Rankings feel decisive. They are not. They are a flashlight, not a floor plan. If you are comparing a financial advisor for retirement income, a business sale, or money that has to last across two generations, the ranking is a starting point and a poor ending. I have watched families treat a list position like a warranty. It is closer to a well-lit storefront. You still have to walk inside.
What The Ranking Number Quietly Does And Does Not Say
The published methodology behind this particular list looks past raw assets. That matters. A firm can gather a mountain of money and still run a thin planning practice. Another can stay smaller and still do the unglamorous work: tax coordination, beneficiary reviews, cash-flow maps, the conversation nobody wants about long-term care. The ranking is built to notice more than size. Even so, a list cannot sit in your kitchen and hear how you actually argue about money.
SJS Investment Services is described as serving a wide mix of clients with planning needs that stretch across generations. That sentence is easy to skim. It is also the whole job. Multi-generation work is not a slogan about “family wealth.” It is three different time horizons arguing in the same portfolio. Parents want income that does not vanish. Adult children want growth and clarity. Grandchildren, if the plan is honest, are mostly a tax and trust question, not a marketing photo.
Perhaps the most useful way to read a No. 13 placement is as a signal of staying power plus breadth, not as a promise of outperformance. Nothing in a public ranking profile tells you last year’s return, the fee schedule, or whether the person across the table will still be there in seven years. Those gaps are not a flaw in the firm. They are a flaw in treating any list as a complete file.
A Snapshot You Can Actually Use
Here is the profile in plain language, stripped of ceremony. The firm is headquartered at 6711 Monroe Street, Building IV, Suite A, in Sylvania, Ohio. Leadership listed publicly includes Scott Savage as founder and chief executive officer, Kevin Kelly as president and chief compliance officer, and Jennifer Smiljanich as managing director and senior advisor. Assets under management sit at $2.9 billion. Accounts under management sit at 3,006. The practice has been operating for 31 years. It accepts clients nationwide and maintains offices in three states. There is no stated minimum asset threshold.
That is a sturdy mid-to-large independent profile. Not a wirehouse skyscraper. Not a two-person shop running out of a spare bedroom. Large enough that compliance, custody, and continuity should be real operational questions, small enough that a household can still ask who, exactly, owns the relationship.
A ranking is a well-lit storefront. You still have to walk inside and ask who answers the phone when the market is ugly.
I like the compliance title sitting next to the president role. It does not prove a culture. It does tell you the firm is willing to put a name on the rulebook. In advisory work, the boring titles often matter more than the visionary ones. Chief compliance officer is one of those titles. If a practice treats that job as decoration, clients usually find out during a transfer, a complaint, or a messy inheritance. Not before.
Assets, Accounts, And The Math People Skip
Two numbers, side by side, tell a quieter story than either one alone. Divide $2.9 billion by 3,006 accounts and you land near $965,000 per account, on average. Averages lie, of course. A handful of large relationships can pull the mean up while plenty of smaller households sit well below it. Still, the figure is a useful smell test. This is not a practice built only on ultra-high-net-worth family offices, and it is not a micro-account call center either.
Scale has a temperament. At a few thousand accounts, a firm needs process. Meeting notes. A real client portal. Someone who notices when a required minimum distribution was missed. Someone who can onboard a new household without reinventing the folder. I have found that households romanticize the tiny firm and fear the large one, then discover the opposite problem: the tiny firm forgot the beneficiary form, and the large one buried them in a queue. The middle, when it is well run, is often where the work actually gets done.
Assets under management are not the same thing as advice quality. A billion can be gathered with a decent model portfolio and a busy calendar. Planning quality shows up in the unbilled hours: the Roth conversion sketch, the Social Security timing note, the conversation about whether the lake house is an asset or a family argument waiting for a funeral. None of that appears in an assets figure. The ranking’s choice to weigh factors beyond assets is, in my view, the only reason a list like this is worth a second look.
Thirty-One Years Is A Filter, Not A Trophy
Thirty-one years in business means the firm has lived through more than one bad decade. The early 2000s. The financial crisis. The pandemic shock. The inflation spike that made cash feel clever and bonds feel betrayed. Longevity does not equal skill. It does equal survival, and survival in this industry usually requires clients who did not all leave at once.
