For closely-held businesses and nonprofits
Treasury and operating reserves, managed like they matter.
Most businesses leave operating cash earning nothing in checking, or hand it to a brokerage that quietly buys their own products. Premier manages corporate treasury the way a fiduciary should — transparent, conflict-free, structured for your specific liquidity, regulatory, and reserve-policy needs.
Why businesses choose Premier for treasury
If your business cash is sitting in too many places earning too little, you’ve probably hit…
- Your reserves earning 30 bps in a checking account while inflation eats the rest.
- Your brokerage steering you into their proprietary money-market funds with hidden fees.
- Your no written investment policy — just informal preferences that drift over time.
- Your board or finance committee asking questions the current advisor can’t answer cleanly.
We treat corporate treasury with the same fiduciary discipline as private wealth — because the obligations are the same.
What's included
Everything one team handles for you.
Written Investment Policy Statement
A formal IPS built around your operating-cash needs, reserve targets, board expectations, and regulatory environment.
Liquidity-laddered portfolio
Operating-cash, working-reserve, and longer-horizon tiers — each invested for its actual time horizon and risk tolerance.
Independent custody & transparent fees
Assets held at an independent custodian (Schwab, Fidelity custody, etc.). No proprietary products. Fees fully disclosed.
Reserve-policy modeling
How much should you actually hold in reserves? We model your operating volatility and recommend a target band — with the math you can defend to your board.
Board / committee reporting
Quarterly reports designed for finance-committee review — clean, plain-English, no hidden footnotes.
Coordination with your CFO & auditor
We work alongside your internal finance team and external auditor. Our reporting feeds directly into your audit process.
How we work
The Premier Method — applied to Corporate Asset Management.
The same four steps every Premier client experiences. Adapted to the specific work of Corporate Asset Management.
Listen
A full discovery: review your existing reserves, treasury practices, board governance, audit history, and the cash-flow pattern of the business. No pitch. No deliverable until we understand the situation.
Plan
Your written Investment Policy Statement in plain English — defensible to your board and your auditor, with every allocation rationale documented.
Coordinate
We brief your CFO, finance committee, and auditor on the plan. Coordination calls with internal finance whenever significant changes are needed.
Communicate
Quarterly committee-ready reports. Annual IPS refresh. Real-time response when business cash flow or strategy changes the picture.
What it looks like in practice
Three engagements. Three different starting points.
Manufacturer treasury restructuring
A $12M operating reserve earning 0.4% APY
A privately-held manufacturer with $12M in operating reserves sitting in a single checking account. CFO wanted higher yield but didn’t want to add complexity or risk. Board was uncomfortable with the brokerage they’d been quoted.
Built a three-tier liquidity ladder: 90 days of opex in a high-yield sweep, 6-9 months in short-term treasuries, the remainder in a conservative bond ladder. Drafted the IPS for the board. Coordinated with the auditor on reporting format.
Effective yield on reserves moved from 0.4% to roughly 4.6% in the prevailing rate environment — with no increase in functional liquidity for the business. ~$500K of incremental annual income.
Nonprofit endowment IPS rewrite
A $4M endowment with no policy and a drifted allocation
A regional nonprofit with a $4M endowment that had been informally managed by a board member for a decade. No written IPS. Allocation had drifted significantly equity-heavy. Spending policy was ad-hoc.
Wrote the IPS from scratch with the finance committee. Rebalanced gradually to the new policy allocation. Coordinated with the audit firm on the new reporting cadence. Trained the new staff CFO on quarterly review.
A documented, defensible endowment policy. Cleaner audit. Board now confident they understand what the endowment is doing and why.
PE-backed company cash deployment
Operating cash for a portfolio company between rounds
A PE-backed SaaS company with $18M of operating cash between funding rounds, expecting major capex spending in the next 18 months. The board wanted yield without compromising the spending schedule.
Built a calendar-matched treasury allocation: cash needed in the next 4 months in sweep accounts, the rest in a treasury ladder maturing as capex needs hit. Coordinated with the CFO on monthly liquidity reporting.
Captured approximately $620K of additional annual income vs. their previous all-checking-account treasury — with zero risk of being short on a planned capex draw.
How we compare
Premier vs. the alternatives.
| Premier | Robo-advisor | Big-4 brokerage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compensation | Fee-only, AUM-based, no commissions | Low flat % (~0.25%), algorithmic | Mix: commissions + product revenue + advisory fee |
| Relationship | Same advisor & team for decades (20-yr avg tenure) | No human advisor (or paid-tier call center) | Assigned advisor; often reassigned every 18–24 months |
| Scope of work | Investment + tax + estate + business coordinated together | Investment allocation only | Investment-led; tax/estate often siloed or via product cross-sell |
| Conflicts | None — fiduciary, fee-only, no proprietary funds | Low — limited to their fund universe | Yes — proprietary products + commission-eligible securities |
Working together
How we charge, and who this is for.
How we charge
Fee-only. AUM-based. No commissions.
Transparent percentage tied to your assets under management. No commissions, no proprietary products, no soft-dollar arrangements. Discussed openly in your initial conversation and disclosed in writing in your engagement letter and our Form ADV.
Who this is for
Typically $1M+ in investable assets.
Most clients arrive with $1M or more under management. Some start smaller with a clear path — a business sale, an inheritance, a vesting event. If we’re not the right fit, we’ll tell you straight — and point you toward who is.
Common questions
Questions we get from prospective clients.
What size of business is this for?
Most engagements involve $2M+ in operating reserves or endowment assets. Some smaller engagements make sense when there’s a clear path (a funding round, a planned operating-cash buildup, etc.). We’re explicit about fit in the first call — if you’d be over-served by what we do, we’ll tell you.
Will you work with our existing CFO and auditor?
Always. We see ourselves as an extension of the internal finance team, not a replacement. Most engagements start with introductory calls to your CFO and external auditor so everyone is aligned on reporting cadence, IPS framework, and decision-making authority.
What happens if my advisor leaves the firm?
Why fee-only? What's wrong with commissions?
Commissions create a conflict of interest that even the most ethical advisor can't fully neutralize: if you're paid more for selling Product A than Product B, you'll naturally see more reasons to recommend Product A. We chose to remove the conflict structurally rather than try to manage it with good intentions. Fee-only means our compensation moves only when your assets do.
Do you work with my existing CPA and attorney?
Always. Your existing CPA and estate attorney know your history. We’re not in the business of replacing those relationships. What we DO is the coordination most firms skip — making sure your investment, tax, and estate decisions actually align with each other instead of contradicting each other in ways nobody notices until it costs you.
Becoming a client
A 30-minute treasury conversation, no pitch.
Bring your most recent balance sheet and a rough sense of your reserve target. We’ll spend 30 minutes telling you straight whether your current treasury setup is leaving meaningful yield on the table — and what changing it would actually involve. No product pitch. No follow-up cadence unless you ask for one.
Most chosen
Schedule a conversation
30 minutes. By phone or video. No prep needed.
Lower commitment
Request the wealth guide
A 24-page PDF on what "fiduciary" actually means — and how to evaluate one.
Direct line
Call us directly
707.443.2741 · 8 AM – 5 PM PT. A human answers, not a menu.
No pitch. No pressure. If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you who is.