Mike Boroughs
Mike Boroughs’ interest in developing strategies for tech professionals to manage their finances and protect their wealth started when he was young. After watching close family members become overnight millionaires in the tech industry, only to lose it all in the dot-com crash due to lack of diversification, he swore he would not let that happen to anyone else. After graduating as valedictorian from the University of San Diego, he embarked on a 13-year career in the financial industry, including roles as an auditor at Ernst & Young and an assistant portfolio manager at Glacier Peak Capital. In 2014, he brought the experience and insight befitting his stature as a Five Star Wealth Manager to cofound a company dedicated to specifically helping people in the tech industry build and protect their wealth—Fortis Financial Group. As a managing partner, Mike is responsible for designing the firm’s future and leading the wealth management team to provide excellent, insightful services to clients, as well as investing in team development and managing client portfolios. In 2021, Mike also launched the Fortis Digital Asset Fund LP, focused on providing accredited and qualified clients access to the most promising crypto / blockchain investment opportunities. Under his leadership, the firm has seen massive growth, including 130% top line growth during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Based in in Seattle, Washington, Fortis Financial Group is a holistic wealth management firm that specializes in working with technology professionals, typically high-income families with material holdings of company stock. They provide services in financial planning, insurance, accounting and bookkeeping, and mortgages, and have an in-house equity hedge fund and crypto hedge fund. They’re also currently building out a branch for tax and real estate services. They help clients create personalized, realistic, and actionable financial plans for all manner of life events, including real estate decisions, and help them navigate their investment options to best optimize and protect their wealth. Fortis also pioneered a new net-worth based billing approach, instead of being tied to investable assets for compensation. “Clients are way more focused on optimizing and growing their overall net worth, not on ensuring their assets are on our platform. Sometimes the best decision to make for a client is to tell them to take assets from under our management to buy real estate, pay off a loan, or invest in another company. We want to make sure we are on the same side of the table as the client,” Mike says.
Mike’s experience as an auditor, advisor and fund manager gives him unique insight into his clients’ situations and the best solutions for them. “At the end of the day, what I believe we do better than anyone else out there is we are better problem solvers,” he says, “so when clients bring us issues they are facing, whether they are simple or complex, our team goes to work to find a solution.” Rather than being raised in a big box firm with a very structured training plan, Mike’s multifaceted experience allows him to think outside the box and bring broad range tools to bear to help his client.
One of Mike’s favorite and proudest achievements at Fortis is the team of talented and dedicated people he’s helped cultivate. “Our company feels like family, and I would go to bat for any of them,” he says. “Our culture is super important to me and something we spend a lot of time actively designing.” The team is all aligned with the values of integrity, honesty, and transparency, along with a commitment to learning and evolving to get the best results for clients. And they’re great friends, too, regularly participating in team activities outside of the office. They even have a monthly book reading where they read about business strategies, then discuss the reading and apply it to their own practices. “Growth is a top value for me personally, and I think everyone here is similarly dedicated to continual improvement,” Mike says. “Growing and learning is the number one thing we can do to improve ourselves, our business and our clients’ lives.”
Mike Boroughs
Co-Founder & Managing Partner — Fortis Financial Group
Website: www.fortis.capital
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeboroughs
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