Principal, Managing Director

 

Matthew Sanes is a third-generation financial professional whose personal mission dovetails perfectly with the two firms he runs. “I’m dedicated to serving underserved communities,” Matthew says. “We created Wealth Innovations to help young professionals, who often aren’t given adequate attention because people in their 30s and 40s are considered ‘less profitable’. Conversely, we established Leveraged Solutions to help people 50+–retirees and pre-retirees–who are often ‘sold’ on high-fee investment products. Every single client, whether older or younger, wealthy or not, deserves an overarching plan delivered with our full focus, expertise and impartial advice,” says Sanes.

Harold Sanes, a 46-year veteran in the insurance and estate-planning business, is Matthew’s father and business partner. His grandfather, William Sanes, is now retired at 91.

Matthew himself has over ten years of experience in the financial industry, and holds a bachelor’s degree in management with an emphasis in finance from Florida Atlantic University. Unlike many other degreed professionals who started out at big brokerage firms, Matthew began his career working for a national wholesaler. “Instead of pushing products to meet sales quotas, I was able to learn about the investment architecture underlying various financial products. I observed how the most successful financial advisors met their clients’ needs, and how less successful advisors didn’t. I often tell people that my choice to work for a wholesaler instead of Wall Street took my career from 0 to 160 miles per hour in record time; I have experience that would have taken me several decades to acquire otherwise,” Sanes says.

He directs his two firms to use state-of-the-art financial planning tools which analyze more than historic performance when they design clients’ portfolios. “We can’t control returns, but we can control fees–and minimizing expenses can lead to much higher client returns in the long run,” says Matthew. They pride themselves on attention to detail and delivering investment recommendations based on a universe of options not specific to one firm. He says, “We deliberately chose to be independent advisor representatives so we could give unbiased advice.”

Matthew is married to his college sweetheart, Jennifer Sanes, who is a CPA and works as chief financial officer for a large property and casualty insurance company. For fun, he plays and teaches tournament poker, which challenges both his math and strategy skills. “I have a passion for poker because it’s like a game of chess, except you can’t see the opponents’ moves until the very end,” he says.