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September 01, 2008 at 04:00 AM
(CHICAGO) The AIG Advisor Group hosted “Why Women Are Winning,” a female-advisor event at the Ritz-Carlton from July 13-15. The event drew some 100 advisors and a good number of sponsors. And it highlighted the success stories of top AIG FAs, including (above, left to right) Carter Leinster, Patricia Kummer and Alexandra Armstrong.
Armstrong leads Armstrong, Fleming & Moore, a practice affiliated with FSC Securities Corporation and based in Washington, D.C. It has 15 full-time employees. “I am really into delegation and delegate as much as possible to make my life easier,” she says.
The group has about $1 billion in assets under management, with Armstrong’s AUM at $650 million.
Her high-net-worth practice caters to both married couples and single women, since Washington D.C. has the highest percentages of working women of any city in the United States, she says.
Armstrong’s main marketing techniques are to do book and article writing, as well as to serve on non-profit boards and make charitable donations. She’s active in the Foundation for Financial Planning and the Boy Scouts, for instance, and in the Financial Planning Association.
As part of her group’s succession planning, Armstrong has sold 15 percent of the practice to a partner who’s been with the firm eight years. She attributes her success to staying physically active, taking regular vacations, and hiring good people and rewarding them.
One of her latest strategies has been to offer employees a four-day work week to help them cut down on transportation expenses. “People are ecstatic about this,” she says.
In addition to succession planning, the firm is dealing with aging clients who may forget appointments or make repeated calls for the same information. “This is an issue that we should all be aware of and could become more of an issue and even a liability for us,” she notes.
Kummer leads Kummer Financial Strategies, a fee-based practice affiliated with AIG Financial Advisors and located in Highlands Ranch, Colo. The firm has over $120 million in AUM and recently hired a chief compliance officer. “We work with engineers,” she says. “And we love working with engineers,” who work for Denver-area employers like Lockheed Martin, Quest Software and other firms.
Some clients carefully review the custom-designed software used by Kummer. “This really keeps us on our toes,” she notes.
Kummer writes a weekly finance column for the local paper and is getting a writer on board to boost her website content. “We’re excited about this and think the Internet is going to be the future. It will also help us keep marketing costs down.”
