There's four key ways that Paragon is different from other financial advisors:

1. We are a Fiduciary. We are legally and ethically required to act in your best interest. We are not a brokerage, we don't have any funds or products to sell you, we don't make commissions, and we absolutely do not negotiate any kind of kick-back deal with any of the funds we recommend. We are legally obligated to avoid all conflicts of interest, and we must disclose them to you upfront if they do exist.
2. We offer private investments. Many investment advisors may not have the access or expertise to provide thoroughly researched private investment recommendations. It takes a lot of time and money to perform sufficient due diligence on private investments given the complexity, and from a business perspective it may not make sense to some advisors. Moreover, since it’s historically been difficult for non-institutional investors to access private investments, some advisors may not adequately understand the space due to the historical irrelevance. Corey's background was in researching private investments and providing advice to the ultra wealthy, and as a result has been utilizing private investments for several years.
3. We charge lower fees. Paragon's starting annual fee of 0.45% is less than half the industry average fee of 1.00% annually. By cutting the non-value-add services provided by other advisors, we can lower our fee and increase your returns. Our platform is driven by efficient technologies and tools, and when combined with focused oversight from your dedicated financial advisor, provides the best net returns for you.
4. Comprehensive financial advice. We will help you manage the full spectrum of your finances, including 401k, IRAs, Roths, brokerage accounts, 529s, trusts, SEPs, SMAs, life insurance, retirement planning, financial planning, life events, and investments. Our client portal aggregates all your investment accounts daily, so you can monitor their growth in one convenient place. We provide all of these services for one low, transparent fee.

Pricing for our services are based on a percentage of total assets under advisement, and may be found here.

For Paragon's Access-Only Service, pricing starts at 0.45% for portfolios of $1.0M or more. We are committed to keeping our advisory fees low, because the more you pay in fees, the less you have to invest next year.

Our minimum account size is $100,000 USD. For individuals or families earning more than $300k a year, the minimum account size can be waived. Our fees are based on a percentage of assets under management, and vary based on level of service and account size. For more details, please see here.

We will selectively sell securities that have losses, referred to as “loss harvesting,” in order to offset capital gains elsewhere in the portfolio and/or ordinary income. With the proceeds from the sale, we will purchase a comparable security to maintain the appropriate asset allocation and risk exposure. By loss harvesting, your tax bill will be lower, giving you a larger tax refund (or lower tax payment) and more money to invest next year.

Conversely, we assess tax consequences when considering the sale of securities with gains. In many instances we can mitigate the tax consequence through a variety of techniques, including realizing offsetting losses, gifting/donating securities, and prudent estate planning.

Your Paragon advisor will be able to explain how best to execute trades to manage your investments in a tax-efficient manner.

While we frequently utilize passive management, our research indicates there is not a long-term, stagnate active/passive approach that is superior across all market environments and asset classes. Therefore, we recommend an adaptive approach that considers cost, efficiency of a given asset class, the current market environment, and desire for downside protection when designing a client portfolio.

We will most heavily utilize passive management within more efficient asset classes such as US large cap equities, but may complement a primarily passive allocation with an active manager to add a stylistic tilt (such as quality for downside protection). Conversely, we will utilize more active management in less efficient asset classes such as international equities and fixed income where the median active manager has been able to outperform (we’re confident we can select an average or better manager).

Although the efficiency of the asset class and active managers’ track records are key to the active/passive decision, it is prudent to go more granular. The style of the manager (growth vs value), in addition to the market environment (early vs late cycle) impacts the decision as well. Moreover, today’s market environment has added elements to the active/passive decision unseen before. For example, if you own a passive global bond fund, you likely own negative or zero yielding bonds that are taking up valuable space in your portfolio.

The active/passive decision is complex, and a lot of time, money, and resources go into making these decisions. Our partners invest over $100,000 annually in fund research, due diligence, and manager selection for the benefit of Paragon clients’ portfolios. We do not receive any kickbacks from managers. When we do use active management, it is because we have conviction in adding risk-adjusted value to client portfolios after fees. Paragon’s interests are aligned with yours.

We prefer to use Charles Schwab. We recommend using Schwab as your custodian and brokerage to facilitate trades, because we can offer clients access to all our investments, institutional share classes, lower fund fees, and half-price mutual fund transaction fees. Using Schwab is not required, but it's highly recommended.

Paragon on Schwab includes:

• institutional share classes,
• private debt funds,
• restricted funds, and
• soft-closed funds

In order to purchase most of the Private Asset funds, you'll need an investment account at Charles Schwab.

If you already have a Schwab account, then no action is needed. We can add your account to our Schwab Master, giving you full access to all funds and investments.