Phil Zimmerman is a Vice President and Wealth Management Advisor who joined Merrill Lynch Wealth Management in 2005. Prior to joining Merrill, Phil was with Morgan Stanley from 1988 to 2005. Phil graduated from New York University with a BS in Finance and is also a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER^™ certificant, a designation awarded by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. Phil also holds the Certified Plan Fiduciary Advisor^® designation, awarded by the National Association of Plan Advisors.

For Individuals: As a Wealth Management Advisor, Phil helps clients develop and implement highly personalized strategies in the areas of retirement planning, concentrated stock management, college education planning and charitable gifting. He also helps clients focus on estate planning issues and works with their tax and legal advisors in developing their estate plan. Portfolios are available in traditional and ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) investments, whichever clients prefer.

In addition to providing traditional advice and guidance, Phil is a qualified Portfolio Manager who can help clients pursue their objectives by building and managing his own personalized or defined strategies, which may incorporate individual stocks and bonds, Merrill model portfolios, and third-party investment strategies. When servicing clients through the firm’s Investment Advisory Program, a Portfolio Manager may manage his strategies on a discretionary basis.

For Retirement Plan Sponsors: In his capacity as a Retirement Accredited Financial Advisor, Phil assists retirment plan sponsors with plan design geared around optimizing testing issues. He offers access to Merrill's Fiduciary Advisory Services, which encompasses plan menu due diligence, fee benchmarking, employee education and retirement readiness. He also provides access to services that can assist plan trustees and committees with Investment Policy Statement and annual Fiduciary reviews. For more information on this, please go to the Understanding Your Life section near the top of this page, and after that page loads click on Retirement Accredited Financial Advisor.

Phil is on the board of the Delaware County Estate Planning Council and is a member of the Philadelphia Estate Planning Council, the Philadelphia Alliance for Capital & Technologies and the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Phil volunteers as a Community City Leader for Bunker Labs, a non-profit incubator for businesses started by veterans. Phil is also passionate about being a repeat donor to the American Red Cross. He donates platelets, which are needed by cancer patients to prevent blood clotting.


*Impact investing and/or Environmental Social Governance (ESG) investing has certain risks based on the fact that ESG criteria excludes securities of certain issuers for nonfinancial reasons and therefore, investors may forgo some market opportunities and the universe of investments available will be smaller. 
I follow the deep-seated Merrill tradition of participating in the communities we serve. This drives my interest in spending time volunteering with organizations in our community.