– Advisory Business
GSA is a Texas limited liability company formed in February 2019. GuideStone Advisors, a Texas non-
profit corporation, is GSA’s manager and member that was established in June 2008 by GSFR, which is
also a Texas non-profit corporation and the sole member of GuideStone Advisors. GSA is the successor
to GuideStone Advisors. Prior to February 12, 2019, GuideStone Advisors provided investment advisory
services to clients, as described below. GSA’s other member is GuideStone Resource Management, Inc.,
a Texas corporation (“GSRM”), which is a wholly owned subsidiary of GSFR.
GSA provides advisory services to individuals, trusts, estates, charitable organizations and other
business entities. As of December 31, 2023, GSA managed $1.29 billion in client assets on a
discretionary basis.
GSA is affiliated with GSFR and its subsidiaries, GuideStone Financial Services (“GFS”) (a
registered broker-dealer), and GuideStone Capital Management, LLC (“GSCM”) (a registered
investment adviser to GuideStone Funds, a registered open-end management investment company).
All of GSA’s investment adviser representatives (“advisors”) (and other personnel) are employees
of GSFR, and GSFR bears a material amount of the operating and other expenses of GSA.
Accordingly, GSA depends upon the revenues earned by GSFR for its operations, including the
compensation to its advisors (who are charged with providing objective advice to clients) and
other personnel. GSFR’s revenues consist of, among other things, shareholder servicing (e.g.,
recordkeeping) fees paid to it by GuideStone Funds (and the Capital Preservation Fund sponsored
by GSFR (the “Capital Preservation Fund”)) for its services as an employee benefit plan
recordkeeper and trustee. GSFR also earns revenues indirectly from the management fees paid by
GuideStone Funds to GSCM (and directly from the management fees paid by the Capital
Preservation Fund to GSFR) and indirectly from the advisory fees paid to GSA. Additionally, all
advisors are also registered representatives with GFS, allowing them to provide brokerage
services to individuals along with the advisory services described in this Brochure.
When GSA is advising individuals on their assets in their employer-sponsored plan accounts with GSFR
or on their GuideStone Funds IRA or GuideStone Funds investments account (collectively “GuideStone
accounts”), model portfolios will be utilized that primarily consist of the available GuideStone Funds
and the Capital Preservation Fund (collectively “Affiliated Funds”) and may include other non-
GuideStone mutual funds, if available and as chosen by the employer within an employer-sponsored-
plan (“unaffiliated funds”). GSA’s advice may be the same or materially the same for different clients
with materially similar investment objectives and circumstances. GSA, its affiliates and its
representatives have a financial interest in recommending Affiliated Funds. However, clients are under
no obligation to purchase Affiliated Funds and there may be other similar funds available with the same
or better performance, with lower expenses, from which GSA, its affiliates and its representatives receive
no compensation whatsoever. GSA has developed policies and procedures to address these conflicts.
If your GSFR account offers unaffiliated funds, GSA may obtain your preferences for a (i) faith-based
recommendation (that only includes Affiliated Funds) or (ii) a recommendation that could include
unaffiliated funds in addition to or in place of Affiliated Funds. The relevant information will be
analyzed and used to determine your financial plan and make projections that will influence the advice
for your specific circumstances.
GSA adheres to the faith-based investing policy of GSFR and therefore does not invest in any company
that is publicly recognized (as determined by GSFR) for offering products or services that are
incompatible with the Christian values of GSFR, including but not limited to those involving abortion,
sexual immorality, alcohol, tobacco, or gambling. Investments in the Affiliated Funds or through an
SMA are consistent with this policy.
GSA, its personnel and affiliates will not be liable for any loss arising out of GSA’s advice or for any
other act or omission taken with respect to its services, except for any act or omission which constitutes
willful misfeasance, bad faith or gross negligence in the performance of its duties described in this
Brochure. Notwithstanding the foregoing, you should be aware that federal and state securities laws may
impose liabilities on GSA under certain circumstances. Therefore, nothing herein shall have the effect of
waiving, releasing or limiting any rights you may have under those laws or under any other laws that are
not permitted to be waived.
