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A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.

A leading advisory group to the wealth management industry has launched a crowdsourced list of wealth terms it hopes will reduce confusion and marketing hype.

The Ultra High Net Worth Institute, a nonprofit focused on improving services to wealthy families and investors, recently unveiled its “Wealthesaurus” — a list of over 80 terms commonly used and abused in the wealth management business. The list, which will be continually updated and expanded based on input from wealthy investors and advisors, aims to define the new language of wealth management and create accepted standards for communicating with clients.

“There are a lot of garbage terms, a lot of marketing terms being tossed around,” said Jim Grubman, content and curriculum chair at the Ultra High Net Worth Institute and the founder of Family Wealth Consulting. “The motivation on a lot of this is to counteract some of the BS in the field.”

The need for a credible wealth Wikipedia follows an explosion of gimmicks, false labels and misleading hype in the business of managing the fortunes of the wealthy.

In 2024, households worth $5 million or more controlled an estimated $49 trillion in financial wealth, more than half of the nation’s total, according to Cerulli Associates. With assets growing fastest at the top of the wealth ladder, the competition for ultra-wealthy investors and family offices has grown fierce among private banks, wirehouses, registered investment advisors, private equity firms and boutiques. With that growth has come a barrage of inflated brand language.

Terms like “family office services,” “holistic advice” and “assets under advisement” are used indiscriminately, making it harder than ever for clients to navigate an industry already impenetrable for nonfinancial experts.

One of the most egregious violations is the term “multifamily office.” Traditionally, a multifamily office is a single family office that’s expanded to serve a small number of outside families or family members. Today, dozens of RIAs, boutique managers and even large advisory firms call themselves multifamily offices, trading off the exclusivity and bespoke services implied by a true family office.

“Some industry observers believe the term has no established basis and should never be used,” according to the Wealthesaurus entry for multifamily office. “Most professionals simply recognize that the term has had growing recognition over the past thirty years, even if there is inadequate validity or consistency in its use.”

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To comply with the Wealthesaurus definition, multifamily offices need four specific attributes, from certain clients (at least 10 complex, multigenerational families with a median net worth of at least $30 million) to specific services, service delivery (no conflicts of interest) and experience.

Another contentious term is “assets under advisement.” Firms often toss around asset terms to appear to manage more client money than they actually do. Some firms use “assets under management (AUM),” while others say “assets under advisement (AUA)” and others tout “assets under administration (AUAdmin).” Clients rarely know the difference.

The Wealthesaurus gives highly specific definitions of each, with the focus for assets under advisement being firms that serve as fiduciaries (another debated term). It says clients should ask wealth managers specifically how they break out assets under management and assets under advisement.

“Some firms include AUM in their calculation of AUA without making it clear they are doing so, while others report AUM and AUA separately,” according to the Wealthesaurus. “To address this problem if these amounts are being evaluated, firms should be asked to explain how they calculate their AUA.”

Grubman said the idea for the Wealthesaurus started with an unexpected problem at the Ultra High Net Worth Institute. The Institute was founded in 2019 by Steve Prostano, a longtime advisory to wealthy families and private business owners, who felt that clients needed unbiased help understanding and navigating the industry. The Institute, which counts the leaders of dozens of top wealth management firms, advisory firms and specialists on its boards, also aims to promote best practices and standards in the industry.

Two years ago, the Institute started developing what it calls the Integrated Family Wealth Management Initiative, looking at the sweeping changes in the industry in recent years and how it could better serve clients. The group’s discussions hit a problem: They often couldn’t agree on certain words.

“We would use a term and someone would say ‘Um, actually I think it’s this,'” Grubman said. “And someone else would say ‘I remember from 15 years ago it was defined like that.’ It was amazing the differences people had, even around words like family enterprise.”

Grubman and Tara Kehoe, the Institute’s library manager, started compiling an internal glossary and crowdsourced definitions with members of the group. Over time, the list grew and they decided to create a public version to better help clients and firms.

They considered calling it Wealthipedia, but the name was taken so they arrived at Wealthesaurus and added a dinosaur mascot. Grubman said the Institute welcomes suggested terms and definitions from other wealth management experts and clients in hopes of expanding its use. Kehoe said engagement has been high — with new users spending an average of over seven minutes on the recently launched site.

“They’re clicking from term to term and really using the resource,” Kehoe said.

The site doesn’t aspire to be a comprehensive guide to all wealth management terms. There are no explainers on GRATS, or FLiPs or SCINS from the estate planning world, or SMAs and PPVAs in investing, or the myriad other products that make wealthy investors’ heads spin. Grubman said the Institute didn’t want to include products or terms that investors could easily look up on the web. For those kinds of product terms, the Wealthesaurus website includes links to a variety of online investing guides, including the Charles Schwab Investing Glossary and Investopedia and the SEC Glossary.

“We looked for terms that were important to the field, or where the other definitions out there were so full of jargon,” Grubman said. “Wading through the definition of assets under advisement on the SEC website is a nightmare, for instance. So we wanted to create this for clients.”

