What It Takes to Wow Ultra-Wealthy Clients

Wong Fountain, in an interview with ThinkAdvisor, said the energy at Art Basel reflected a trend she’s seen throughout 2025 as head of family office resources, platform and partner management at Morgan Stanley.

“There’s a lot of energy and interest in the art market right now among the ultra-high-net-worth families that our advisors support,” Wong Fountain said. “We’re coming off a very exciting auction season in New York, and we’re seeing increased activity in terms of the management of collections across multi-generational families. Likewise, the high price of gold has sparked a lot of interest in families assessing their collections of jewelry and coins.”

These observations might not seem relevant to advisors serving mass affluent and even high-net-worth investors, Wong Fountain said, but financial advisors working with the ultra-wealthy need to do more than manage money to captivate their clients. That’s why her team manages a curated platform of more than 100 specialty UHNW service providers, a number of which involve the procurement, management and enjoyment of collectibles.

“It’s a constant effort of assessing the needs of our clients and making sure we are supporting our advisors with the right capabilities,” Wong Fountain said. “Wowing the UHNW group requires a clear vision and a significant investment in our service platform and concierge team, but its worth the effort.”

Here are some additional highlights from our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

THINKADVISOR: How has 2025 has gone for your area of the business? If you look at the numbers, the UHNW client segment is flourishing in terms of wealth creation. Have you seen that play out in practice?

VALERIE WONG FOUNTAIN: Yes, I would definitely say that is the case, and we’ve been doing a lot of work internally to ensure we are doing everything we need to do to remain that trusted and sought-after partner for clients in this space. For example, one thing we did this year was do a real streamlining of the lifestyle advisory brand. It’s still the same curated network of lifestyle specialists, but we’ve sharpened the brand and organized it around four key pillars, so that potential clients can get a clear sense of who we are and what we're all about.

First is leisure and experiences, which could include things like luxury travel, access to sought-after tickets, aircraft management, etc. Next is personal pursuits and enrichment, which covers areas like art collections and higher education consulting. Third is home and security, which covers a lot of what you would expect around real estate management and personal home security. Finally, we have the category of health and wellness, which has really become a strong focus as the population ages.

All of these pillars are in significant demand now, and I’m sure the same will be true for 2026.

THINKADVISOR: It makes sense that health and wellness services, in particular, are an area of focus. What are you seeing there?

WONG FOUNTAIN: Yeah, we’ve been really excited about the ways we have been responding to that demand. For example, we recently brought in Dr. Kim Henderson to work directly on my team as our in-house doctor and medical expert. She’s been amazing as an educator and as it’s come to identifying various third-party service providers that we really think can be helpful to our clients.

Specialty care is a good example of this. Dr. Henderson uses her expertise to help us assess and create a relationship with individual hospital systems that specialize in things like cancer care, elder care, in-home nursing — whatever the specific client need is. As another example, we recently onboarded a provider onto our platform that specializes in helping families respond to very serious critical illness diagnoses. I can’t tell you how much our clients appreciate the access to these services and curated providers at a difficult time in their lives.

It’s about providing both financial and also emotional peace of mind. We think that’s a big differentiator for us.

THINKADVISOR: Dealing with medical challenges and caregiving questions is always difficult. On the other hand, a big part of the deliverable is about more positive experiences and opportunities. What trends are you seeing there?

WONG FOUNTAIN: You’re right about that, and things have evolved over time as I’ve worked in this role. Increasingly, the next generation of these UHNW families has come into adulthood, as well, and they seem to be as much or more interested in accumulating positive life experiences as they are in accumulating material wealth.

As an example of that, we’ve seen a lot of growing interest in getting access to World Cup tickets for this summer, so we’ve made an effort to invest in new hospitality relationships that can help us help our clients achieve that dream of seeing a World Cup match. It’s a lot of things like that, which is a lot of fun.

THINKADVISOR: What about personal and home security? Are UHNW families more cognizant of the increasingly real security risks they face?

WONG FOUNTAIN: Unfortunately I think the answer is another clear yes. There’s been a lot of tragic things in the news in the last several years, including the assassination of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO while he was in New York. This is just something that clients in high-profile positions need to think about.

Security has always been a pretty big topic, but it was almost seen more as a background kind of thing to keep in mind. Today, we’re seeing a lot more families give it more proactive attention and create specific security strategies, including for things like cryptocurrency wealth. It’s definitely an area of strong demand today.

THINKADVISOR: What other big themes are you seeing play out?

WONG FOUNTAIN: One thing that is kind of interesting and different this year relates to the way the price of gold has just gone up and up. That’s sparked a lot of clients to kind of reassess and do an inventory of their jewelry and gold coin collections, which are more common than you might think. Similarly, as we think about wealth passing from one generation to the next, we’re seeing more art be included in the estate planning process, and clients that have inherited art are demanding a variety of services ranging from appraisals to insurance to storage.

Education consulting is another area I would point to. We continue to see interest from UHNW families in terms of really providing the best opportunities and preparation for their children as they reach college age.

Today, this work is more about the process of helping the next generation better understand who they are and what they want to achieve as an individual. It’s not just focused on the outcome of getting them into one specific school or career. That’s been a positive development, for sure.

THINKADVISOR: And what’s in store for 2026? Do you anticipate any big changes or challenges?

WONG FOUNTAIN: It’s a good question, because we’re in the middle of finalizing our 2026 strategic plan as we speak. As the leader of the team, I’ve tried to really step back and thinking about how our clients’ interests have evolved. What additional services might they benefit from? This is always our guiding question as we reassess partners on the platform and consider who we might want to add and why.

Right now, our platform has over 100 different partnerships, so it’s always an effort of making sure all the incentives are aligned and that it’s a win-win-win for ourselves, our clients and our service provider partners.