Understanding the RIA model

Jane King:
My name is Jane King, and I'm president of Fairfield Financial Advisors. I've been in the investment business all my professional life. The investment business is very entrepreneurial, so I always knew someone who had gone out on their own. I needed to have earned my own financial independence before I felt I had earned the right to give advice. Once I became financially independent myself, I felt it was the right time for me to start my own independent registered investment advisor firm.

Caroline King Hedges:
My name is Caroline Hedges, and I am the client relationship manager at Fairfield Financial Advisors. I started my career right out of school at a large Wall Street firm which then fell victim to the market volatility in 2008. I think that was a pretty eye-opening experience for everyone who worked in finance, and it really taught me that smaller is definitely more manageable and more adaptable. Since then, I've only been at smaller firms. Obviously, seeing how fulfilled my mom was in starting her own business and the work-life balance that she was able to attain was really attractive to me and was totally convincing to join forces with her.

I was really surprised by the variety of career paths that are available through RIA. I spoke with several different people, several business owners, but also talked to an event planner, someone in communications and marketing. So, this industry has a variety of career paths for any individual that's in it.

[End of Audio]

00:00:05 – LISA:
Hi, everyone. I'm Lisa Salvi from Schwab Advisor Services, and this is Schwab At Home. One of the things that I love that I get to do in Business Consulting and Education is work on programs that generate awareness of the RIA industry and a pipeline of high quality talent for advisory firms to hire. And one of the ways we've done that over the last eight years is through our RIA summer intern program, where our goal is not to hire the interns at Schwab, but to have them go on to work in advisory firms. 

00:00:34
I'm so pleased today that I have one of our 2020 interns, Cassidy Farar from BYU, Idaho, joining us today to share a little bit about her thoughts on the industry. Welcome, Cassidy.

00:00:45 – CASSIDY:
Hi, Lisa. Thanks for having me.

00:00:47 – LISA:
So, Cassidy, you and I first met back in April. We, at Schwab, of course, were having to rethink our usual intern experience given the COVID situation and knowing we wouldn't be gathering together in person or having you guys go to independent advisory firms. Could you just share a little bit about the feedback all of your… all of you and your intern class gave to us during that call?

00:01:07 – CASSIDY:
Yeah, I was really grateful to have the opportunity to even still have this internship with everything going on. And it seemed that all the interns really wanted to be a part of it, even if it was virtual. So I was really excited. We were all able to kind of pitch in our input on what we wanted to do this summer.

00:01:24 – LISA:
Yeah, and we were excited, too, because we were hoping you guys would still want to have an experience even if it was going to look a little bit different. 

00:01:30
So maybe we could just start today by having you share a little bit about how you found out about the RIA industry. What put it on your radar?

00:01:38 – CASSIDY:
Yeah, so I have a family member who works at Schwab, and so I… I had an initial interest in the company from that, and so I looked up their internship. I was applying for that and saw the RIA internship on there, as well. And wasn't really sure what it was, so I started looking into RIAs and realizing, 'Oh, this is exactly what I’m looking for,' and decided to apply for that one instead.

00:02:00 – LISA:
What kind of appealed to you about the RIA industry as you did that research?

00:02:04 – CASSIDY:
So I've been applying… interviewing with some other firms that were a lot commission-based, a lot sales-based, and I didn't really… it kind of turned me off of all of that. And so when looking into RIAs and I saw that it was all based on the client's need and giving advice solely on what is in their best interest, I really liked the idea of being able to reach out and help people for them and not for me.

00:02:29 –LISA:
Yeah, that's just such a foundational part of this industry, and it really does resonate when people hear about that. You know, if there's advisors out there who want to help tell that story with young talent, like you and at your university, what are some things that they could do to help come in and share the word about the RIA industry?

00:02:46 – CASSIDY:
Yeah, I think reaching out to universities is a great first step. I know a lot of universities have different organizations. I'm in my Investment Society. We have an Econ Society, Wealth Management Society. Reaching out to those organizations, being able to come in and introduce themselves, talk a little bit about what they do, that's put a lot of different companies on my radar while in college, and I think that would help a lot to get the word out about the RIA industry.

00:03:11 – LISA:
And I've heard from a lot of students that lunch is important, like pizza is a really good strategy to get attendance. Would you [absolutely] say that that's…

00:03:20 – CASSIDY:
…always bring food. [laughter]

00:03:22 – LISA:
The more food, the more students will show up, is that about right?

00:03:24 – CASSIDY:
…Exactly. [laughter]

00:03:27 – LISA:
What about as you're looking at job opportunities in the future, what… what kind of things would make an advisory firm stand out to you? That's a question I get from advisors just all the time.

00:03:36 – CASSIDY:
Yeah, I like being able to look ahead and see where my growth within the company would be. Where am I going to start, and what's my… what are my next steps to move up? What's my career path going to look like? And what are my opportunities? How are they going to help foster growth that I can move forward within the company?

00:03:52 – LISA:
Yeah, I hear that from students all the time, that just knowing that there's a career path within an advisory firm, and that they're going to get training and experiences really resonates and helps firms stand out a great deal.

00:04:04
So my last question for you today, Cassidy, is just as you have been going through this unique virtual internship experience, how do you think that's going to help you in the future as you start to look into joining a firm someday?

00:04:18 – CASSIDY:
You know, I've really learned to be flexible through this whole experience, being trained online every day, having online webcasts meetings, and working with a team that I've never met in person, and it's all been really unique. And I'm hoping that I can take that flexibility and that growth with me wherever I go. And so I'm hoping that that's something that my employers will look at and realize that I'm able to be flexible. I’m able to learn in different environments.

00:04:44 – LISA:
Job skills of the future. Well, Cassidy, thank you so much for joining me today and for joining our intern program. The future of the industry is clearly very, very bright. I'm Lisa Salvi, and this has been another edition of Schwab @Home.

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