Ropes Wealth Advisors LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ropes & Gray LLP (“Ropes & Gray”), was formed in 2013 and became registered as an investment adviser with the SEC on September 15, 2014. Ropes Wealth commenced providing investment advisory services to client accounts on January 1, 2015. Ropes & Gray’s long history of fiduciary advising imbues the culture and operating environment of Ropes Wealth. Since 1865, Ropes & Gray has advised individuals and families on legal strategies and issues relating to estate and income tax planning. For many generations, Ropes & Gray attorneys have served as independent fiduciaries to many of their clients’ trusts and other related entities. Today, Ropes Wealth, as an affiliate of Ropes & Gray, works with clients as a fiduciary to provide investment solutions that bridge time-tested principles with a contemporary approach to investing and planning. Client Relationships. Ropes Wealth provides discretionary and nondiscretionary investment advisory services to individuals, families and their related entities, including trusts and estates, as well as charitable organizations, business entities, and ERISA plans. Many of Ropes Wealth’s client relationships include one or more attorneys or former attorneys of Ropes & Gray, who serve as trustee, executor or LLC manager to the client relationship. Ropes Wealth offers clients a seamless combination of an open architecture investment platform, financial planning, and custodial coordination with Ropes & Gray’s trust and estate planning legal services for a truly integrated wealth management offering. Investment Philosophy. Ropes Wealth’s investment approach is based on the belief that asset allocation is the single largest driver of long-term investment returns.
Ropes Wealth provides investment advice to help clients increase their chances of meeting their investment goals by allocating among asset classes in an attempt to improve the overall return of a client’s portfolio and to mitigate risk. Ropes Wealth’s goal is to smooth out return streams over time and create a long-term investment strategy that is revised only with a change in client circumstances. Shorter- term tactical asset allocation decisions in response to market movements or outlook are made by Ropes Wealth to refine a portfolio’s long-term strategy. Investment Platform. Ropes Wealth employs an open architecture investment platform, which provides investment exposure to a full range of asset classes via mutual funds, exchange traded funds (“ETFs”) and separate accounts managed by unaffiliated third parties. Ropes Wealth also recommends investments in privately offered pooled investment vehicles, such as hedge funds, private equity funds or other similar vehicles (collectively and together with mutual funds and ETFs, “Investment Funds”) for clients who are qualified to invest in those funds and for whom these investments are otherwise deemed to be appropriate. Ropes Wealth utilizes both active and index-oriented investment vehicles, depending on its judgment of the efficiency of an asset class. From time to time, Ropes Wealth trades individual stocks or fixed income securities for client portfolios in fulfillment of their investment objectives. Ropes Wealth does not sell any proprietary investment products and does not enter into fee sharing arrangements with outside providers. Instead, Ropes Wealth’s open architecture approach seeks to mitigate conflicts of interest relating to the selection of managers and asset classes. Investment Services. Ropes Wealth works with each client to develop and execute an appropriate investment strategy for each portfolio. This includes establishing an investment objective and an appropriate asset allocation that is aligned with the client’s investment goals and constraints. For instance, certain clients request to exclude certain asset classes, or individual securities, while other clients choose to customize their portfolio for impact investing. Ropes Wealth also provides security research, monitoring, and diversification strategies to clients with concentrated equity holdings. A client with a discretionary account can direct Ropes Wealth to purchase or hold a security that Ropes Wealth does not recommend as appropriate for the client, given the client’s investment objective, and other suitability factors. Prior to doing so, the client must acknowledge:
• The security was a directed trade and Ropes Wealth has no investment discretion with respect to that security.
• The value of the security will be included in the client account’s market value

calculation and will be subject to the same fee as the other investment assets in the client’s account.
• Ropes Wealth will consider the security when making asset allocation decisions on the client’s behalf but is not obligated to provide the client with investment advice pertaining to the specific security.
• Ropes Wealth will provide administrative services for the security, which include purchasing and selling the security at the client’s direction.
• Unless and until the client notifies Ropes Wealth in writing, Ropes Wealth will continue to hold the security in the client account. Custom Fixed Income and Cash Management. Ropes Wealth offers high quality fixed income and cash management portfolios customized to each client’s tax status, state of residence, and cash flow needs. Ropes Wealth seeks to design each portfolio to deliver preservation of capital, reliable income stream and competitive total return. Ropes Wealth focuses on disciplined, expert yield curve management and individual security selection, while targeting short-and intermediate-term maturity bonds, with a premium placed on high liquidity and low volatility. Ropes Wealth employs extensive internal credit analysis to identify attractive sectors and individual bonds and has a network of over 100 fixed income dealers to execute trades. This approach seeks to provide the opportunity to capitalize on market inefficiencies to maximize total return potential, and to avoid taking on elevated credit or interest rate risk. Custody Services. All client funds and securities are held with independent qualified custodians. Clients can choose the independent qualified custodian where their assets are held; however, in many instances, Ropes Wealth recommends a qualified custodian to provide custody services that include arranging for the safekeeping of assets. Ropes Wealth typically recommends Fidelity Institutional®1 (“Fidelity Institutional”) as the qualified custodian for client accounts and facilitates the arrangement for the safekeeping of client assets with Fidelity Institutional. Ropes Wealth also acts as liaison with SEI Private Trust Company (“SEI”), which maintains possession 1 Fidelity Institutional® provides a comprehensive clearing and custody platform, brokerage services, trading capabilities, and practice management and consulting to registered investment advisers (RIAs), including strategic acquirers and professional asset managers, as well as retirement recordkeepers, broker-dealer firms, banks, and insurance companies through National Financial Services LLC (NFS) or Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, Members NYSE, SIPC. In addition to providing services to third-party institutions, the NFS brokerage platform supports all the clearing and custody businesses at Fidelity, including Fidelity’s retail and capital markets businesses. of cash and securities for certain Ropes Wealth’s clients. From time to time, Ropes Wealth facilitates custodial arrangements with Fidelity Institutional and SEI for client accounts that do not receive investment advisory services from Ropes Wealth. Financial Planning Services. Ropes Wealth provides financial planning services for certain clients. Financial planning can be described as helping individuals determine and set their long- term financial goals. The role of a financial planner is to find ways to help the client understand their overall financial situation and help the client set and map out a course to meet financial objectives. A typical financial plan includes any or all of the following: cash flow analysis and budgeting; mortgage and debt management; retirement planning; disability, long-term care, life and other insurance needs; lifetime family giving, including gifts to meet educational expenses; and charitable gift planning. Ropes Wealth relies on each client to promptly notify us in writing of any material changes to the client’s financial condition including, but not limited to, investment objective, risk tolerance, net worth, annual income, and investment time horizon. Consulting Services. Ropes Wealth has consulting or other arrangements with certain clients. These arrangements, to the extent applicable, are made on a case-by-case basis. Assets Under Management. As of December 31, 2022, the total amount of client assets under management by Ropes Wealth was $6,468,204,099. The amount of client assets managed on a discretionary basis was $6,219,917,892 and the amount of client assets managed on a nondiscretionary basis was $248,286,207.