What is Wealth? Part 1 of 3

According to formal definitions, wealth is "an abundance of valuable resources or material possessions and the control of such assets. According to Wikipedia, a wealthy individual, community, or nation thus has more resources than a poor one. The opposite of wealth is destitution. When positioned in these terms, wealth becomes quite a relative and thought provoking idea.


As the financial services industry has transitioned to using wealth management as a fancy term for investment management and/or insurance product sales, the moniker has become diluted and misunderstood. The turmoil that exploded the financial industry in recent years has caused many of the large firms to re-invent themselves and the perception of what they do. Do not be fooled, in most cases wealth management has simply become a name change without any fundamental business model adjustment to support it. The financial industry is a marketing machine, and will do and change swiftly to keep or take any market share possible.


Wealth Management, in its most basic definition, is the proper fiduciary process of overseeing, directing and monitoring wealth. This begs the need to define wealth. Wealth, as discussed earlier, is most often associated with abundance or material supremacy. While we cannot argue the perception of this being the acceptable definition, at Criterion we have sought to not be cornered by the pretense of wealth merely being a dollar amount or genre. Wealth is always inclusive of money, but is not defined only by the amount of it.

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