Investment Management Services
GSA provides investment management services according to your objectives, risk tolerance and
investment preferences. These details are described in your Investment Strategy, and you are able to
impose reasonable restrictions (described in more detail in the Restrictions section below) or meet your
investing goals by investing in other funds or investments for which GSA does not provide advice,
including some which may charge lower fees. Our investment management services can be offered by
themselves through an investment advisory agreement or packaged together with other services, such as
part of GuideStone Wealth ManagementTM, GuideStone Managed AccountsTM or GuideStone Personal
Advisory Services®. GSA does not provide tax or legal advice.
Your Investment Strategy may include a recommendation of an allocation of your eligible assets to a
Separately Managed Account (“SMA”) consisting of equity and/or fixed income securities that will be
managed on a discretionary basis by an unaffiliated third-party investment manager (“TPIM”), for an
additional fee paid to the TPIM from your SMA and will be held in brokerage accounts with an
unaffiliated GSA designated broker/dealer for facilitation of the SMA. TPIMs are SEC-registered
investment advisors selected by the advisor due to their expertise with various types of investment
strategies such as specific market expertise, strategic approach, efficient income management and
reputation. A recommendation to allocate your assets to an SMA for management by a TPIM will
consider various factors to determine if the investment is appropriate based on your financial needs,
goals, risk tolerance, investment horizons and objectives and the investment strategy and expertise and
performance of the TPIM investment. GSA will monitor the performance of the SMA and TPIM and
will have discretion to replace any TPIM based on our evaluation of the services provided and
performance achieved by the TPIM in accordance with your agreed upon Investment Strategy. The fees
you pay to GSA for our Investment Management and Planning Services will not be increased or reduced
by the fees you pay to the TPIM.
Once selected, a TPIM has discretion with respect to the portion of the assets placed with them, allowing
the TPIM to choose and prudently manage investments for you. In exercising their discretion, the TPIM
may develop an appropriate investment strategy, buying and selling securities in accordance with that
strategy, subject to restrictions imposed by GSA and/or you. Participation in a SMA strategy will be
subject to an investment minimum established by the TPIM or GSA. Assets in an employer benefit plan
are not eligible for placement in an SMA. No recommendation for an SMA will be given or should be
expected based solely on eligibility therefore your Investment Strategy may not include an SMA.
Upon enrollment in our investment management services, GSA will process any necessary investment
transactions to implement your Investment Strategy as efficiently as possible. Your Investment Strategy
will identify and describe how your enrolled accounts (your “Portfolio”) will be managed on a
discretionary basis. By enrolling, you give GSA the discretionary authority to process investment
transactions as described in your Investment Strategy. This would include executing transactions
necessary to maintain the target allocations specified in the Investment Strategy and might include
changing the specific investments used to implement the Investment Strategy (without prior notice to
you) to the extent any such changes are consistent with the Investment Strategy.
Financial Planning Services
GSA offers non-discretionary financial planning services, which may include an analysis of your
specific financial circumstances (e.g., assets, liabilities, risk tolerance, investment preferences, time
horizon, investment objectives and goals, tax considerations, insurance policies, spouse and family
information and current and future income and expenses) and make projections and recommendations
focused on improving your ability to achieve your investment objectives and goals. The projections are
based on multiple considerations including, but not limited to, historical and forward-looking projections
on the capital markets, inflation, economic factors and other matters. These projections, by their nature,
are inherently difficult to predict and might turn out to be wrong, and as a result there is no guarantee
you will meet your financial goals, even if you implement our advice. Additionally, our financial
planning services could include charitable gift planning, estate planning, tax planning, insurance
planning and other planning services. These financial planning services may be offered individually by
themselves through a financial planning agreement or packaged together with other services, such as
part of GuideStone Wealth Management, GuideStone Managed Accounts or GuideStone Personal
Advisory Services® (“GPAS”). The specific services provided will be described in your respective
advisory or financial planning agreement. GSA does not provide tax or legal advice.
