An Interview with Savant’s Chief Investment Officer, Zach Ivey

Savant Wealth Management, a fee-only registered investment adviser (RIA) majority-owned by its employees, named Zach Ivey, CFA®, CFP®, as its chief investment officer (CIO), effective Jan. 1. Ivey, who joined Savant in 2023 as part of the firm’s acquisition of Birmingham, AL-based Bridgeworth Wealth Management, previously held the role of chief investment strategist, and is a member-owner in Savant.

Video Transcript:

Ramey Becker: Hi everyone and thanks for joining us. My name is Ramey Becker and I’m the editor of Savant Wealth Management’s quarterly client newsletter called Savant Talk.

With me today is Savant’s Chief Investment Officer, Zach Ivey. Zach took over the post on January 1st of 2025 after serving in a similar capacity at Bridgeworth Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama. And by the way, Bridgeworth and Zach both joined Savant in 2023.

Welcome Zach.

Zach Ivey: Thanks for having me.

Ramey Becker: You know, let’s get to know you a little bit, what inspired you to pursue a career in this industry and how has your journey brought you to where you are now?

Zach Ivey: Yeah, well, thanks for that. Well, I was very blessed to have entrepreneurial parents that taught me how to run a business and take risk.

And at the same time, I was very fortunate to meet my wife in elementary school. And so by the time we had dated through high school and college, we were ready to get married right after college and I went to graduate school. I always had an interest in finance and in markets and things like that.

And it was during that time that I realized I didn’t know much about personal finance. And I was thinking, you know, I paid a little bit of attention in high school and a lot more in college. And I had smart parents that were businesspeople, but I didn’t know some of the basics of personal finance and sort of a light bulb went off for me that if I didn’t know this, then there must be other people out there that don’t know about personal finance.

And so that really kind of started my journey of just reading and learning. And I found out about the wealth management industry, that there were companies and people that helped others. And I just really said, this is what I want to do. Personally, I have an interest as a young person trying to figure out adult life, but also just seems like a great business.

So when I graduated from graduate school, I entered the business and you know, there’s a saying that goes, it’s talking about medicine, but it says prescription before diagnosis is malpractice.

So if you have a doctor that’s just writing prescriptions and they don’t know their patient, we would say that’s malpractice, but in the financial business, it’s pretty normal for people to just hand out investment strategies and portfolios to anybody who will take them, and I always thought that was wrong.

And so for me, I wanted to be an advisor. I wanted to be in a company that understood his clients, their goals, visions, values, and then took that investment knowledge and prescribed. And that’s really why I’ve been at the companies that I’ve been in the past and why I’m so excited about Savant.

 You’ve talked about working with clients and I’m sure that you’ve just learned so many different insights from working with clients over the years. How has that shaped your investment philosophy?

Yeah, well, there’s a book that many investors have probably read. It’s a classic book called The Intelligent Investor. It was written by Benjamin Graham a long time ago. He was kind of considered the, you know, the father of value investing. He was a mentor to Warren Buffett. There’s a quote in there “To invest successfully doesn’t take an unusually high IQ or unique business insights, but what’s required is a framework for decision making and the ability to keep one’s emotions from corroding that framework.”

And so what I’ve learned over time and really what I believe today is you have to have a framework for decision making and we all have emotions. I mean, we’re not robots. We all have emotions. We all have emotional biases and those often do corrode that decision making process. So I’ve really strived my whole career to to kind of develop that.

And as I was looking to join Savant, I had the privilege to read everything that they’ve written over the numerous years, and it was pretty fun because I felt so encouraged that I found people that think like me. And as you know, at Savant, we utilize an evidence-based approach to investing, which means we don’t, you know, we don’t believe in crystal balls or invest in fads.

But we ground our investment decision making that process in academic research, empirical evidence. And our goal is to build those robust portfolios. So I think part of that process when you’re an evidence-based investor is, you know that the book of knowledge on investing isn’t closed.

So there’s always stuff to learn. There’s always conventional wisdom to challenge and markets are always changing. So there’s, new things to learn every day. And so I’m as excited today as I was 25 years ago when I started.

Ramey Becker: Certainly all different kinds of things to invest in. And, we hear a lot of talk about alts and crypto and, you know, what’s mainstream and what isn’t anymore. One thing I wanted to ask you about was something that Savant started offering in 2024, which is custom indexing. And I wonder if you could explain the key differences between custom indexing and say traditional index or ETFs.

Zach Ivey: Yeah, well, this is a, you know, a perfect example of just evolution and constant development in the investment business. So if you think a long time ago we went from stock picking where you’re trying to find the needle in the haystack to sort of the advent of the mutual fund where we just don’t buy the needle.

We buy the haystack. And then fast forward a few decades, and we had the advent of the ETF. It’s very similar. We’re buying hundreds of stocks oftentimes. But we buy them in a tax-efficient wrapper that’s easier to trade, has lower transaction costs. And, you know, the newest step or newest development in that is really taking that wrapper off.

So rather than have an ETF or even a mutual fund that has hundreds of stocks, but you see it as one position on your portfolio. To remove that wrapper, which allows us to own all the individual securities and then we can customize the tax management. And the intent is not necessarily to earn more return than the index, but to keep more of the return through that active tax management. So we used to think about mutual funds or managers and could they provide alpha that extra return? And really we know that alpha is very small oftentimes, but we can generate some tax alpha by being able to keep those returns.