Founder-led firms carry a specific risk that glossy profiles rarely mention. The founder is the brand until, one day, the founder is not in the room. Scott Savage is listed as founder and chief executive. That is a fact worth respecting and a succession question worth asking out loud. Who runs the relationships if the founder steps back? Is the president role, held by Kevin Kelly, an operating succession or a compliance-and-management seat? Is Jennifer Smiljanich’s managing director title a client-facing bench or a title on a page? You will not get that from a ranking. You get it by asking.
Age of a firm also shapes investment habits. Practices that have been around for three decades tend to have scars. Some become cautious to a fault. Some keep a house view that made sense in 1998 and never quite updated. A good first meeting listens for whether the language has moved with the tax code, with required distribution rules, with the way equity compensation actually works now. If every answer sounds like a brochure from a prior cycle, longevity is costume.
No Minimum Sounds Generous. Read It Twice.
No minimum asset threshold is the line that made me pause. Many ranked firms quietly select for complexity by setting a floor: a million, two million, sometimes more. A floor is not snobbery by default. Planning a concentrated stock position, a pension decision, and a trust for three kids takes hours. If the fee is a percentage of assets, a small account can be a money-losing client. Firms that skip the floor are either subsidizing smaller relationships, charging in a way that is not asset-based, or being selective in a different currency, like time and fit.
So the absence of a minimum is not automatically a welcome mat. It can be. It can also mean the published policy and the practical policy are cousins, not twins. A fair question in a first call is simple. What does a typical new client look like, and what kind of household do you usually refer elsewhere? Polite firms answer that without flinching. Evasive ones talk about “custom relationships” until you forget the question.
For younger households, or for someone who just sold a small business and is not yet “wealthy” in the brochure sense, a firm willing to start without a hard asset gate can be a genuine opening. For a retiree with a large taxable account, the same policy is less relevant than fees, tax location, and who actually builds the withdrawal plan. Same fact. Different weight. That is how you should read almost every line in a firm profile.
Three Offices, Fifty States, And The Geography Trap
Physical offices in Arizona, Illinois, and Ohio, with clients accepted in every state, is a modern advisory shape. The headquarters sits in Sylvania, on the western edge of the Toledo area. Arizona and Illinois give the firm a footprint beyond a single Midwest county. Nationwide acceptance means the legal and registration side is built for distance, at least on paper.
Geography used to be the whole relationship. You drove to the office, shook a hand, looked at paper. Some of that still matters, especially when documents need a notary or when a surviving spouse wants a person, not a portal. A lot of it does not. Portfolio reporting, tax packets, and meeting notes travel fine. What travels badly is context. A planner in Ohio does not automatically know how your state’s estate tax, property tax, or Medicaid rules behave. Multi-state families, and SJS is set up to meet them, need a team that either knows those rules or knows when to bring in local counsel.
I would not treat an out-of-state office as a problem. I would treat it as a prompt. Ask which office would own your relationship. Ask whether reviews happen in person, by video, or both. Ask what happens if you move. A firm that already works across state lines should have a boring, clear answer. Boring is a compliment here.
- Confirm which office and which advisor would actually own the relationship.
- Ask how state-specific tax and estate questions get handled when you do not live near an office.
- Clarify the mix of in-person reviews and remote meetings before you assume either one.
- Find out what a move to a fourth state would change, if anything, in service or registration.
Planning Across Generations Is The Real Product
The public description leans on breadth of planning across multiple generations. That is where a firm like this either earns a high ranking or merely occupies one. Generational planning is a stack, not a vibe.
At the near end, it is cash flow and risk. Emergency reserves. Debt that should be gone before retirement. Insurance that matches the actual household, not a packaged bundle. In the middle, it is accumulation and tax location: which dollars sit in taxable accounts, which sit in tax-deferred accounts, which might belong in a Roth after a careful conversion window. At the far end, it is estate design, beneficiary alignment, and the awkward meeting where adult children learn what exists and what does not.
Most families do not fail because the portfolio lagged a benchmark by a point. They fail because the pieces never spoke to each other. The retirement account named an ex-spouse. The trust was signed and then ignored. The business owner had a buy-sell agreement from a different decade. A practice that claims multi-generation range should be able to show a process for those seams, not just a model allocation.
