A measure of worth
A measure of worth
Angela Sloan • Clover, SC
Sloan Financial Group, LLC • Madison Avenue Securities
From the ashes of personal devastation, Angela Sloan has built a 4,000-client financial-services firm. Her crusade to protect others from similar financial loss drives her to learn from industry experts and to demand excellence from business partnerships. The worth of every third-party asset manager she chooses is carefully measured by their risk-management approach and performance. It’s part of “doing right” by her clients.
Proactive Advisor Magazine: Angela, can you describe your firm’s business model?
I am all about personal relationships, and the thing that drives my business is doing right by my clients. I think that means understanding their total financial picture, seeing how each piece relates to everything else, and offering solutions to all of their financial needs.
We work with over 4,000 clients across all lines of business and offer many services to meet all client needs: financial planning, tax planning and preparation, investment management, many lines of personal insurance, and estate planning. I am most proud of the fact that just about every new client we take on is from a client referral. Currently, we have around $300 million in assets under management, and that could not have happened without some very loyal and satisfied clients.
That is impressive. How did you go about building the practice?
Getting into financial services was the furthest thing from my mind when I was young. It really happened through a series of life-changing events.
Early in my first marriage, I was living on a military base with my husband and children, trying to save money on a modest income. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I incurred significant health-care costs—I had to use our invested savings to pay for those expenses.
I had entrusted everything I had saved to a “financial advisor,” hoping to grow the money. He churned my account to make commissions, and I lost close to everything I had worked so hard to save. I vowed at that point to become smart about financial matters and to try to make sure the same thing did not happen to others.
I tell people I grew up on the longest dirt road in South Carolina and never went to college, but that did not stop me from figuring out how to obtain every license I could. I worked and studied hard—one of my gifts is absorbing information like a sponge. I read everything I can get my hands on and stay very current with the latest best practices, tools, and theory.
I entered the business first in insurance and then moved on to add investment planning and investment management. Before I knew it, I had built a financial-services firm just by helping people. Over the years, it has kept growing with clients, employees, and new services. I joke that our town only had one traffic light before they had to add another because of my new office building.
How has your investment philosophy evolved?
I have always been conservative by nature, wanting to protect assets first. I grew up initially in the mutual fund business and was on a “service excellence” advisory board for one of the major fund companies. I have been exposed to some very smart minds throughout my career. I learned early on how important diversification was, but not just your typical diversification of different sectors of bonds or stocks—I am talking about the major buckets of investment alternatives people have to choose from and different asset classes. Through those early influencers, I was introduced to the endowment model of investment management, where a wide range of alternatives can be considered depending on the specific objectives.
No one investment product, to my mind, can get the job done all by itself. The three things that clients need are a high degree of safety of principal, returns that can exceed inflation, and liquidity when it is required. No one investment product is perfect in delivering all three at the same time, which is why having those major buckets of different asset classes or products is so important. Equities can provide, for example, liquidity and inflation-beating growth over the long term, but the safety of principal has historically been an issue over shorter time frames.
What is your solution to that?
It really goes back to what the client’s needs, objectives, and desires are for the future. But in most cases, for those planning primarily for retirement, we will utilize the broad buckets of equities and fixed income, insurance products, annuities, and endowment-type investments in private equity or some form of business operations. The objective is to put together a total portfolio approach that can help address the three objectives I cited and deliver sustainable, inflation-adjusted, lifetime growth and income for our clients.
We also think that for the broad bucket of equities—and even fixed income—there is a way to help reduce the drawback of shorter-term volatility and drawdowns. This comes through the use of third-party asset managers who specialize in strategies that manage risk.
What first attracted you to active investment management?
I think it is a little ridiculous that one feels they can be an expert in everything. I want to surround myself with the people and products that are at the top of the class, the best in the business. I have always operated that way, and that carries over to the area of active management.
Third-party managers have complete focus on the markets every day and the expertise to build strategies that can react favorably to changes in market conditions. I have neither the time nor the ability to manage my clients’ specific investments with that level of knowledge and sophistication.
How do you evaluate third-party managers?
I expect excellent service and a clear and repeatable approach. I also want to examine the history of the firm to make sure they are going to be there over the long term for my clients. Of course, we closely examine their record on returns. Do they have the expertise to put their money where their mouth is, so to speak?
When it comes to returns, I am a little less interested in how they have performed during strong bull markets and more concerned with how they have performed during market downturns. I always tell my clients the first way to make money is to not lose it—the returns needed to make up big losses can take many years. I really measure the worth of active managers by their approach to risk management and how they perform during those difficult times in the market.
How does active management fit it with your client service philosophy?
I am always trying to bring the most sophisticated strategies and approaches to my clients that will ultimately make their lives better. I think active management fits perfectly with that approach, as its model seeks to deliver competitive returns and growth while doing a good job of managing risk. Knowing that my clients’ investments are in strong hands is very important to me.
I feel truly blessed for what I have been able to achieve in my personal and professional life. In turn, I want to provide clients with the highest level of service and education and a broad line of financial products—so they can get their entire financial house in order and take care of planning for their future. I know we do a very good job at that.
Disclosure: Angela Sloan is a registered representative of and offers securities through Madison Avenue Securities, Inc. (“MAS”), member FINRA & SIPC. MAS is not affiliated with Sloan Financial Group, LLC, and its affiliated companies: Preservation Financial, Inc.; Metrolina Tax Service, Inc; and Metrolina Insurance.
Photography by Kyle Pearce