GuideStone Wealth Management
GuideStone Wealth Management (“GWM”) is our advisory service for individuals that packages our
investment management services and full array of financial planning services together with a dedicated
personal advisor. This includes discretionary investment management according to your personalized
Investment Strategy, comprehensive financial planning, tax planning, estate planning, insurance
planning, charitable gift planning and other planning services. Together, these services will represent your
“Wealth Plan” and will be focused on helping you achieve your investment objectives and goals.
Your advisor will create, implement and maintain your personalized Investment Strategy and Wealth
Plan according to your objectives, circumstances and preferences. Your advisor will request to meet
with you to review your Wealth Plan (including your Investment Strategy) on at least an annual basis to
determine if there have been any changes to your circumstances that would necessitate adjustments to
your Wealth Plan.
GWM on an investment account or a non-ERISA retirement plan account allows you the option of
separately maintaining a Self-Directed Account (SDA) consisting of investments chosen, monitored and
managed by you at a GSA designated broker/dealer or Donor Advised Fund provider and receive
servicing and reporting from your GSA advisor. GWM is not available for ERISA plan accounts.
GuideStone Managed Accounts
GuideStone Managed Accounts (“GMA”) is our advisory service for individuals that packages a limited
set of financial planning services with our investment management services delivered by a team of
advisors. This includes discretionary investment management according to your Investment Strategy and
basic financial planning. Together, these services will represent your “Managed Plan” and will be
focused on helping you achieve your investment objectives and goals.
You will meet with one of our advisors, and we will create, implement and maintain your personalized
Investment Strategy and Managed Plan according to your objectives, circumstances and preferences.
You have access to our advisory team to update us with any changes to your situation. You will receive
a request to meet with an advisor to review your Managed Plan (including your Investment Strategy) on
at least an annual basis to determine if there have been any changes to your circumstances that would
necessitate adjustments to your Managed Plan. GMA services purchased through an ERISA plan will
only provide plan related services to the plan account and will not be provided to or combined with
services to any other account.
GuideStone Personal Advisory Services (available to limited client accounts as of
10/12/2023)
These services became limited to certain clients as of 10/12/2023 and ERISA plan accounts as of May
31, 2024, but we retain discretion to allow certain clients to enroll and to continue providing services on
existing and new accounts of existing and new clients. GuideStone Personal
Advisory Services is our
advisory service for individuals that packages our investment management services and financial planning services
together with a dedicated personal advisor. This includes discretionary investment management according to
your Investment Strategy and financial planning. Together, these services will represent your “Financial
Plan” and will be focused on helping you achieve your investment objectives and goals.
Your advisor will create, implement and maintain your personalized Investment Strategy and Financial
Plan according to your objectives, circumstances and preferences. Your advisor will request to meet
with you to review your Financial Plan (including your Investment Strategy) on at least an annual basis
to determine if there have been any changes to your circumstances that would necessitate adjustments to
your Financial Plan. GPAS services purchased through an ERISA plan will only provide plan related
services to the plan account and will not be provided to or combined with services to any other account.
GPAS on an investment account or a non-ERISA retirement plan account allows you the option of
maintaining a Self-Directed Account (SDA) consisting of investments chosen, monitored and managed
by you at a GSA designated broker/dealer or Donor Advised Fund provider and receive servicing and
reporting from your GSA advisor.
GPS: Guided Planning Services®
GSA provides GPS: Guided Planning Services (“GPS”) to clients on a nondiscretionary basis, for an
individual instance, at the specific point in time of the service. GPS typically consists of a conversation
with an advisor covering retirement planning topics such as: developing an investment allocation,
establishing adequate savings amounts, estimating retirement income and helping individuals plan to
better meet their desired retirement goals. The advice provided is designed to primarily focus on your
retirement planning needs and should not be considered a comprehensive financial plan.
