The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is having an increasing impact on businesses and our communities. While our business focus means that your financial matters and the investment markets are always important to us, we also care deeply about the impact on all of our daily lives and the health issues being created by the growing global pandemic. We hope all of our communities are able to effectively manage the current circumstances. We also feel it is important to share with you the steps we are taking to help keep everyone in the Crestwood Advisors family safe and healthy and to ensure that our business continues to operate seamlessly.
Crestwood has a long-standing and robust continuity plan in place to ensure that during any crisis we can continue to effectively manage portfolios and engage with clients. We have run our business using cloud-based solutions for years, which includes other infrastructure and contingency plans that provide for remote working across all areas of our business. We have routinely tested our plan and feel secure that we can and will successfully continue our business operations.
Beginning Monday, March 16, we are also implementing the following precautionary measures and strongly encouraging all of our employees to:
- work from home
- avoid business travel
- avoid in-person meetings
Importantly, everyone at Crestwood remains focused on providing the highest quality guidance, service and support to you. As a team, we will continue to effectively coordinate our investment research, portfolio management and financial planning and we remain committed to engaging with you during these challenging times, including meetings via phone and/or video conferencing. As always, we are actively monitoring events in the investment markets and proactively striving to make important portfolio adjustments that can enhance your circumstances. We have been in constant contact with our custodial partners and are confident in the effectiveness of their contingency planning and that our business with them will not be interrupted with their evolving plans for a remote workforce.
Fortunately, we have not yet been directly impacted by the coronavirus and everyone at Crestwood remains healthy. However, we are taking these extra measures to help our employees, their families and our clients stay safe as well as do what we can to help our local communities slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. As the likely familiar graphic below highlights, we are keenly aware of the potential stress on the capacity of our healthcare systems and other community services and hope that our collective efforts of “social distancing” make sure that those most vulnerable will continue to have access to any necessary important medical care.
While we have not been impacted, we know the situation remains fluid and are reviewing our plans daily. We will continue to monitor advisories from the CDC, WHO and our state and local community governments. Our focus will remain on providing you, our client, the highest level of service and communication during this difficult time.
Please do not hesitate to contact us at any time if you have any questions or concerns.
Michael A. Eckton, CFA
CEO & Managing Partner
617.523.8880