In my experience, the best tell is the second meeting, not the first. The first meeting is theater, even at good firms. The second meeting is where someone should return with your numbers rearranged into a decision. Claim Social Security at this age or that one. Convert this slice or wait. Pay off the mortgage or keep the liquidity. If the second meeting is another slide about philosophy, you are still in the brochure.
Leadership Titles Are A Map, If You Read Them
Three names are public. Scott Savage, founder and chief executive. Kevin Kelly, president and chief compliance officer. Jennifer Smiljanich, managing director and senior advisor. Titles are not biographies. They do sketch a structure: a founder at the top, an operating and compliance lead, and a senior advisory seat that sounds client-facing.
Dual roles deserve a plain question. A president who is also chief compliance officer is wearing two hats that sometimes pull in different directions. Growth wants new accounts. Compliance wants clean files. Neither hat is sinister. The tension is the point. Households rarely ask how that tension gets resolved. They should. A short answer about review committees, outside counsel, or simply “I do not approve my own exceptions” is more reassuring than a speech about culture.
Senior advisor is the title I would chase if I were hiring the firm. Rankings celebrate the institution. You hire a person. Who prepares the plan? Who presents it? Who calls when a parent dies on a Tuesday? If the senior advisor on the masthead is not your advisor, ask to meet the one who would be. Charm at the top of the org chart is not a service model.
How A Sensible Household Reads Any Advisor List
Lists are built for publishers and for firms. Households borrow them. That is fine, as long as the borrowing is skeptical. A high placement can mean strong reported planning, long tenure, clean growth, or a methodology that happened to favor the firm’s shape this year. It can also mean the firm was good at submitting a thorough questionnaire. Both can be true.
I would use a ranking the way I use a restaurant review from a stranger with good taste. It gets the place on the short list. It does not order the meal. For SJS, the short-list case is straightforward: decades in business, billions in assets, thousands of accounts, more than one office, no hard asset floor, and a stated focus on planning that is wider than portfolio management. That is enough to justify a conversation. It is not enough to justify a transfer.
Recent industry commentary, the careful kind, keeps returning to the same warning. Past list position is not a forecast. Advisory quality is lumpy. A firm can be excellent for a retiring engineer with a pension and clumsy for a founder holding private stock. Fit is a local fact. Rank is a national average wearing a nice jacket.
Questions Worth Asking Before Any Paperwork
If I had one afternoon with a firm of this profile, I would skip the market outlook. Outlooks are weather. I would ask about the plumbing.
- Are you a fiduciary for the advice you give me, and in what legal capacity?
- How are you paid, in percentages, flat fees, hourly work, or a mix, and what does that look like on a household like mine?
- Who has custody of the assets, and what name appears on the statements?
- What does the planning process produce in writing after ninety days?
- How do you coordinate with a tax preparer and an estate attorney you did not choose?
- What is the succession plan if my lead advisor leaves or retires?
- Which clients do you turn away, and why?
None of those questions are hostile. A prepared firm answers them the way a good pilot answers a preflight question: briefly, specifically, without taking it personally. Watch for wandering. Watch for a pivot to performance charts. Performance charts have a place later, once you know what the money is for.
Ask for a sample of the deliverable with names removed. A plan that is twelve pages of generic risk text is not a plan. A plan that shows your spending, your tax buckets, your insurance gaps, and a decision calendar is a plan. The difference is obvious once you have seen both. Many people never ask to see either.
Fees, Custody, And The Unfashionable Details
The public ranking profile does not publish a fee schedule. That is normal. It is also the first thing a serious prospect should request. Percentage fees on assets feel painless until you annualize them next to the actual work. A flat planning fee can feel steep until you notice it does not rise just because the market did. Neither model is morally superior. Opacity is the problem.
Custody is the other unfashionable detail. Assets should sit with an independent custodian, in your name, with statements that do not depend on the advisor’s word. This is not a slight against any particular firm. It is the basic architecture that kept clients whole when a few famous frauds proved that pooled, advisor-controlled accounts are a bad idea. If a firm of SJS’s size and age is doing this correctly, the answer will be dull. Dull is what you want.
