An Interview with Gregory P. Kushner, Lido Advisors LLC Founder and CEO: ‘Our Investment Discipline Focuses on Risk Management, Cash Flow, and Capitalizing On Opportunities Presented by the Constantly Shifting Market and Economic Scenarios’

“We are comfortable with a variety of approaches and investment strategies including private asset-based lending, direct real estate investments, and private equity.”

For people amassing wealth often by having an equity stake in a successful business, the use of super-rich solutions can prove to be very advantageous. Several wealth management strategies and products used by the super-rich, ultra-wealthy business owners, and family offices are increasingly available to a wide array of affluent individuals and businesses. Many investment advisors are motivated to adopt these wealth management strategies to better serve their clients.

In light of the foregoing, we’re thrilled to present Lido Advisors LLC — an investment management company that provides wealth management and philanthropy advisory services.

The company was incorporated in 1999 and is headquartered in Century City, CA.

Gregory P. Kushner, Lido Advisors LLC Founder and CEO, spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review. Below is an excerpt.

Q. Explain your services in brief.

Lido curates custom investment strategies for clients and institutions, designed to grow, maximize, and protect clients’ assets and legacy. We dedicate our resources to the development of coordinated wealth planning to offer innovative, creative, and cutting-edge solutions to high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals, families, and charitable organizations across the U.S.

Q. What are the latest technologies leveraged by you to provide exceptional financial services?

Lido Advisors, LLC uses the latest and most advanced in CRM technology, (Salesforce --Financial Services Cloud) to help keep up with the speed in which our clients expect their needs to be met. The firm uses eMoney for Financial Planning and Client Portal services so our clients can see and directly interact with and control their financial future. Lido also utilizes DocuSign Digital Signature and custodian’s straight-through processing services to lessen paperwork and the processing burdens of our clients and the firm.

Q. The financial technology – or FinTech – the industry is one that is growing quickly, with an increasing number of companies offering an even greater number of online and mobile platforms. How do you distinguish your services from others?

Lido Advisors distinguishes its services from others with continued growth and adaptation of current and future products. To meet individual client needs without disrupting their desires for simplicity, Lido employs the most cutting-edge aspects of products that are flexible enough to be tailor-fit to a client. Constantly striving to find technology that puts our clients first and does not burden them with outdated or unnecessary technological changes, Lido focuses on giving clients the best user experience possible.

Q. How do you balance the customer service aspect with the security aspects?

Unnecessary layers of security can cause slowdowns in productivity, increasing the importance of balancing top of the line security and security tools for employees. Lido emphasizes this by using multi-authentication, single sign-on, mobile device management, and security policies that protect our users’ and clients’ data while not creating delays. Lido takes very seriously the need for protecting clients’ data with encryption tools, backups, and policies that would cause clients more disruption if they were impacted then having a strong frontline response. Educating clients on the layers of protection that Lido has internally and for their use is always top of mind.

Q. Why do you think wealth management is important and is there any frequent misconceptions about it?

Proper wealth management asks the questions that we don’t know to ask about asset protection, investment allocations, and growing our top line while protecting the bottom line. That is just the beginning of wealth management as it relates to our family’s growth, economic cycles, and potential events that could cause harm to our loved ones (such as healthcare), which should be an integral part of every family’s life strategy. Misconceptions are when wealth planning is confused with singular advice such as an investment recommendation or anything based on anything other than acting as a fiduciary for the client’s best interest.

Q. Employees must derive a sense of meaning from their work, and to feel good about the companies for which they work. Does your company stand for something beyond simply increasing profits?

Our team members spend the vast majority of their waking hours dedicated to the company and helping Lido achieve its overall goals. This communal sense of purpose is integral to maintaining a healthy work-life balance and cultivating a team mentality that Lido feels is key to a healthy work environment. This includes finding ways to utilize our for-profit mentality to help team members pursue their corporate, personal, and general life goals, which ultimately is embracing the true American dream. We encourage collaboration amongst our team members rather than the ‘dog-eat-dog’ environment prevalent in many other financial service firms. We frequently say, “it is called work, not fun but you can have fun at work”, which is the environment our management team always strives to provide for our employees. Also, Lido has most recently been working directly with employees to create a Diversity and Inclusion committee that is working on programs to help students in underprivileged areas on the college track. Our civic and social responsibility to not only empower others but to allow our team to work together and create a project they feel proud of is integral to Lido’s overall mission.

Q. What are the different strategies that you implement and how do you develop one?

We incorporate a myriad of both liquid and non-liquid core, tactical, and alternative strategies including tactical allocations, income strategies, real estate (debt and equity), hedging strategies, and private investments to complement more traditional investments. The end goal is to quantify and measure risk/return, provide predictable cash-flows, and have the ability to position for opportunities when they appear. Lido creates strategies designed to actively manage a client’s portfolios and concerns while constantly thinking about the future. This includes proactively creating a recovery portfolio for our current economic and social climate, as well as planning for any new potential issues that may arise.

Q. Do you have any new services ready to be launched?

Lido Advisors is always working diligently to launch the best products and services. The firm takes the time to properly scrutinize services and rollouts and we always have improvements in production being tested and readied for appropriate release. This can be minor releases to our internal systems to improve productivity to major rollouts of client-centric tools to bring the best to our clients. We are rolling out an enhanced tax planning service in addition to what we already provide for our clients in the way of coordination of tax planning and tax preparation with their outside CPAs. We are excited about all of our upcoming launches!

Gregory P. Kushner: A Dynamic Leader

Gregory P. Kushner, Founder, serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Lido Advisors LLC. Greg started his career as a CPA* and worked in large accounting firms focused on Personal Financial Planning for high net worth and Ultra High Net Worth families. He was recruited to run a Family Office for an ultra-high net worth family in Beverly Hills, CA in the early 1990s where he quickly realized that he knew many other heads of large family offices and that it would make sense to meet regularly to compare notes on best practices and to consider co-investing opportunities. It was these meetings that helped generate the idea of Lido Consulting in 1995 to be a resource for the family office community. Subsequently, Lido Advisors was formed in 1999 to provide the same approach to wealth management for high net worth individuals that wealthy families utilize. Today, Lido manages over $5.4 Billion of assets for clients. (* Inactive CPA licensed in the State of California)

“We dedicate our resources to the development of coordinated wealth planning to offer innovative, creative, and cutting-edge solutions to high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals, families, and charitable organizations across the U.S.”