Case study

How Addepar’s Client Success Team Helped Three Bridge
Power its Addepar Installation

Three Bridge Wealth Advisors

Three Bridge Wealth Advisors pride themselves on providing services so comprehensive that their clients have them on speed dial. Their white-glove services include investment and portfolio consulting, asset allocation, advanced planning, wealth enhancement through tax mitigation strategies and cash flow planning, and wealth protection, as well as a network of outside experts who handle tax, trust and estate, and risk management matters. “We jokingly say that we don’t walk dogs and we don’t buy groceries, but for everything else, we want to be the first and only call that our clients have to make,” said Managing Director Brett Sharkey.

HEADQUARTERS

Portola Valley, CA

FOUNDERS & PARTNERS

Fred Molfino, Brett Sharkey,
Eric Thurber

ESTABLISHED

2009

ASSETS UNDER ADVISEMENT

$450 million

CUSTODIAN

Charles Schwab
TD Ameritrade

CLIENTS SERVED

50 families &
individuals

TEAM MEMBERS

4

BUILDING A CUTTING-EDGE TECH STACK

When the partners at Three Bridge realized a few years ago that the firm’s growth was outpacing the ability for their technology to keep up, they hired an outside consultant to do a full-scale review aimed at aligning systems and strategy. Three Bridge decided Addepar’s comprehensive functionality in handling alternative investments like limited partnerships, real estate interests, and private equity, coupled with its customization capabilities, made it a natural choice as their technology cornerstone.

"Times have changed in the last 10 to 12 years, and Addepar is on the bleeding edge of that while others just haven’t caught up."

Brett Sharkey

“Financial technology has changed significantly in the last 10 to 12 years, and Addepar is on the bleeding edge of that while others just haven’t caught up,” said Sharkey. Many Three Bridge clients are Silicon Valley titans and expect the financial technology they interact with to be customized to their needs, he noted. “To not be able to deliver customized solutions to your clients – that’s just a non-starter these days.” 

EXPERT TRAINING FOR A TECHNOLOGY JUMP START

"If I can distill what the Client Success team does in a nutshell, it’s that it helps us get up that learning curve at a sprint rather than a walk."

Brett Sharkey

Once Three Bridge signed on with Addepar, they wanted to hit the ground running. They hired the Addepar Client Success team to train their wealth managers to become power users of the system as quickly and efficiently as possible. “If I can distill what the Client Success team does in a nutshell, it’s that it helps us get up that learning curve at a sprint rather than a walk,” said Sharkey.

Three Bridge has worked with Client Success to learn how to quickly make changes to the client portal that will allow investors to easily review different aspects of their portfolios. Recently, thanks in part to their collaboration with Client Success, Three Bridge was able to build three new views for a client in one morning – a process that, with the firm’s previous technology provider, would have taken at least three months.

Through the partnership with Client Success, Three Bridge has developed the capacity to powerfully leverage the Addepar custom attributes feature. For example, the firm’s wealth managers can adjust their platform so that it attributes investment performance over multiple time periods – and create a feature that allows for that type of reporting in-house. Having this level of flexibility is a “game-changer,” Sharkey said. 

EMPOWERING IN-HOUSE EXPERTS AND ENABLING MORE TIME TO FOCUS ON CLIENTS

One major benefit that Three Bridge managers learned when working with Addepar’s Client Success team is that the team already understood the needs and reporting requirements for alternative investments. “It’s a massive advantage to have people with expertise like that,” said Sharkey. Ultimately, this significantly reduced the time Three Bridge spent on creating reports, empowering them to focus more deeply on their clients’ needs.

"Order of magnitude is not a strong enough term for the efficiencies we’re going to be able to bring to the table going forward."

Brett Sharkey

That expertise, plus the level of collaboration the Client Success team brings to the table, results in speedy problem-solving. And it’s been a huge benefit in building in-house expertise. Aggregating all the data to get an internal view of the firm’s entire book of business used to take four full days, said Sharkey. With Addepar, Three Bridge experts can build a view to display that data in about 10 minutes, he added, and “we can now have that same amount of data in four seconds.”

Overall, Sharkey described the level of satisfaction with Addepar and its Client Success team as an 11 on a 1-10 scale. “We haven’t come across something we wanted that they haven’t been able to deliver on,” he said. “Order of magnitude is not a strong enough term for the efficiencies we’re going to be able to bring to the table going forward.”