Since GPS is provided to you at a specific point in time at your request, GPS does not provide for
ongoing management or review of your accounts or circumstances by GSA. GPS is designed to be
utilized no more frequently than annually, but exceptions may occur if requested by you and agreed to
by GSA. You alone will be responsible for requesting each instance of GPS and GSA will have
discretion to provide or deny service according to its resources and availability. The decision whether to
reject or accept any advice, in whole or in part, is entirely up to you in your sole discretion. GSA will
deliver a current version of this Brochure each time it provides any GPS advice but will not otherwise
provide annual updates to the Brochure due to the point in time nature of the services.
GSA will provide an investment allocation for your GuideStone accounts that aligns with your
investment preferences based on the available investment options in your GuideStone account(s). If you
choose to adopt the investment allocation provided by GSA, you alone will be responsible for initiating
all transactions required to establish and maintain the account(s) at the allocation targets as frequently as
you desire subject to any trade restrictions placed on your accounts by your investment platform or the
target investments. GSA will not be responsible to monitor nor notify you of any effect on the
recommended allocation resulting from to subsequent changes to your personal circumstances, financial
or otherwise, nor due to subsequent changes in general economic or market conditions nor due to
subsequent changes in the recommended investment products. You alone will be responsible to monitor
and determine if any change has occurred and warrants an additional GPS consultation with GSA or
another resource.
GSA will also conduct an analysis focused on determining if you are on the right track to achieve your
retirement and/or financial goals, and, based on your circumstances, will provide recommendations that
consider, among other things, your: (1) retirement age, (2) retirement savings, (3) retirement expenses
and (4) investment purpose. The projections are based on multiple considerations including, but not
limited to, historical and forward-looking projections on the capital markets, inflation, economic factors
and other matters. These projections, by their nature, are inherently difficult to predict and might turn
out to be wrong, and as a result there is no guarantee you will meet your financial goals, even if you
implement our advice.
Computer model
The investment advice provided by GPS is generated by a computer model designed and operated to:
apply generally accepted investment theories which consider historic risks and returns of different asset
classes over defined periods of time (and additional considerations); take into account investment
management and other fees and expenses attendant to the recommended investments; appropriately
weight the factors used in estimating future returns of investment options; utilize, to the extent
furnished, information relating to age, time horizons (e.g., life expectancy, retirement age), risk
tolerance, current investments in other designated investment options, other assets or sources of income,
investment preferences and additional information that a plan or a participant or beneficiary may
provide; utilize appropriate objective criteria to provide asset allocation portfolios comprised of
investment options available; avoid investment recommendations that inappropriately favor investment
options offered by GSA’s affiliates over other investment options, if any, available under the plan, or
inappropriately favor investment options that may generate greater income for the GSA’s affiliates; and
except as provided below, take into account all designated investment options available under the plan
without giving inappropriate weight to any investment option.
GSA has obtained a written certification from an “eligible investment expert” (as defined in Rule 408g-
1(b)(4)(iii) under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended (“ERISA”))
certifying that the computer model used by GPS meets the requirements of Rule 408g-1(b)(4) of ERISA.
GSA, at least annually, engages an independent auditor, who has provided written representation to
GSA that it has appropriate technical experience and proficiency to conduct an audit of the investment
advice arrangement for compliance with the above requirements.
Restrictions
You may impose reasonable restrictions on how GSA manages your investments, such as requesting that
allocations to certain securities be held (as long as they are available within the enrolled accounts).
These requests may result in different diversification and performance characteristics than our
recommendations. Additionally, these restrictions will be analyzed and reviewed by your advisor and
GSA to determine if they are suitable and how to appropriately incorporate them into your Investment
Strategy or investment allocation.
You should consult your advisor before processing any security transactions in your accounts that are
being managed on a discretionary basis through GWM, GMA or GPAS according to your Investment
Strategy. Processing security transactions in these accounts may result in your portfolio’s risk and return
characteristics being inconsistent with your Investment Strategy. Additionally, there may be tax
consequences to selling securities in your taxable investment accounts. Finally, you may be restricted
from processing security transactions in these managed accounts until you terminate the advisory
agreement with GSA or if your self-initiated trades violate the trading policies of the investment assets
such as frequent trading limits and market timing prohibitions.
