity positions, including analyzing risk, income tax and transfer tax considerations.  I’ve helped CEOs and board members of public companies craft 10b5-1 selling plans to systematically reduce their exposure to concentrated holdings.

3. Behavioral Coaching - In my decade-plus of working with clients, I have learned that the best plan is one that the client can stick with through good times and bad.

4. Research-Based Portfolio Management - I believe in the importance of using data to set the baseline for decision making and for projecting ranges of outcomes. This means that I lean on academic and practitioner research to inform my views and recommendations rather than the latest short-term narrative that financial media is focusing on.

5. Alternative Investments - Prior to joining Savvy, I evaluated private investment opportunities on behalf of clients, with a focus on expected returns net of taxes and fees, while ensuring that my clients also preserved sufficient liquidity.

6. Family Communication - Finally, I believe in the importance of helping families talk effectively about their wealth so that core values can be passed to the next generation. Defining and funding a good life can mean many different things to different people, and clarifying roles and expectations can be extremely valuable when it comes to maintaining family harmony.

The strategies are tailored to client goals, time horizon, and ability and willingness to take risks. However, there are a few foundational principles across my strategies, including a focus on tax efficiency, maintaining a long-term orientation, an emphasis on quality, constant re-underwriting of investment theses, and operating with the conviction to act opportunistically during periods of market dislocation.

‍Tax Efficiency: Incorporating tax planning into portfolio management includes managing “asset location.” In other words, holding high-yielding assets in tax-advantaged accounts and lower-yielding assets in taxable accounts. It also means not day-trading portfolios and therefore not generating short-term capital gains or unnecessary transaction costs where possible.

‍“Long-Termism”: I am a steadfast believer in the extraordinary compounding of capital that can occur after long holding periods.  In my opinion, timing the market is incredibly dangerous.  Investors need to be right twice - selling at the top and then having the courage to buy back in after a steep decline, which is often at a very scary moment in time.  It is a cliche, but for most investors, time in the market beats timing the market.
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Quality: Generally, the best businesses in the world are those that:

• provide a product or service that people regularly need and where there are few good substitutes

• do so better, cheaper, or faster than others

• do so repeatedly, and 

• do it without sinking a mountain of capital and fixed costs into the ground (i.e., if they are “capital-light” businesses).

These businesses tend to earn customer loyalty, utility-like usage, and pricing power that allows for sustained earnings growth and reinvestment back into the business. When I recommend external fund managers for clients, I ensure that they adhere to a similar philosophy on quality investing over long periods.

‍Continuous Evaluation: Having a long-term outlook does not mean “set it and forget it”. In fact, holding investments for long periods of time should be the opposite of set it and forget it. I believe that long-term holds require a constant sense of paranoia that the investment thesis is wrong: this healthy paranoia forces difficult questions and encourages more thought and circumspection throughout the life of an investment.

‍Strategic and Tactical Opportunism: Crises and dislocations are natural phenomena in the markets, almost purge-like episodes following periods of relative calm. Finding clarity and conviction in these moments is difficult—plenty of capital managers have been found hiding in their caves during crises—but if an investor can successfully identify and capitalize on a dislocation, they may be rewarded over long periods of time. I plan to approach each and every day—and every crisis—with a prepared mind, and I believe my clients will be well-suited to react to these opportunities with conviction as a result.

What makes me unique is the breadth of my legal and investing experience. I bring institutional-level experience that is typically reserved for UHNW clients to a broader audience. As a JD with experience practicing both corporate and estate planning law, as a CFA® Charterholder, and as someone with experience managing several billion dollars on behalf of individuals and institutions, I am able to provide my clients with wide-ranging advice that typically would require bringing in specialists from multiple disciplines.

My favorite part about working with clients is listening and learning about each individual’s stories, challenges, and dreams. It is a privilege to sit in the seat of the “trusted advisor,” which in the most productive relationships extends far beyond investment management.

I derive great personal satisfaction in seeing my clients achieve their goals, whether it is buying a home, fully funding their retirement, paying for a dream vacation, or enabling their child to go to the school that seemed out of reach.

Ultimately, I want my clients to feel safer and feel that they can offload their financial and life stressors to me, which is a responsibility I embrace.

When I was deciding where to operate my business, I did due diligence on dozens of alternatives, ranging from the bulge bracket banks to independent registered investment advisors to building my own tech stack. 

After countless hours of research, in-person meetings, and tech demonstrations, it became clear to me that Savvy represents the leading edge of advisor technology. This enables advisors like myself to spend more time doing what we do best - research, portfolio management, and meeting with clients, and to spend less time on repetitive administrative tasks (which are critically important to get right but which can also be incredibly inefficient and time-consuming in legacy tech systems).  

In my opinion, the most important thing to me is that Savvy’s technology platform positions me to provide  a better experience for my clients.

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