During a recent meeting with a prospective client in Knoxville, Tennessee, Kurt Schumacher saw an expression he’s seen many times throughout his career counseling high-net-worth individuals.
“This was a guy who came up from nothing; he never had anything in his life,” says Schumacher, a wealth strategist for United Community. “Now, as a result of his hard work, he’s come into meaningful wealth … and the complexity that comes with it. He’s been managing everything on his own, and I could literally see the exhaustion on his face.”
It can be overwhelming for individuals and families to deal with complex financial situations on their own. They face challenges that could include deciding where and how to invest, finding proper insurance, planning retirement, transitioning a business, or setting up and administering a trust or estate plan.
Schumacher says clients, particularly business owners, attain financial success but often remain unprepared for key business and life events.
“While they’ve done superb work growing their business or personal wealth, they often haven’t taken basic, but crucial, steps to maximize the sale value of the business, or to make sure that at the end of the day their wealth is
transferred to loved ones in a tax-efficient and asset-protected manner,” he says. “It’s shocking how many wealthy clients have wills or buy-sell agreements that are 20 years old.”
Helping those clients is the goal for Schumacher and his colleagues at United Community Private Wealth, part of a comprehensive wealth-management division the bank launched in early 2025. The program allows a client to work one-on-one with a private banker, who coordinates planning and investment services with other team members as appropriate for each client.
United Community is in an optimal position to meet the needs of these clients, Schumacher says.
“There’s not a lot of people in our market who can offer comprehensive services like us,” he says. “The large banks have essentially abandoned all but the highest-net-worth clients, and small local banks just don’t have the capacity to do what we’re doing.”
And the United team is prepared for the challenge.
“Everyone who’s joining Private Wealth has a ton of experience,” Schumacher says. “We’re attracting the best people to create a new and unique group.”
Providing investment advisory services and — at no additional cost — high-end counseling on estate planning, tax strategies, philanthropy and business transfers is the core aim of United Community Private Wealth. And potential clients, like the one in Knoxville, are taking notice.
“We can take the burden of complexity off of his shoulders,” Schumacher says. “And that will give him the most valuable thing of all: peace of mind.”
