Creative Investment Group

Creative Investment Group is a SEC-registered advisory firm that serves individual clients (including high-net-worth households) and a range of institutional and entity clients such as family offices, trusts, private foundations, endowments and qualified retirement plans. It offers discretionary and non-discretionary portfolio management, standalone and ongoing financial planning, retirement-plan advisory, and can recommend external money managers or platforms for portions of client assets.

The firm says it builds client-specific plans by assessing goals, risk tolerance, tax and liquidity needs, and employs both fundamental and technical analysis within a generally long-term orientation while permitting shorter-term trading for rebalancing or tactical reasons. Creative uses a broad investable universe — including equities, mutual funds, ETFs, fixed income, municipal securities, REITs, private/alternative funds and variable annuities — monitors accounts on a regular basis and conducts at least annual reviews of plans and portfolios.

Compared with many peers, Creative manages a mid-sized team (seven advisors) with roughly $206 million in discretionary AUM and discloses a number of operational distinctions: it recently ended a dual registration arrangement with a broker-dealer while continuing to participate on that firm’s custodial platform and to use an additional custodian; it discloses assistance with securities-backed lines of credit and updated billing practices (monthly advance billing adjusted for cash flows). The brochure also notes that some personnel are licensed insurance professionals (and historically acted as registered representatives), that the firm does not accept proxy-voting authority for client accounts, and that it offers both one-time fixed financial plans and ongoing planning engagements.