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October 02, 2002 at 08:00 PM
The indexes are down along with the value of many clients’ portfolios, investor confidence is shaky at best, and the wealthy want some answers. That is exactly what Daniel O. Leemon intends to offer during his opening remarks at Schwab’s IMPACT 2002 conference October 27-30 in Washington, D.C. As executive VP and chief strategy officer for The Charles Schwab Corporation, Leemon will offer his perspectives on the current state of the affluent market and advisor opportunities. The affluent need a different kind of advice than other investors, he says: “There are a number of opportunities arising within [the affluent market] that advisors need to address.”
We spoke with Leemon about the importance of addressing the affluent, his response to the reported slight decline of this market segment, and Schwab’s advisor strategy in today’s economy.
Your opening remarks at Schwab Impact will cover the current state of the affluent market and advisor opportunities. Why is it important to address this topic? We’re obviously in an unprecedented situation both as a country but certainly within the scope of our business when you think about individual investors. Individual investors are in a position they have never been in before. They are unhappy, they are angry, they are confused–and the phrase “crisis of trust” has been used so much over the last four or five months that it has almost become trite, but that is exactly what is going on. So we see in our market research that on the one hand, most investors are pretty fed up with the corporations they have invested in and the people they have gotten advice from, and on the other hand, most of them still believe that the financial markets are where they need to put their money for long-term security. So it is important to be talking about affluent investors and opportunities for advisors, because somebody is going to break this wall down. Somebody is actually going to go out with a message that says, “You can trust us, and here’s why,” or, “we understand what to do in a situation like this, and we can work with you.” It’s important to begin cutting through not only every investor’s anxiety, but also through the noise in the marketplace. I think this is an unprecedented time, and as miserable a time it is for everybody, there is an opportunity there.
What is your response to the decline in HNW households? Most affluent investors are still in their working years, so there is sort of this double whammy that they have been hit with. One, their investment portfolios have gone down. Two, any incentive compensation or bonus part of their income has probably evaporated over the last part of the year as well. So it doesn’t surprise me that a bunch of people have dropped below the million threshold. I think what’s important here is that all of those people will go back over that threshold again. So you need to continue to treat them as you did before. They need what they needed before; in fact, more now than ever, in terms of sound advice and a long-term strategy. All those people will be back.
The 11% decline sounds like a round number that was found very scientifically, but our math says that the long-term grown rate in investable assets in the U.S. is around 10%. We had a whole bunch of years where it was 13% and 14%, and then we had two years, from 1999 to 2000, when it went down about 4%, and now it probably went down another 10%. That still leaves you with a long-term average of about 9% or 10%. So, I don’t have a lot of expectation that the market will go a lot further down. I think the real question is how long will it stay in the current trading range, and that to me gets back to an investor confidence issue rather than anything else. My reaction to a bunch of people falling back over the million-dollar line is, that they will be back. And we need to think about our business while keeping in mind that they will be back. This is not a permanent shrinkage or permanent disappearance in the market; it is a setback for investors, and we need to be there for them.
