It's a long way from North Sea oil rigs to a bank in Jamestown, a town of about 33,000 in Upstate New York. But as unlikely as his career shift sounds, Timur Tyra, a senior financial adviser at Key Investment Services, says it was not so illogical.
Mr. Tyra, who had signed on as a management trainee at the North Sea platform owned by a Dallas oil company, returned home to New York in the late 1980s, got a job in a tech company, got married, and had a child. By then, he was sitting on a tidy sum, and he wanted it to grow but had trouble finding someone to help him manage it.
His effort to find investment advice convinced him that brokers at the time cared too little about the client. "I was on the other side of the table," he said, "and the people helping me clearly had their own agenda. I saw then a real need to help people. I wish I'd had someone like me on their side of the table."
When Mr. Tyra lost his job at the tech company, he joined A.G. Edwards but a year later was ready to pack it in. He didn't want to sell stocks and court the type of clients coveted by wire houses; he wanted to build financial plans. So he took an opportunity that opened up in 1990 at Key Bank's fledgling investment program. (Key at the time used the third-party Independent Financial Marketing Group.)
"It was an easy transition," he said. "At a wire house, you're always striving to find people, but in a bank, they're looking for your help." Another draw was the teamwork inherent - or at least encouraged - in bank brokerage.
Something of a workaholic, Mr. Tyra was accustomed to 12-hour days both on the oil rig and at A.G. Edwards. The bank, with its nine-to-four operating hours, looked at first as if it would save him from himself. But then, he said, "they gave me the key." "I had no assistance at all, and I'd be at work until 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. every night."
It stayed like that for "quite a while," he said, until he was producing enough for the bank to justify hiring an assistant. Technically, Key advisers must produce $800,000 to get their own full-time assistant, and Mr. Tyra's assistant is only his on an ad hoc basis; he must share her with other reps in the region. However, he said, "her office is right above my own, and I monopolize most of her time."
Having administrative support, he said, is the only way for a rep to become truly successful. "You have to hire an assistant - people have 40 or 50 hours' good work in them per week, but longer than that and you're not really productive."
Another bump in the road came when Mr. Tyra tried to integrate himself into a branch network that had never offered investment services. Since he was the first rep to cover the territory, his biggest challenges were getting bankers to trust him with their clients and making sure they were up to speed on investment products. However, the bank made it clear to the branches that if there were any weak links in the chain clients were likely to put their money elsewhere.
"They were forced to work with me," Mr. Tyra said. "But when they eventually realized it was productive, that's what did it. Turnover in the branch staff means it's a constant process, but we had a good run of keeping people for a while, and I'd say it took three or four years to get them really comfortable with me."
To keep bankers' energy level up for investment services, Mr. Tyra gives presentations at the periodic "Lights, Camera, Action!" meetings with his branches' bankers, talking about different situations and the investment products he uses to meet clients' needs. "Tellers are not that sophisticated when it comes to investment products," he said. "When I explain how annuities work, they get excited about it."
His approach has been so successful that the licensed branch managers refer him business even when they could have made more money selling a client an annuity themselves. This is quite a testament to Mr. Tyra since branch managers do not get compensation for referrals.
Mr. Tyra estimated that he runs 2,000 to 3,000 client accounts, a workload that is simply untenable for one adviser. He has four licensed branch managers who help by directing clients with less than $50,000 into simple mutual funds and annuities. He himself does at least two client reviews per day and continues to drum up new business.
His investment strategy helps him manage that load. A keen subscriber to "modern portfolio theory," he uses a combination of mutual funds and variable annuities to build portfolios that can weather financial storms, so he only needs to see clients once a year. He spends more time, though, with his 300 to 400 "A" clients, who have assets in the $100,000 to $500,000 range and whose situations tend to require more sophisticated portfolio construction and wealth-transfer strategies.
The other client accounts range from $50,000 to $100,000, he said. "I allocate their assets in the right place, and I stay independent from mutual fund companies because their information is biased," he said. "I ... use a common-sense approach to investing. It's not rocket science, but it works. I have a loyal client base, and I don't often lose a client. If a client leaves me for what I think is the wrong reason, it bothers me."
By explaining what he does in terms his clients understand and by properly diversifying their portfolios, Mr. Tyra has survived the past few years of market turmoil with his practice largely unscathed. "I was on the phone a lot, holding hands and adjusting the portfolios of people who were upset, but on the whole clients' assets were pretty safe because they were diversified and we stuck to the plan."
Mr. Tyra stops short of using separately managed accounts - he said he can do the same job more cost-effectively using mutual funds in diversified portfolios and by monitoring clients' account performance. This, he said, is what separates advisers from brokers. "The philosophy was, once, that you'd open up as many accounts as you possibly could," he said. "Now, it's a consultative relationship with the client."
