Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
January 01, 2010 at 02:00 AM
In late September 2009, Patrick McEvoy changed jobs, moving from the presidency of Multi-Financial Securities, part of the ING broker/dealer network, to become president and CEO of Woodbury Financial, a 1,700-rep independent broker/dealer. Now reporting to Brian Murphy, chairman of Woodbury, a subsidiary of The Hartford, McEvoy calls himself a “sales guy who learned to become an executive,” and who “got licensed shortly after the 1987 crash, and luckily I didn’t have any clients then,” McEvoy says he’s “never stopped remembering how tough it is” to maintain relationships with clients in difficult times, though he also says that the “first thing I learned as a sales guy is if you listen to your clients closely enough, they’ll tell you exactly what they need.”
While at Multi-Financial, he says he built the firm on the “relationship model,” something he plans on continuing, because, he says, “when you build a business on relationships, contrary to the Godfather, it’s not business, it’s personal. When it’s personal, you have a tendency to deliver on your promise, which is the cornerstone of what we do.”
Speaking of reps, McEvoy says that over the last 18 months, “the registered reps that are thinking of making a move are doing so for a whole different set of reasons. Financial packages and forgivable notes have shrunk for financial reasons, but more important, reps and firms–by which I mean advisors who are partners within a multiple-partner organization–they look at this business a whole lot differently now. That’s in the wheelhouse of the way I do business–I comply, I align, I retain, and I recruit. That’s my job.”
In compliance, most reps these days want to be with a firm that has a good reputation and “no longer want to go to a place that’s ‘flexible,’ because flexible compliance means we’ll let you do what you want to do, and that doesn’t work.” The Hartford’s compliance staff doesn’t look at risk management, but at managing risk, he says, though “there will always be risk in our business. Five years ago we were talking about Class B shares, now we’re talking about ERISA and fiduciary duty. It’s not the challenges that make it hard, but staying abreast of them and being knowledgeable–and communicating to reps the reasons for implementing policies. “You can’t communicate too much,” McEvoy says.
