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George Nichols III

Practice Management > Diversity and Inclusion

Conference Focuses on ‘Reclaiming Black Wealth’

By Jeff Berman

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What You Need to Know

  • The financial services industry’s largest gathering of Black leaders is in Chicago this week.
  • The conference’s agenda includes advancing underserved communities, including Hispanics, the LGBT community and women.
  • Retirement is a main track at the conference.

For the American College of Financial Services’ 17th annual Conference of African American Financial Professionals, being held in Chicago through Wednesday this week, the theme is “Reclaiming Black Wealth.”

In a recent interview, George Nichols III, CEO and president of The American College of Financial Services, explained that the conference’s agenda this week was designed to reinforce and elevate the conversation around how the financial services industry can inspire Black professionals and promote the advancement of all underserved communities through education and empowerment.

Those underserved communities, he pointed out, includes Hispanic people, the LGBT community and women, as the CAAFP seeks to narrow the wealth gap and create sustainable, generational change.

Keynote sessions will feature thought leaders from various backgrounds in financial services and other areas, and there will be a variety of breakout sessions, with a focus on empowering Black communities and the advisors who serve them.

The conference’s four main tracks are Retirement, Consumer Connections (building skills and learning tools to cultivate personal and professional networks to better understand the real needs of clients), Applied Knowledge (focusing on foundational industry knowledge, insights from thought leaders and experts, and best practices from pioneers and new voices making an impact across financial services), and Niche Markets.

At The American College of Financial Services, “our job is to help look at retirement from a comprehensive perspective,” Nichols told ThinkAdvisor. That, he said, is because “what people are looking for and what they need in retirement really should be specialized and customized to them.”

He added: “We think that, if you believe in specialization, which we do, that retirement is No. 1 on that list, whether it be boomers, who may have an immediate need,” or others.

“What this conference is all about, he explained, is, “How do we give [advisors] the tools to make them better and more successful so they can go be better on behalf of the clients that they serve?”

When it was decided that “we wanted the theme to be reclaiming Black wealth” at this year’s conference, “some of our external partners” were concerned that it was a negative issue. But Nichols argued that it is just “the reality, and the reality of it is if we never had wealth through the Black community, then I’d say, ‘Yep, we’re stretching it.’”

But he said: “If you think about Tulsa, Oklahoma, you think about Harlem and the Renaissance, you think about Sweet Auburn area of Atlanta, you think about the Chatham community in Chicago where we had the Independence Bank, all that’s wealth.”

However, he said, that wealth has been “diluted over the years, so we’re saying, ‘Well, let’s go back to those days and let’s try to recapture that and that these financial advisors have an opportunity to do that.’ We can go reclaim those days.” But he added, “We also have to acknowledge [there are] a lot of Blacks who’ve been able to expand their wealth.”

The goal is to “build off of the progress that’s already been made as we go reclaim Black wealth,” he said.

Pictured: George Nichols III

Jeff Berman

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