Trading costs, fund expenses, and advisory fees are three different bites. People argue about the advisory fee and ignore the fund fee, or the reverse. A clear firm will put all three on one page. If the conversation treats cost as impolite, that is information too.
A Practical Way To Compare Firms Like This
Rankings collapse a firm into a single integer. Households need a wider grid. The table below is not a scorecard of SJS against named rivals. It is a way to hold any ranked firm, including this one, against the job you actually need done. Fill it after the meeting, not before. Memory flatters the person who talked the most.
| Decision Lens | What To Listen For | Weak Answer Sounds Like |
| Planning depth | A written map of tax, income, estate, and cash flow | Philosophy slides and a model portfolio only |
| Fee clarity | All-in cost on your actual account size | We are competitive, then a subject change |
| People | Named advisor, backup, and review rhythm | The team will take care of you |
| Geography | How out-of-state rules get covered | We work with everyone, no further detail |
| Continuity | A succession path you can repeat back | The founder is not going anywhere |
| Fit | A clear description of clients they decline | We can help anyone who is serious |
Notice what is missing from that grid. A promise to beat the market. If beating a benchmark is your only hire criterion, you may not want a planning-led firm at all. You may want a different product, and you should be honest about that before you consume someone’s planning hours. SJS is being presented, in the ranking write-up, as a planning firm with a wide client mix. Judge it on that claim.
Where Rankings Tend To Mislead Smart People
Smart people love a sorted list. It feels like due diligence. Sometimes it is the opposite. A sorted list lets you outsource the uncomfortable comparison and then feel finished. I have seen executives do this with advisors the same way they do it with schools and surgeons: pick the ranked name, skip the site visit, act surprised later.
Three distortions show up again and again. First, size bias. Bigger assets photograph well, even when the methodology tries to look past them. Second, tenure bias. Old firms look stable, and many are, but age can also hide a service model that has not been redesigned since paper statements. Third, narrative bias. A clean sentence about generations and nationwide clients reads like a strategy. It might be a strategy. It might be a sentence. You only know after someone applies it to your tax return and your family tree.
There is a fourth distortion that rarely gets named. Rankings are snapshots. The profile you are reading reflects a moment: $2.9 billion, 3,006 accounts, 31 years, a No. 13 place. Next year the integer moves. The work either continues or it does not. Hire the work.
Hire the work, not the integer. Integers move. The withdrawal plan has to survive a bad year either way.
– A useful rule when any advisor list starts to feel like a verdict
What Multi-Generation Clients Actually Need From A Firm This Size
Let me get concrete, because “breadth of planning” can hide in abstraction. Picture a household that looks ordinary on a form and complicated in real life. Two incomes, one of them uneven. A paid-off house and a parent who is not. A brokerage account from an old employer plan. A small inheritance that arrived with cost-basis mysteries. A child who might need help and a child who does not want it. This is the client a no-minimum, multi-office, multi-decade firm is implicitly saying it can hold.
The work starts with a balance sheet that includes the awkward lines. Not just funds. The cabin. The loan to a sibling. The stock options that vest on a date nobody wrote down. Then a spending number that is not a round aspiration. Then a tax map: what is already deferred, what is still flexible, what a conversion would cost this year versus a later year when income drops. Then the estate layer, which is mostly titles and beneficiaries, not a leather trust binder.
A firm with three thousand accounts cannot do that as improvisation. It needs a repeatable path and enough senior time to handle the exceptions. That is the operational bet behind a ranking that claims to look beyond assets. If SJS has earned a high place, some version of that path exists. Your job is to see the version that would be used on you, not the version described for a profile.
Retirement Income Is Where Theory Gets Rude
Accumulation is flattering. You add money, markets help or they do not, the line generally wants to rise. Distribution is rude. Every withdrawal is a tax decision and a sequence decision. Take too much from the wrong account in a down year and you lock in damage that a ranking cannot see. Delay Social Security without a bridge plan and you may create a cash problem that forces a sale.