As the business of advising wealthy families increasingly cuts across industries — from trust and estate planners to accountants, real estate advisors, philanthropy consultants, aviation and fleet experts, and even concierge doctors and other specialists — the Wealthesaurus can also be a bridge between disciplines.

The Wealthesaurus even has a defined term for “ultra high net worth,” a phrase used throughout the luxury and banking worlds with little context.

The Wealthesaurus says the most common definition of “high net worth” is a client with between $5 million and $30 million. “Ultra high net worth” typically means $30 million or more. It cautioned, however, that “with inflation and the significant expansion of global wealth since 2000, more firms are considering the modern threshold to the top UHNW level to be $100 million.”

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FILE PHOTO: The American flag flutters at a Nissan automobile dealership in Irvine, California, U.S., March 27, 2025. 

Mike Blake | Reuters

Nissan Motor’s new Americas leader said the automaker is aiming to “max out” production at its largest American production plant amid President Donald Trump’s 25% auto tariffs.

Christian Meunier, who started as chairman of Nissan Americas in January, said the tariffs are accelerating already needed plans for the automaker to increase domestic production to assist in a turnaround of its embattled U.S. operations.

“We have big facilities, big capacities and today we don’t have max capacity. We still have more room to improve our capacity,” Meunier told CNBC during a virtual interview Wednesday. “We’re looking into selling more of the U.S. products, and adjusting, along the way, vehicles that are coming from Mexico and from Japan.”

Meunier said his “ultimate goal” is to “max out” capacity at the automaker’s 6-million-square-foot facility in Smyrna, Tennessee. The facility is capable of producing 640,000 vehicles a year on three shifts, he said. It produced more than 314,500 vehicles last year on two shifts with about 5,700 people.

“We’re looking at maxing out capacity and making Smyrna the powerhouse that it used to be,” he said. “That’s my ultimate goal … to get the plant full and make a lot of money again.”

Meunier declined to speculate on a timeframe for hitting that maximum production at the plant, which currently makes four products, including the automaker’s Nissan Rogue – its top-selling vehicle domestically. He said it takes time to change plans and move production.

“We can increase production, as I described on the existing models that we have in the U.S., and commit to a plan to bring a product the next two years … or a couple products to the U.S. market. But it cannot happen overnight,” he said.

Meunier’s comments come two days after Trump said he’s looking to potentially “help” some automakers, saying the companies need time to alter production plans.

Christian Meunier, then-chief executive officer of the Jeep brand at Stellantis NV, during the 2023 New York International Auto Show (NYIAS) in New York, on Wednesday, April 5, 2023.

Stephanie Keith | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Nissan is looking at adding hybrid production to Smyrna as well as new products such as an Infiniti model, Meunier said. He also said the company is analyzing production increases for powertrain components such as engines and increasing domestic content.

“The good thing is, we have flexibility. We have an ability for us to to accelerate, to do things faster than we would have normally,” Meunier said. “I was already working on it before the tariff, because I, I’m convinced that localization is the way.”

Tariffs on imported vehicles into the U.S. have been in effect since April 3, despite Trump’s pullback last week on other country-based levies. Additional 25% tariffs on auto parts are scheduled to take effect by May 3.

Meunier said those potential parts tariffs would hurt the company and its plans.

“Hopefully there will be solutions that don’t hurt completely, to a full extent at 25% because that’s a lot,” he said. “Hopefully there will be a compromise in between.”

Nissan has two assembly plants in Mexico that produce a variety of vehicles, including imports such as the Nissan Kicks and Nissan Versa. In 2024, Nissan reportedly produced nearly 670,000 units in Mexico, with over 456,000 being exported, according to UnoTV in Mexico.

Autoworkers at Nissan’s Smyrna Vehicle Assembly Plant in Tennessee, June 6, 2022. The plant employs thousands of people and produces a variety of vehicles, including the Leaf EV and Rogue crossover.

Michael Wayland / CNBC

In the U.S., Nissan says it has assembly facilities capable of producing more than 1 million vehicles, 1.4 million engines, 1.4 million forgings and 456,000 castings annually. Of that full capacity, the automaker produced nearly 525,600 vehicles in the U.S. in 2024.

Other than Smyrna, the company has a large powertrain plant in Tennessee and another large vehicle assembly plant in Canton, Mississippi.

The Canton plant currently produces the Nissan Altima sedan and Nissan Frontier midsize pickup truck. It employs roughly 5,000 workers on a single shift for the Altima and two shifts for the Frontier.

The Rogue and the Pathfinder, as well as the Frontier, which has experienced significant market share declines in recent years to roughly 7% to 8% of its segment, are among the vehicles with the greatest growth potential for Nissan in the U.S., Meunier said.

Nissan lowered pricing of the Rogue and Pathfinder by between $640 and nearly $2,000, depending on the vehicle and model, in response to the tariffs. It also stopped taking new orders from the U.S. for two Mexican-built SUVs for its Infiniti luxury brand.

“Nissan has struggled a little bit lately, but we have a good plan,” he said. “We have good product in the pipeline. We’re launching super good product now that are successful, and we’re gonna turn it around despite the tariff.”

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