Nick Cantrell

Green Future Wealth Management - Finance

Profile

About Nick Cantrell
Nick Cantrell is the founder of Green Future Wealth Management and one of its Senior Wealth Advisors. He has worked closely with clients as a financial advisor for over 15 years.

In 2020, Nick founded Green Future Wealth Management to provide independent and values-rooted holistic financial planning for his clients. He specialises in advising on complex retirement income planning, with a particular focus on integrating government pensions and Social Security plans with invested assets to maximise income, tax efficiency and legacy benefits. He also works with clients to engage in values-aligned financial planning through the use of charitable funds and socially responsible investments.

Nick holds FINRA Series 7, 63, and 65 licenses and is licensed to advise on life, health and variable insurance. He is also a Certified Financial Planner™ practitioner, a Chartered Financial Consultant®, a Chartered Life Underwriter®, and a Chartered SRI Counselor®.

Interview

What was your vision in founding Green Future Wealth Management?
When founding Green Future Wealth Management, I wanted to create a firm dedicated to helping clients manifest their values in their financial lives while planning for what is ahead. I wanted to build a large firm with a regional and, one day, national footprint.
Now, only two years after our founding, we have three office locations throughout New England and have expanded into offering tax planning and preparation as well as helping businesses and organisations integrate sustainability into their retirement plans, in addition to our focus on financial planning, investing and wealth management.

In what ways do your team enshrine sustainability when it comes to assisting clients with financial decision-making?
It is really important for us to focus on the specific values of our clients, rather than trying to shoe-horn them into a one-size-fits-all ESG investment portfolio. Part of our client engagement process entails helping our clients explore which values are most meaningful to them in their investments as well as their lives in general. Sustainable or socially responsible investing means dramatically different things to different individuals and organisations, so we try not to come to the table with any preconceived notions about what our clients may want.

What motivates you to achieve strong returns for your clients?
We are motivated by helping our clients to achieve their goals and by helping them solve problems. One of the reasons we focus so much on financial planning and tax planning with our clients is because we believe it is where we can bring the most tangible value to our clients. It is really difficult to accomplish a financial goal in the future if you do not know how much money you need, when you need it, and what your plan of action is along the way.

Most of our clients already have ‘enough money’, but they are not certain that they are taking advantage of all of the opportunities available to them. Most of them have a lot of questions about how their current investments stack up on the issues that are most important to them, like climate change and sustainability. Being able to help our clients navigate through retirement, sending kids and grandkids to college, selling a business, and achieving their philanthropy and legacy goals while also aligning their assets with their values is incredibly rewarding work.
How are your team utilising new technology to make this happen?
We are lucky to be able to work closely and collaborate with some of the most cutting-edge fintech tools out there. In particular, we have developed a strong relationship with our sustainability data tool, YourStake. Through our relationship with them we are able to customize client portfolios using over 100 different sustainability metrics. They have been really great partners and have worked with us on developing customised sustainability metrics that we can use when a client has a particular ethical value that they want incorporated in their investment portfolios.

We also use YourStake’s values-screening questionnaire to help us engage with clients and prospects and gain greater insight into the issues that are most meaningful to them. Outside of the ESG analytics space, we utilize Y charts within our investment committee to analyse our investment solutions from a purely financial view.
What does this award mean to you?
It is quite humbling. When I founded Green Future Wealth Management in the early months of the pandemic, I set out to help clients align their assets with their values by offering customised, sustainable investing and financial planning. To now, only two years later, be receiving such an important award seems just mind-boggling, until I start to realise that this is really an award that recognises the work that has done not just by me, but also by my team. Once I consider that it all makes sense, as I have a tremendous team at Green Future Wealth Management, as well as at home – particularly my wife, who has always believed in and supported me.

Can you share anything about what might be on the horizon for Green Future Wealth Management?
We just completed our first practice acquisition this year, which was really exciting and allowed us to add some really great team members and clients. Through that acquisition, we added tax preparation and planning. We have also recently begun offering sustainable offerings within workplace employer plans, having developed the first sustainability-focused pooled employer plan 401k in the country.

Having really increased our capabilities this year, I predict that the next couple of years will be focused on scaling our business as we continue to grow quickly and add clients, although I think that based off of the conversations that I have been having we are going to have some good acquisition opportunities in the near future. Further down the road I have some ideas for some proprietary software that I would like to build that will enhance our ability to serve values-based investors.