This is the zone where a planning-forward advisor should sound specific. Bucket logic, guardrails, a tax order of withdrawals, a view on Roth conversions in the gap years between retirement and required distributions. You do not need to agree with every lever. You need to hear levers, not adjectives. “We are long-term investors” is an adjective wearing a suit. “We would fill the 22 percent bracket with conversions for four years, then stop” is a lever.
SJS has not published that level of portfolio doctrine in the ranking profile, and it should not have to. Doctrine belongs in the meeting, matched to a household. What the profile does support is the claim that planning needs, not just asset gathering, are part of the firm’s identity. Retirement income is the cleanest test of whether that identity is operational.
Tax Location Beats A Clever Fund Pick More Often Than People Admit
I will risk a small opinion. For taxable households, asset location often matters more than the last fund on the recommended list. Bonds and tax-inefficient income in tax-deferred accounts. Broad equity in taxable accounts where the basis can be managed. Roth space reserved for the highest expected growth, if the conversion math works. None of this is exotic. It is also routinely skipped by firms that lead with performance theater.
A 31-year firm with nearly a thousand accounts per billion, roughly, has seen every version of the taxable-account mess. Old mutual funds with embedded gains. Employer stock with a low basis. Municipal bonds bought because a prior advisor liked the word tax-free. The repair work is slow and often correct. If a first-year plan promises to “optimize” everything in a quarter, be curious about the tax bill that optimization creates.
Ask how gain budgets are set. Ask whether tax-loss harvesting is systematic or occasional. Ask who signs the letter to your preparer. Coordination is the unsexy advantage of a real planning firm. A portfolio that ignores the tax return is only half a portfolio.
The Human Side Of A Compliance-Heavy Business
Money talk is intimate in a way people underestimate. You are describing the marriage, the private worry about a child’s spending, the parent you are supporting without telling the siblings. A firm can have the right custodian and still be the wrong room. That is not soft advice. It is why so many technically fine relationships die in year three.
Listen for how the advisor handles disagreement. A good one will tell you when a withdrawal rate is fantasy. A weak one will nod and rebuild the chart until the fantasy fits. Rankings do not measure backbone. You can measure it in a meeting by floating a bad idea on purpose. See whether it gets a polite redirect or a silent rewrite.
Also notice who speaks. If only one person in a couple is addressed, the plan is already fragile. Surviving spouses are the clients who find out whether the relationship was with a household or with the person who liked talking markets. A firm that advertises multi-generation work should be fluent with both.
A Midwest Base Is Not A Limitation
Sylvania is not a financial-media capital. That can be an advantage. Coastal firms sometimes price the zip code into the manner, if not the fee. A Toledo-area headquarters with Arizona and Illinois offices suggests a practice built on clients who live in real housing markets, not only on clients who live near a skyline. Nationwide reach keeps the door open for people who left and kept the relationship, or who found the firm from somewhere else entirely.
Do not romanticize geography in either direction. Talent clusters, and so does complacency. The relevant test is responsiveness and competence, which you can sample. Send a specific question before you become a client. Time the reply. Read whether the reply answers the question or answers a neighboring, easier question. That tiny test has saved people more money than any ranking integer.
What I Would Not Assume From No. 13
I would not assume the firm is the best advisor in Ohio, or in Arizona, or for you. I would not assume fees are low because the list is prestigious. Prestige and price are unreliable cousins. I would not assume every advisor at the firm plans at the same depth. Firms have ranges. The published senior advisor is not a guarantee that your assigned advisor has the same habits.
I would not assume investment performance led the ranking. The public framing emphasizes factors beyond assets under management and a planning relationship across generations. If performance is your scoreboard, ask for it directly, with benchmarks and time periods you choose, net of fees. If planning is your scoreboard, ask to see a plan.
I also would not assume a problem because a firm is ranked thirteenth rather than first. The gap between the top of a hundred-firm list and the teens is often methodology noise plus different business models. Chasing the single top name, then discovering the minimum or the style does not fit, is a common and avoidable loop.
A short personal filter before any transfer: Can they explain fees on one page? Can they name the custodian without pausing? Can they describe a client they referred away? Can they show succession in a sentence? Can they put your plan in writing? If two answers wobble, keep looking.
