At a time when it is all too commonplace for target date portfolios to be lined up and presented as the sole options from which investors can select, not all advisors are skipping the more personalized, client-specific form of advising. Rather than giving clients a parade of standardized choices, the notion of starting from scratch and foregoing the one-size-fits-all mentality is still being employed.

For Edward D. Foy, this specialization is his standard mode of operation.

As president and chief investment officer of Foy Financial Services, Inc., headquartered in Lincoln, NE., Foy wants each client to receive unique financial advice tailored to their specific situations.
“Lumping clients into a standardized model that basically turns their investment into a commodity does not work for me,” Foy said. “Clients have very specific income requirements and specific concerns with respect to volatility that others may not share. Income does not come to them at the same time as everyone else. They do not all retire on the same day. They don’t take their income on the same day and in the same way as everyone else. That is why I run a firm that uses a very individualized approach to what we do in terms of making advice for investments, and we are very individualized in our work of helping people realize their objectives.”

Being a fiduciary isn’t a question that Foy needs to weigh. A resounding, “Yes, I am a fiduciary,” is already his answer – and it comes from having worked on both sides of the financial advising world. Foy entered the financial services business in 1980, beginning as a stock broker with a regional firm in Minneapolis, MN. He has worked for both regional and national firms, including E. F. Hutton, where he was introduced to the concept of managing a client’s entire financial needs, rather than merely buying stocks and bonds for investment purposes.

In the late 1980s, Foy joined forces with First Financial Planners in St. Louis, MO, using the firm as his broker-dealer for the next 19 years while he developed his practice of giving independent advice. He was dual-registered as a registered agent with the Securities and Exchange Commission and as a registered representative governed by FINRA.

Seeing both sides of the picture, Foy became increasingly convinced that clients needed plans characterized by detailed and personalized attention rather than being stuffed into buy and hold models. This is when he developed his own system for meeting these needs. The then-president of First Financial Planners gave Foy a green light with his personal accounts in 1992. That year went so well, that Foy’s approach was introduced firm-wide. Over the next seven years Foy’s program, SELECTOR® Money Management, grew from dollar zero to over $500 million under management. He knew his approach was working.

He still sticks with it today and he is certain in regards to what investing clients want from him. “Clients want to be able to see absolute returns,” Foy said.

He is referencing absolute returns over long periods of time – not spans lasting only a couple of months or years. Getting clients to the point of accepting short term loss, knowing that long-term gain is ahead of them, is also part of his work, he believes. Beyond giving advice and arranging transactions, Foy knows he functions as part counselor and part teacher.
Educated clients – clients who have paid attention to the long-term investing lessons Foy uses to illustrate the philosophy and approach his firm takes – don’t panic during a Great Recession, such as the one from 2007 to 2009, Foy told The Suit.

Foy said, “It is important that we all accept we can only do as good as the winds, the currents and tides take us. We cannot make good progress in a hurricane, under a gale force wind or when typhoon strikes. But we can hunker down and ride out the storm. They understand that when a typhoon hits, it is just a typhoon. It isn’t what they are invested in. It is just the weather – and the weather will change.” Foy also has a life preserver ready to toss when life gets turbulent. His goal is to develop such a close relationship with clients that he is on their front line of defense when trouble comes along.

"We are right there with their pastor or priest, with the CPA or attorney,” Foy said. “We develop our relationships so that our clients contact us immediately and we develop our response abilities so that we can function on that first line of defense.”

This need for client stability is one of the reasons Foy has already built his own succession plan. His daughter, Cindy L. Foy, is the firm’s director of  operations. His son-in-law, Andrew J. Kramer, is the firm’s chief compliance officer.

“The fact that I have been able to build this firm is my greatest success,” Foy emphasized. “This is a family firm. I am not the whole show. I did not just build this for myself. This fuels and feeds my children and my grandchildren. There is another generation behind me that gives our clients the knowledge that they will be taken care of – and that there is a strong sense of continuity.”

For more information, visit: www.foyfinancial.com