Second-career financial advisors could enrich your practice

Wilson Chen never planned on becoming a financial planner.

The former dentist attributes his career shift to “sheer desperation” after the lingering effects of a cycling accident made his days hunched over patients saying “ah” almost unbearable.

Chen, financial planner with The Wyndham Group at Raymond James Ltd. in Toronto, was about five years into his dental career when he began to have serious doubts. He was experiencing pain and numbness in his arm, which he eventually connected to a cycling accident several years earlier.

Rob Pollard, the Wyndham Group’s senior portfolio manager, asked if Chen had a backup plan. Chen had worked with Pollard delivering first aid courses while attending dental school. As Chen took time away from his practice and sought treatment, he began studying for his certified financial planner designation.

Chen’s path to financial services is uncommon in an industry where recruits tend to come from professions such as accounting, consulting and banking. Erin Roy, principal, branch team optimization with Edward Jones in Mississauga, Ont., said those professions have the advantage of entering wealth management already understanding finance and how to work in a regulated industry.

But there are other attributes, such as being entrepreneurial and able to develop trusted relationships, that she said the firm has found in recruits with less conventional backgrounds.

“People who are highly client-centric, [such as] educators, also have been very successful,” Roy said.

In addition to being good communicators who can build trust, teachers tend to be organized, accountable and disciplined, she said, and able to anticipate clients’ needs.

Chen received his CFP in 2001. By then, he had mostly overcome his physical ailments but he soon began practising part-time as a financial planner for a handful of the Wyndham Group’s dentist and doctor clients.

Chen said he had never taken a business course but he knew his way around income statements and balance sheets from running his own business.

“It was a real niche,” he said of his client focus when he started. “The financial planning part was new, but I already understood what their business models were, so that part of the planning was easier.”

He also found the skills he developed as a dentist transferred to financial planning.

“A fiduciary factor is huge in dentistry or any of the health sciences,” he said, and he learned to grow a business through client relationships.

Dentistry is also governed by processes, he said. “Now we find that, in the advisory business, processes have to drive things. People are getting into larger teams and they need to know that nobody is falling through the cracks and everything is getting done.”

After more than a decade of part-time financial planning, Chen decided to go all in. His two dental partners were retiring and, with his nagging injury in the back of his mind, he was reluctant to take over the practice. In 2014, he joined Pollard and the Wyndham Group full time.

The move coincided with a greater emphasis on planning in the industry, and Chen headed up that part of the practice. He also expanded his client base beyond the medical practitioner niche.

Roy said Edward Jones’s regional teams play a role identifying talent and recruiting to suit the needs of a given community.

For example, she pointed to an Edward Jones advisor in an Ontario farming community who joined the firm after a career selling farm equipment. The equipment is expensive and a major financial decision for farmers, she said, so selling it required trusted relationships.

“This is a person who understands education, communication, integrity,” Roy said. “To be in a community and have a successful career in that way, it’s many of the same skills and attributes you would need to be a successful financial advisor.”