John Kuhn • Fargo, ND
Bell Investments • LPL Financial
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Bell Investments is a division of Bell Bank, which has great resources for retail and business customers in many diversified financial-services areas. It has been voted consistently as one of the best places to work for in the upper Midwest and is currently the 12th-largest privately owned bank in the country. The advisors of Bell Investments collectively have approximately $855 million in brokerage and advisory assets to date. We are different in that all of our wealth advisors are salaried, not commission-based, which reinforces our commitment to providing guidance to clients that is not influenced by a “sales orientation.”

I enjoy being able to talk to customers about their life goals, conducting a thorough discovery process, and analyzing their overall financial situation. Our team’s mission is to help clients put together a game plan that will work effectively over the long term to pursue those goals. My hope is to create relationships that last a lifetime.

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We provide access to a wide spectrum of financial services, including financial planning, retirement planning, college-funding planning, wealth management, brokerage accounts, annuities, and life- and long-term-care insurance. Our team can use a broad array of investments—including stocks, bonds, alternative assets, and real estate investments—to help clients work toward meeting their objectives, whether that is creating an income stream, mitigating tax exposure, or capital appreciation. We have the capability to work with complex client situations, including those of high-net-worth families, nonprofits, or foundations, as well as creating estate and philanthropic solutions for many types of clients.

There is no such thing as a “typical client,” and we have broad reach among many demographic segments. It is a tremendous pleasure to work with so many members of our local communities. Most of our wealth-management clients are customers of the bank. The branch in Fargo where I’m located is the largest bank in town. When you have that type of market share, there tend to be a lot of new customers of the bank as people move into our area and get established here.

Many new clients are initially looking for an account rollover, but we try to initiate a broader financial discussion and review the benefits of going through the full financial-planning process. As we dig deeper into their needs, they will often come to understand that we can assist them with concerns such as college-funding planning, retirement planning, or analyzing whether they have appropriate life insurance or long-term-care insurance in place.

Clients have accomplished the first important step by talking to a financial professional who will take the time to get to know them and identify tools to help them progress toward their goals. The best way that we can do that is by creating a comprehensive financial plan through our wealth-management group, which includes financial planners.

We work as a team to gather all of the necessary client data, have a thorough discussion of where they have been in their financial lives and where they want to go, identify their risk tolerance and financial data, help determine objectives for the short term and long term, and then create the financial plan and review that with the client or client couple. We will meet periodically to assess how they are progressing toward their goals and make appropriate adjustments, if necessary, to their overall plan or a specific element of it. We also feel it is important to continually work with a client’s attorney, accountant, or other advisors.

I feel very fortunate, and I think our clients are also, to have many professional resources located literally within our building. These include the financial-planning group, attorneys, trust officers, a 401(k) group, and an asset-management group in the bank’s trust department. I am the quarterback of the team and attend virtually every client meeting. If outside professionals are required for a specific situation, we have trusted resources available there as well. I think we are well-positioned to help our clients develop a highly professional and customized financial plan and to implement all of its facets.

One of the real strengths of my training and background, which is reinforced by Bell Investments’ planning process, is the ability to listen closely to clients, help them clarify their financial objectives, analyze their financial data, and propose a customized investment plan that will help them progress toward their goals. We use sophisticated planning tools, have access to a full spectrum of investment products and services, and are committed to constructing a sound investment strategy and asset-allocation framework.

I strongly believe in financial education and spend a lot of time talking to clients about the risks and rewards of different types of investment products and strategies. Clients who go through the process of financial and investment planning should have realistic expectations about how their portfolio will likely perform in different types of market conditions. There are no guarantees in any investment scenario, which is why we believe in having highly diversified portfolios and a strong emphasis on risk management that is in-line with a client’s risk tolerance.

I have explained to clients that when I first got into this business back in the early 1990s, we would occasionally see 10% market corrections that lasted about six months. They were painful, but they tended to be slow moving and relatively orderly, and the market would soon recover. Over the past two decades, markets have been more likely to move down 10% or more a couple of times a year and then periodically experience an intense bear market and steep market drawdowns.

That is why risk management, diversification, and the clarification of expectations for clients are so important in today’s investment environment. Each client’s or client couple’s portfolio construction is based on their financial objectives, risk profile, time frame, and overall comfort level. But it is generally a given that we will recommend multiple investment products and strategies, some that are correlated with the equity market and some that have less correlation.

We will likely consider alternative investments, and, where appropriate for clients concerned about retirement income, we may use an equity index annuity. We also have access to professional third-party investment managers who can add an entirely different level of risk management for a client portfolio. This might be in the form of an allocation to more tactical strategies that are not highly correlated to the overall market and that can adjust market exposure based on changing market conditions. As I explain the potential benefits of further diversification and risk management by using an allocation to actively managed strategies, I usually receive a positive response from clients.

We want clients’ expectations to be centered on their entire portfolio, not just one product or account. But whether we are talking about a tactical money manager, an annuity, a fixed-income approach, or a mutual fund family, we believe in the concepts of professional management oversight and a high level of due diligence on our end.