“We believe we are at the threshold of a digital transformation with few precedents in human history. A revolution driven by innovation built on the blockchain.” - Mike Boroughs, Managing Partner at Fortis Financial Group

Let’s face it: wealth comes with significant perks. That said, with wealth comes greater financial complexity. From investment and tax optimization to establishing trusts and formalizing succession plans, a high level of knowledge and experience is required in financial planning for high-net-worth individuals.

The financial planning requirements of the rich are vastly different and a lot more complex than that of a regular investor. High-net-worth individuals and ultra-high-net-worth individuals usually rely on the continuous flow of income and cash flow to cover their future costs, aided by their assets accumulated over the years. Additionally, given their level of wealth, they have opportunities to invest in new and emerging asset classes where higher returns can buoy their overall portfolio. But finding the right mix of investments to ensure they both preserve wealth and continue to see it grow becomes a challenging endeavor. Due to the demands of work, family, philanthropy and other obligations, it can be hard to stay ahead of innovation and understand where the market is moving. Therefore, working with a financial planner who is forward thinking becomes paramount for maintaining a strategy to produce both steady cash flow and net worth growth.

As a high-net-worth individual with a diverse portfolio of assets, taking the complexity out of financial planning is crucial to maximizing and preserving your wealth.

One of the leading financial advisors for high-net-worth individuals is Fortis Financial Group. Fortis is an SEC-registered RIA with ~$250 million in assets under management. Fortis focuses on taking the complexity out of financial planning by empowering and educating clients to grow and protect their wealth. They strive to build lasting relationships with high net worth individuals and successful families who want to work with advisors who listen and help them solve their specific problems. Fortis’ involvement in the digital asset space through its subsidiary, Fortis Digital Ventures, allows clients to have advice on how to invest in an emerging asset class most advisors have no experience in.

At Fortis, doing the right thing for clients is their top priority. This means they operate with the following value system: Trust, transparency, education, empowerment, and value.

Q. Fortis Financial Group—the story behind it and why it was started?

In 2008, Mike started his career working in auditing at EY, where he got his CPA license and learned how to analyze company financial statements from the ground up. Having bought his first stock at 14, investing was his first love. After three years of auditing, he left to go work for a registered investment advisor called Summit Capital Group. He was an analyst on the firm’s two equity hedge funds. After a few years, he and his boss spun off and took the two hedge funds with them to start a company called Glacier Peak Capital. In 2014, Mike left Glacier Peak to co-found the Fortis Financial Group with former EY colleague Paul Misleh. Mike and Paul started with no clients and no assets and built the firm up to ~$250 million in assets under management (AUM) today after merging Glacier Peak into the firm and bringing on James Rudolf as a third managing partner in 2018.

Fortis has historically been focused on financial planning and wealth management for high-net-worth individuals and families in the technology space. The firm’s focus has always been on figuring out ways to add more value to clients, which has resulted in building up a suite of services for its clients, including financial planning, asset management, life/disability insurance, accounting, mortgage, and real estate services.

Incorporating crypto into financial planning—taking Fortis into the future

As a forward-thinking entrepreneur, in 2017, Mike first became involved in the crypto world after buying his first bitcoin and diving into trying to make sense of the underlying blockchain ledger technology. Mike became convinced that blockchain technology was transformative and would disrupt many aspects of modern society like the internet did in the ‘90s and early 2000s.

After the pandemic hit in March 2020, leading up to the bitcoin halvening event in May of 2020, Mike became incredibly bullish on bitcoin and crypto in general and started allocating a lot more of his capital there worked to get his clients involved. There were no great options for him to manage crypto assets for clients; they would have to do it independently with his guidance.

Paving the way ahead—Fortis Digital

Near the end of 2021, Mike launched the Fortis Digital Asset Fund to streamline access for investors to the blockchain space. Mike brought in Chris Capriccio, former VP of Engineering for Legal Zoom, who has 20+ years of software development experience, to help him evaluate the portfolio’s underlying technology of the prospective investments. Mike and his team do all of the research, security, and risk mitigation to help investors get involved in crypto with less work, less risk, and more upside.

One of the critical barriers to entry for many investors has been the volatility of crypto. When you can wake up and be down 30% in one day and see 80-90% drawdowns during bear markets, it keeps many would-be investors on the sidelines because they can’t stomach the volatility. Mike’s background in managing assets in the traditional financial world allows him to bring a depth of hedge and buffer volatility knowledge to reduce risk during significant market drawdowns. Losses work geometrically against you (if you are down 33%, you have to be up 50% to get back to even, if you are down 50%, you need to go up 100% to get back to even and if you are down 90% you need to go up 900% to get back to even) and therefore Fortis places a strong emphasis on reducing drawdowns compared to the broader crypto index.

It should be noted that the Fortis Digital Asset Fund doesn’t own any bitcoin because clients shouldn’t have to pay a fee to own bitcoin. It focuses on alt-coins, which the Fortis team believes will be future software platforms, similar to buying Amazon, Google, or Facebook in the early 2000s.

The minimum investment for the Fortis Digital Asset Fund is $250K, and investors must be accredited and qualified under SEC standards (minimum threshold of $2.2M of net worth excluding primary residence).

Paving the way forward for asset management in the crypto space

Mike Boroughs is the Managing Partner at Fortis Financial Group and the Portfolio Manager of the Fortis Digital Asset Fund. Mike oversees all aspects of the firm’s digital asset strategies, as well as the wealth management and financial planning strategies for specific high net worth clients.

Mike is currently a board member for Teleios and on the Audience Development Committee for the Virginia Mason Foundation.

“We believe blockchain represents the next evolution of software replacing inefficient processes and systems by improving speed, reliability, transparency and governance across ecosystems.”