And it’s really incredible. And, you know, quite honestly, this type of thing has existed for a little while, but you used to have to be very wealthy. Large pools of money were managed this way. And because of commission-free trading and really the advancement of technology, now we can do this at much lower minimums.

It’s not for everybody. If you have a long history with ETFs and mutual funds, you have gains built up. It may not be for you, but for new investors and for people that have cash that are putting money into the equity markets it’s certainly a solution that I think people should consider.

Ramey Becker: Interesting. Well, you know, it’s 2025. We have a new president in the White House. We have a different economic agenda. And I’m sure people are wondering, what should we be looking for? What trends should we be watching this year? What should we be aware of as the markets go?

Zach Ivey: Well, it’s one of the most asked questions and everybody has an opinion about this and because our country is very politically divided, almost 50/50, it’s amazing. Every time we have an election, I’m amazed at how close it is. There’s always going to be some people who are excited, some people who are nervous.

And if you think back I would really get you to think about three things. One, that political leadership is constantly changing. I mean, you just think back over the last 10 or 12 years, we’ve gone from Democratic control to Republican to a Democratic back to a Republican. So certainly, every four years, and really, if you think about the House and Congress every two years you know, the political landscape is always changing.

So, take comfort in that because we look back through market history. You can certainly just look back over the last decade. We’ve had continued market growth, lots of different policies, different personalities, all of that, and markets have been very resilient. So that’s kind of point number one. Point number two, and I love this saying we invest in companies, not countries.

There’s no ticker symbol where we’re buying USA or buying France or Italy. We’re investing in companies. And companies are very dynamic, flexible. They’re constantly seeking to maximize shareholder value. And, they have competitors and they have rules that they’re going to play by. And so companies are not static.

They’re constantly adapting and changing. And so I think you can take great comfort in that. And then the last thing that I would always say is that capital has to go somewhere. You think of the trillions of dollars of money that are floating around the capital markets. Countries, people, investors, you know, they don’t bury their money in the backyard.

That capital is going to be invested and it’s going to flow somewhere. And the capital markets are where people make these judgments. And so we’re constantly looking at those dynamics and allocating our money accordingly. So you just kind of focus on that. Things are always changing. We do invest in companies, not countries, and the money’s got to go somewhere.

And so looking at those relative differences and being very thoughtful about how we allocate that capital. That’s the way that we think is best to move forward.

Ramey Becker: You know, to your point. It makes me think when you mentioned companies versus countries, the importance of diversification too because the market opportunity, I mean, there’s a lot in the U.S. but there’s an awful lot in other parts of the world, too. And it’s important to stay diversified in your investments as well.

Zach Ivey: Yeah. One of the surprises I think of last year, we had a great year in the markets in the United States, but the best returning market of 2024 was Israel.

Now think about that. Would you have guessed that given all the things that have gone on, that Israel would be the highest returning stock market? So this is just an example of, we need to be diversified. We need to be thoughtful about spreading our risk. And the understanding that things are dynamic and always changing.

So what advice would you give to people watching this who might be concerned about market downturns or long-term financial uncertainty? Well, I hate to do this, but I’m going to quote Warren Buffett again. I don’t agree with every investment thing that he says, but he’s really good at quotes.

And one of them that I love is he says that the stock market is the most efficient mechanism in the world for transferring money from the impatient to the patient. And so when I think about that we want to prepare in advance for volatility. Okay. It’s not a surprise. It’s a part of investing. And so we need to remain disciplined, patient, and also ready to act in a positive way, not in a knee jerk or negative way when volatility shows up, but recognizing that it’s going to come and so being ready to act appropriately. But again, that patience and discipline is so key.

Ramey Becker: Tell me what excites you about leading our investment team. What sort of unique perspective should our clients expect out of you?

Zach Ivey: Well, I really am excited. And in part because we have such a great talented team of people who I know care for clients just like I do.

And at Savant, we are on a mission to improve a million lives. And that really energizes me. I think in the end, you know, everyone wants their life to count to have a positive impact on the world. And I’m just really humbled and excited about this opportunity because, my playing field just got bigger. I’m able to help more people. And, kind of the final thing, which I think should be comforting to our clients, is that I have been an advisor for a number of years now, and I still have some clients today. And so I know firsthand how our investment decisions impact our clients’ lives. I never lose sight of the fact that the money we manage is not an account number, but it’s tied to a person, a family, and a goal.

And so I think you can expect that kind of insight from me. We’re not sitting in an ivory tower, looking at numbers on a screen, but we really think about when we’re putting these portfolios together, we know we don’t get a do over in life. Right? It’s not a football game where we lose and we just can move on.

We want to think about how to allocate that money to give our clients really the highest probability of success in reaching their goal. And our team, the investment team, we play a role in that, but we know one of the critical components of that is that relationship with an advisor that you can trust, that can guide you through that, that can educate you, help you to control the controllables.

That’s one of the things we believe in. So, you know, are you saving enough? Are you, what are you spending, you know, all those things from the financial planning perspective that really sometimes have even a bigger impact than what the return on the portfolio is. So I’m happy to be a part of that team.

That’s what we’re hoping to deliver. And that’s what gets me up every day. And while I’m excited to be in this new role.

Ramey Becker: All right, Zach, thank you so much. And thanks everyone for watching. Now, if you’re a Savant client and you have some questions about investing, we encourage you to reach out to your advisor.

And if you’re not yet working with Savant, I hope you’ll visit our website at savantwealth.com to learn more about us. Thanks for watching.