Fast Cars And Bucketing Guide This $1.6 Billion UBS Advisor From Ohio

Name: Blair Cornell

Firm: UBS Wealth Management

Location: Miamisburg, OH

Team Assets (Custodied): $1.6 billion

Forbes Rankings: America’s Top Wealth Advisors, Best-in-State Wealth Advisors, Best-in-State Wealth Management Teams, America’s Top Next-Gen Wealth Advisors, Top Next-Gen Wealth Advisors Best-in-State

Background: “I grew up in the business,” says Blair Cornell, 43, whose father worked as an advisor at UBS. “Ever since I was young, I always wanted to shadow my dad and learn more about what he did.” Cornell interned for his father during summers in middle school and continued through high school and college, at first doing any and every job he could find, like filing and scanning papers. After graduating from Ohio University in 2004 and getting licensed while still in school, he teamed up with his father shortly after. “Family dynamics don’t always work well but my dad is one of my best friends and we talk everyday,” Cornell adds.

Building Relationships: Like most other advisors, Cornell world with high net worth clients, many of whom are business owners. He has a subspecialty working with families that have a child with special needs. “Another angle of focus is any client that prioritizes legacy planning—not only from an investment angle but a comprehensive planning perspective, which is where I can add a lot of value,” says Cornell.

Competitive Edge: “We’re a team that’s multi gendered and multigenerational, which is really important in today’s day and age.” The average team member has a tenure of 13 years, which not only provides clients with stability but also helps foster a collaborative trust-based culture, he adds. “I’m a big believer in having more capacity on the team than we might need so we can always deliver for clients—it lets you look at things from lots of vantage points.”

Investment Philosophy/Strategy: He and his team are big believers in sticking to a bucketing strategy that includes dividing client assets into segments for liquidity, longevity and legacy. When it comes to creating a steady and reliable income stream for clients, he will often look to do so with dividends from equities, interest from bonds or through tax-free strategies. “In the last couple of years we’ve also been active allocators to alternative investments,” says Cornell. “Public markets have done really well so it’s sometimes hard to pry away money into alternatives, but we know there will eventually be a reversion to the mean.” By diversifying part of client portfolios into areas like private equity, private credit or private real estate, Cornell and his team have found—as many advisors did—that it actually reduces risk while garnering higher returns.

Investment/2024 Outlook: “We will most likely see a couple of interest rate cuts in the second half of the year,”says Cornell. That necessitates insulating client portfolios so their income streams remain steady, while also taking advantage of and locking in higher rates for the fixed income part of some clients’ portfolios. “Inflation appears to be somewhat under control, which means rates will probably be a bit more predictable,” he says. Cornell and his team are warning clients not to overreact to 2024’s political noise. “Elections typically don’t have as big of an impact on markets as we think they do—they can move markets in the short term, but long term trends will remain intact based on fundamentals,” he says.

Off The Clock: Outside of work, Cornell is the founder of nonprofit JoyRide, a car club exclusively for children with special needs that organizes weekend rides in exotic cars including Ferraris, McLarens or Maseratis. The idea for JoyRide came to Cornell in 2016, while driving with his special needs son in his convertible.