Feeding a Need to Help

By Charles Keenan

“I enjoyed helping those kids and their parents right the wrongs they had,” he says. “I was getting something out of it emotionally; it was feeding the need of helping.”

Yet with a starting salary of $17,000, he couldn’t see himself prospering as a social worker for the long haul. “The challenge of working in that industry and the public sector was the monetary benefits weren’t there,” he says.

Chevry, born to immigrant parents from Haiti, already knew what it was like not to have much money in his hometown of Quincy, Mass. His mom served as a nurse aide; his dad worked in a hospital kitchen and cleaned offices on weekends. Chevry saw the hard work before his eyes, and it rubbed off. He delivered newspapers in grade school to chip in. “I didn’t want to put the extra burden on them,” he says. “I was rich in a lot of other ways. But financially, I understood what money can mean to you. I didn’t want to replay that in my adult life.”

In search for another career in 1997, he answered an ad in The Boston Globe for a workshop at American Express Financial Advisors, and he was soon hired. He was intrigued by the notion he could still help others, yet also make a decent living while doing so. "Financial planning spoke to me," he says.

Prompted by a friend to check out Merrill Lynch, he soon jumped ship for its trainee program, at a time when the firm was adopting a financial planning model. Merrill offered a more open architecture compared with the proprietary investment products of Amex. At Merrill, Chevry faced a daunting task: Assemble a book of business in excess of $12 million in two years. “I didn’t know how a kid from Quincy with parents from Haiti was ever going to do it, but I did it.” He worked countless hours and weekends. “I was a cold-calling fiend. I ate, slept, and breathed trying to be successful in getting through that program. It was something I really wanted.”

He achieved the goal and ever since has steadily built his book of business, now about $70 million in assets. His clients are mostly high net worth, with an average of $2 million to $3 million in assets. He also manages a 401(k) for clients with $500,000 to $1 million.

Breaking Away Chevry also values independence and left Merrill in 2004 for Coburn & Meredith, his current firm. While Merrill had an open architecture with respect to investments, Chevry says he still felt there was an expectation to hawk products such as credit cards and mortgages.

Coburn & Meredith gives him a platform with respected custodians in Fidelity and First Clearing and access to specialized services such as tax, insurance, and estate planning. “Before, if you weren’t with the big wirehouses, you were a nobody,” he says. “Now you are seeing a lot of great advisors go independent because of the allure and benefit of that independence of thought.”

Chevry, senior vice president of investments at Coburn, uses a process that he has dubbed “CHIP,” or the “client hallmark implementation process.” It starts with a relaxed first meeting to get to know each other. There’s no talk of products or investments, but he uses it to find out more about what a prospect is looking for in an advisor, and he discusses his philosophies, strategies, and methodologies. Taking notes, he fires away with questions: How does the client handle money? Does the client save? What areas does the client wish to improve on? What are areas of concern? What’s the family structure?

He then waits two or three days before following up to see if the prospects want to continue with him. In some cases, Chevry decides he’s not a good fit. If he and the prospective client are a match, Chevry gathers financial information and goals in a second meeting, and then later presents a customized plan. After that, he makes the investments and monitors the approach.

It’s when times get tough that advisors show their true colors, he says. Having a plan for clients helped Chevry persuade many of them to stay the course after the crash in 2008. He told them that unless things go back to the Stone Age, they should be buying. He emphasized stocks where he could selectively capture good companies that had been violently oversold. The strategy paid off for his clients who stuck to the plan. “With chaos, there’s opportunity,” he says. “If you were willing to be disciplined, structured, and have a game plan, you made a lot of money between 2009 and now.”

Giving the Big Picture Chevry, 45, also helps clients with Morningstar Advisor Workstation, in part with performance reporting, showing them ways a portfolio can generate income by running cash-flow scenarios. He also uses Advisor Workstation for reconciliation. It allows Chevry to monitor those client assets that are outside of his purview, such as a 401(k) plan, an insurance policy, or a pension.

“It truly gives a big picture of the client,” he says. “We want to know what exactly the other hand is doing, and that it is doing it appropriately to get to their end goal. Clients appreciate it, because they know you’re there for the right reasons.”

For equity exposure, Chevry also uses a blend of mutual funds for active management and exchange-traded funds for passive exposure to the market and individual sectors. His approach takes a top-down view of the economy and examines where the business cycle is today, leading him to now overweight areas such as information technology, healthcare, and consumer discretionary. He also likes financials due to the prospects of rising interest rates. “Where you are in the market cycle really dictates where you should be based in terms of sectors,” he says.

Beyond investing, Chevry seeks to do more by helping clients with complicated endeavors such as estate planning, diversifying concentrated stock positions, or how to best collar a large equity holding.

He checks in with clients periodically, using CRM software to keep track. It keeps people more at ease. “They know I’m watching the store,” he says. “That is the message I’m trying to send out there. When you do that, you have fewer impulsive calls.”

Just like his early days as a social worker, Chevry keeps on checking in, mentoring, guiding, teaching, but with a different audience. “With a process, strategy, and a plan, you can see things through,” he says.

Graham Chevry, wealth management advisor and senior vice president of investments with Coburn & Meredith.

How he caught our eye: Made transition from social worker to building a book of business of about $70 million.

Career path: Studied sociology at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Joined Merrill Lynch in 1997. He went independent in 2004, joining Coburn & Meredith.

Personal: Lives with his wife in the Marina Bay neighborhood of Quincy, Mass. Has run the Boston Marathon twice and works out religiously five times a week by weight training, cycling, and doing Bikram yoga. Unwinds by cruising Boston Bay with his wife on the Stephanie, a 23-foot Boston Whaler boat.

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Charles Keenan is a freelance financial journalist.

This article originally appeared in the August/September 2018 issue of Morningstar magazine. To learn more about Morningstar magazine, please visit our corporate website.