Relating Accounts for Advisory Services and Investment Management
You may elect to apply our advisory services and investment management services across your eligible
non-ERISA accounts through a single advisory agreement or through separate agreements with similar
or different investment strategies. Your services may include individual and joint accounts as a single or
separate portfolios. ERISA accounts cannot be linked where a prohibited transaction under ERISA or
the Internal Revenue Code could result therefore, separate advisory service agreements will be
established for each ERISA account and the assets of ERISA plans will not be considered with the assets
of other accounts when determining fee breakpoints or when providing other planning services. You
may elect to have a common or different investment strategy applied to both your non-ERISA and
ERISA accounts however, the investment strategy applied to an ERISA account will be applied
independent of other accounts and for the sole benefit of the ERISA account as required by ERISA
regulations.
Investment Education
In addition to the services described in this Brochure, GSA’s advisors (and other personnel), in their
capacity as registered representatives of GFS or employees of GSFR, will provide “investment
education” to you. Investment education includes, among other things, plan information, and general
financial, investment, and retirement information. For example, information that describes the terms or
operation of an employee benefit plan or individual retirement account (“IRA”), the benefits of plan or
IRA participation, the benefits of increasing plan or IRA contributions, the impact of preretirement
withdrawals on retirement income, retirement income needs, varying forms of distributions, including
rollovers, annuitization and other forms of lifetime income payment options, advantages, disadvantages
and risks of different forms of distributions, or product features, investor rights and obligations, fee and
expense information, applicable trading restrictions, investment objectives and philosophies, risk and
return characteristics, historical return information, or related prospectuses of investment alternatives
available under an employee benefit plan or IRA, is “investment education” and not “investment
advice.” Likewise, any materials you receive from GSA and its advisors (or other personnel) or from its
affiliates on financial, investment, and retirement matters informing you about general financial and
investment concepts, such as risk and return, diversification, dollar cost averaging, compounded return,
and tax-deferred investment; historic differences in rates of return between different asset classes (e.g.,
equities, bonds, or cash) based on standard market indices; effects of fees and expenses on rates of
return; effects of inflation; estimating future retirement income needs; determining investment time
horizons; assessing risk tolerance; retirement-related risks (e.g., longevity risks, market/interest rates,
inflation, health care and other expenses); and general methods and strategies for managing assets in
retirement (e.g., systematic withdrawal payments, annuitization, guaranteed minimum withdrawal
benefits), including those offered outside your employee benefit plan or IRA, are “investment
education” and not “investment advice.” The receipt of “investment education” by you or another person
does not create an advisory relationship between you or that person, as a client, and GSA.
Limitations of Financial Planning and Non-Investment Services.
As indicated above, to the extent requested by a client, GSA may provide financial planning and related
planning services. Neither GSA nor its representatives assist clients with the implementation of any
financial plan, unless they have agreed to do so in writing. GSA does not monitor a client’s financial
plan, and it is the client’s responsibility to revisit the financial plan with GSA, if desired.
GSA does not serve as an attorney, tax preparer or insurance agency, and no portion of its Financial
Planning services should be construed as legal, tax accounting or insurance brokerage services.
Accordingly, GSA does not prepare estate planning documents or tax filings nor does GSA sell
insurance products however certain GSFR affiliates of GSA do offer various insurance products for
which GSA may provide information, referral or a recommendation. To the extent requested by a client,
GSA may recommend the services of other professionals or GSFR affiliates for certain non-investment
implementation purposes (i.e. attorneys, accountants, insurance agents, etc.).
Clients are under no obligation to engage the services of any recommended professional or GSA
affiliate.
The client retains absolute discretion over all implementation decisions and is free to accept or reject any
recommendation from GSA. If the client engages any recommended professional, and a dispute arises
thereafter relative to the engagement, the client agrees to seek recourse exclusively from and against the
engaged professional. At all times, the engaged licensed professional(s) (i.e. attorney, accountant,
insurance agent, etc.), and not GSA, shall be responsible for the quality and competency of the services
provided.