Hutchinson & Ziegler Financial Advisors

Hutchinson & Ziegler Financial Advisors

Hutchinson & Ziegler Financial Advisors was founded in 2003 in San Rafael, California, by Pat Hutchinson and Tom Ziegler. The firm operates as a registered investment advisor serving individuals, families, and corporations primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area. Its client base is concentrated among professionals, entrepreneurs, and retirees seeking comprehensive financial planning rather than transactional brokerage services. The firm structures its investment management around low-cost, broadly diversified portfolios, typically using Dimensional Fund Advisors and Vanguard funds, and includes direct indexing and tax-loss harvesting for taxable accounts. Asset allocation spans domestic and international equities, fixed income, and real estate investment trusts, with tilts toward small-cap and value factors. Hutchinson & Ziegler does not market proprietary funds or take custody of client assets. The firm waives minimums for clients who engage in ongoing financial planning, separating the planning fee from the asset management fee. Hutchinson & Ziegler remains deliberately small by design, maintaining a client count below 100 households. The firm operates without additional offices. Pat Hutchinson holds the CFP designation and has served as an officer of the Financial Planning Association of San Francisco. No adjacent private vehicles, philanthropic foundations, or club co-investment structures are known to exist alongside the advisory practice. The firm's structural differentiator is its explicit refusal to scale client count in service of AUM growth — an architecture that many RIAs claim but few implement. Hutchinson & Ziegler's partnership is built around succession by intentional continuity rather than acquisition, with no outside capital or consolidator involvement in the ownership structure.