Mutual Fun

Thanks to your excellent contributions, we continue our Friday feature in which advisors from coast-to-coast let their hair down and tell us some of the funny things they’ve encountered on the job.

Keep ’em coming!

Typographical Errors? An advisor in Alberta had a client who insisted she didn’t want mutual funds and asked that her money be placed in RSVPs. When questioned, she insisted she knew what she was talking about and was only interested in RSVPs.

Apparently she spent a lot of time on the party circuit.

The same advisor had a client who claimed to be very interested in diversification.

When the client showed him the portfolio that would be transferred over, the advisor knew he meant it. And how. The client had $34,000 invested in 28 different bank mutual funds.

“Hey, maybe he said de-worsification and I just misunderstood him,” the advisor quipped. Despite the odds, the advisor insists he managed to keep a straight face during both encounters.

Gender Bender An advisor in B.C. tells us a friend was writing up a policy form for a very attractive woman. She was recently divorced, he was single, and the friendly tone of their conversation had him toying with the idea of asking her to dinner.

Reviewing the medical questionnaire, the advisor saw a term he didn’t recognize in the client’s response to a question about surgical procedures performed in the past five years. He asked about it and her response was, “It means I used to be a man.”

Having never experienced this situation, the advisor became confused as to how to complete the gender information on the policy. So, he called the insurance company, which informed him that the correct answer is “female.”

The company promptly issued the policy, but the two never went out for dinner.

Clean Money A Saskatchewan advisor had some fun with a branch manager after having a meeting with a client who owned a laundromat.

The client was planning to sell his business, and invest the residual funds. The advisor couldn’t resist and told his branch manager that he had a client who he felt might be trying to invest laundered money.

The branch manager immediately contacted compliance and set up a conference call during which the advisor continued the gag. He strung the branch manager and compliance officer along, saying he had reason to believe the source of the client’s funds was laundered money.

When the advisor eventually came lean about the joke, the compliance officer laughed.

And you thought compliance types didn’t have a sense of humor.

Take Down An insurance agent in B.C. had an interesting first day on the job.

After his initial training he was assigned to an office and, while waiting for instructions from management, the phone rang. He picked it up and to his delight the woman on the other end inquired about a life insurance policy and said she’d sign the application today if someone could see her.

The agent booked the appointment for that afternoon and while driving there thought to himself, “This is the greatest job in the world! You go the office and the phone rings and you book the appointment and make money.” He had visions of this repeating day after day for his entire career.

He arrived at the client’s apartment in his best suit and briefcase, and knocked on the door. The moment he did, the door to the apartment across the hall burst open and two men in suits tackled the advisor to the ground. His arms were folded behind his back, his wrists handcuffed, and a knee in the back pinned him face down to the hallway carpet.

At that moment a woman in a bathrobe came screaming down the hallway yelling, “No, no, that’s not him. I think that’s the life insurance salesman!”

Turns out the woman had asked about insurance because she’d been threatened by her estranged husband, and the police had responded to that threat with a stakeout.

Miraculously, the agent stayed in the business.

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Let’s hear from you

Have a funny anecdote? Send it in…the best ones will get published on Fridays.

(08/28/09)