How The Account Count Should Change Your Expectations
Three thousand accounts is a community, not a boutique circle. Expect systems. Expect a client-service layer that is not the same person who designs the tax plan. That division of labor is healthy when the handoffs are clean, and irritating when you repeat your story four times. Ask how notes are shared. Ask whether a service associate can answer a transfer question without booking the senior advisor. These are small frictions that decide whether the relationship feels like a practice or a call center with nicer furniture.
The average account size, near seven figures if you trust the mean, also sets a tone. Meetings should be able to go past the basics. If your situation is simpler, say so, and ask whether the service model still makes sense at your asset level even without a formal minimum. If your situation is denser, a private business, equity compensation, a special-needs trust, ask for an example of similar work. You are not asking for gossip. You are asking for pattern recognition.
A Note On Switching Advisors Without Setting Money On Fire
People treat a new advisor search like a divorce and a wedding in the same month. The emotional part is real. The mechanical part is where costly mistakes happen. In-kind transfers beat liquidations when the tax bill would be ugly. Cost basis has to come along. Beneficiaries should be rechecked, not assumed. Automatic withdrawals need a parallel setup so a bill does not bounce during the move. A competent receiving firm lives in these details. A glamorous one sometimes does not.
If you already have an advisor, the fair comparison is not ranking versus ranking. It is plan versus plan. Ask both firms to address the same three decisions. Then compare specificity, cost, and whether you trust the person who will execute. Leaving a mediocre relationship for a famous name, without that comparison, is how people pay twice: once in taxes, once in disruption.
SJS, on the facts available, is equipped to receive complex accounts. Equipped is not the same as eager, and eager is not the same as right. The no-minimum policy suggests they will at least take the call. The rest is a fit question no list can close.
The Quiet Advantage Of A Named Compliance Lead
Retail clients almost never ask about compliance until something breaks. That is understandable and slightly backward. The existence of a named president and chief compliance officer, Kevin Kelly in this profile, is a small piece of institutional muscle. Policies, advertising review, personal trading rules, cybersecurity expectations, books and records. None of it is romantic. All of it is why a 31-year firm is still a firm.
You can ask a client-level version of this without pretending to be an examiner. How do you protect client data? How are wire requests verified? What happens if an email asks for a money movement that does not match the usual pattern? Firms that have rehearsed the answer sound calm. Firms that have not sound creative. Creative is the wrong texture for wires.
Putting The Profile Next To Your Actual Life
Try a simple overlay. Write your next five money decisions on a card. Retirement date. Pension or lump sum. A house downsizing. A gift to a child. A business exit. Then ask whether a firm with this shape is built for that card. Nationwide clients and three offices suggest they have seen versions of your card. The planning emphasis suggests they want the card, not only the portfolio. The asset base suggests they can staff the work. The missing pieces, fees, lead advisor, written plan, are the interview.
If your card is mostly “pick better funds,” you may be overbuying the relationship. If your card is “make these decisions once, document them, and keep my spouse from having to reconstruct them,” you are in the market this kind of firm claims to serve. Match the purchase to the card. It sounds obvious. It is the step ranking culture constantly skips.
A Measured Reading Of The Whole Picture
SJS Investment Services arrives in this year’s advisor ranking as a long-running, multi-office firm with $2.9 billion under management, just over three thousand accounts, no published asset minimum, and a stated practice of planning across generations. Scott Savage leads as founder and chief executive. Kevin Kelly holds the president and chief compliance roles. Jennifer Smiljanich is listed as managing director and senior advisor. The headquarters is in Sylvania, Ohio, with additional offices in Arizona and Illinois, and the firm accepts clients in all 50 states.
That is a coherent public picture. It supports a conversation if you want planning depth more than a hot take on markets, and if you are willing to test fees, custody, and the actual human who would do the work. It does not support a transfer on rank alone. No serious profile should. The list got the firm into the room. The room still has to earn the relationship, one specific decision at a time.
If I were sitting on the other side of that first call, I would keep the ranking in my back pocket and put the questions on the table. Who owns the plan. What it costs. Where the assets live. What happens when the founder is not the one on the line. Those answers age better than any integer next to a name. And if the answers are plain, specific, and a little unglamorous, that is usually the sound of a firm that has been doing the job long enough to stop performing it.
]]>
