Rene S. Licon Jr., CFP • Whittier, CA
RSL Wealth Management • SCF Securities Inc.
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Proactive Advisor Magazine: Rene, talk about your background and how your financial career has evolved.

I grew up in a primarily lower-middle-class neighborhood outside of Los Angeles. Both of my parents had good jobs and worked hard to provide for our family. They were a big influence on me, encouraging my sister and me to focus on academics and instilling the values of responsibility, generosity, and gratitude. We had a tight-knit family and enjoyed spending time with our relatives living close by. I did well academically and was also a starter on our school’s varsity baseball team.

I was part of the first generation in our family to attend college. I earned a bachelor’s degree in political economy from the University of California, Berkeley. This was an interdisciplinary curriculum, with courses in political science, macro- and microeconomics, statistics and data analysis, history, and business economics.

I thought the degree program was excellent. In addition to my classes, I worked part-time and played intramural sports. I was also an officer for the undergraduate minority business association, which helped minority students build contacts for internships and job opportunities. After graduation, I continued mentoring undergraduates and alums as a co-founder and board president of the UC Berkeley Chicano Latino Alumni Association.

Following college, I entered the financial-services industry and worked for a small brokerage firm. That was a transactional type of position, and I wanted a role more focused on building client relationships. I started working for a local bank and ended up spending the majority of my banking career with Washington Mutual as an investment consultant.

My experience in the banking channel was very positive, as I was part of a team-oriented environment and served clients with a wide range of financial needs. It was important that we understand as much as possible about our clients’ financial picture and overall objectives. The high volume of clients made this a challenging exercise, but one that I took very seriously. During this period, I became a Certified Financial Planner professional, which helped further my knowledge, skills, and approach with clients.

After about seven years in banking, I wanted to be able to spend more time with each client and develop a fuller planning relationship. I decided to become an independent advisor and founded RSL Wealth Management in 2005. We advise clients in the areas of wealth management, asset protection, retirement planning, estate planning, and employer-sponsored retirement plans.

Does your practice have any specific target segments?

I work with many different types of clients and am proud that a good number have been with me for more than 20 years. These are individuals and families from all walks of life, with a core segment of professionals and business owners. Many clients have come from humble beginnings and have built successful businesses or professional careers. I also work with nonprofits that need sound investment advice and help them service and manage their retirement programs.

I have always believed in playing a strong role in our local community. I have served on a number of nonprofit boards and been involved in civic activities. This has required a lot of time and effort, but it provides a great deal of personal satisfaction. This has also allowed me to get to know many people in the community and build a substantial network of like-minded professionals.

Most of my business clients are minority business owners. These clients are devoted not only to their families but also to their employees. While they are very successful with their businesses, many have limited education in managing their finances. What should happen next with the money they are earning is a big question for them. And that’s where I come in, helping them figure out financial priorities and a plan for the future. I can assist them with their personal financial and retirement planning, as well as in various business areas, particularly in setting up retirement and compensation plans.

Describe your overall financial-planning process.

Having been in financial services for over 30 years, I have witnessed the evolution of our industry and the explosion of mass media and technology that influences our lives. I want to bring value to my clients on a personal level and show them how they can be better stewards of their finances.

I saw there was a fundamental need to educate clients from all walks of life on the importance of comprehensive planning. My goal is to provide clarity and transparency as I help clients achieve a sense of financial freedom—and hopefully enhance their personal and professional fulfillment. Our mission is to get to know and understand their needs, wants, and long-term goals—and then deliver appropriate strategies that address their individual situation.

Our planning reflects a disciplined process: establishing broad goals and defining the working relationship with our clients, performing in-depth financial and qualitative discovery, assessing and analyzing the client’s financial situation and priorities, developing a proactive financial and/or retirement income plan with strategic recommendations, presenting and discussing recommendations in the context of client objectives, creating a specific implementation plan and identifying providers of various financial products and services, and monitoring the progress of the plan and making adaptive changes as needed.

For business owners, we follow the same planning framework, while assessing the integration of their personal financial-planning objectives with those of their role as a business owner. This often includes the setup and servicing of their group retirement plan. For all clients, we use planning software that offers them the opportunity to view their real-time financial data and to input changes in their financial situation. I stress to clients that we want to have an interactive process, creating a full understanding of their plan and a sense of ownership.

Over the years, I have developed strong partnerships that have provided valuable resources in serving our clients. Utilizing attorneys, CPAs, actuaries, institutional money managers, underwriters, and third-party administrators allows for a collaborative and specialized approach that each client deserves when we are addressing a specific financial goal.

“My goal is to provide clarity and transparency as I help clients. …”

What is your broad investment philosophy?

Our firm’s overall investment approach is rooted in fee-based asset management. Client investment plans are customized and predicated on each client’s specific investment objectives, risk profile, and time horizons. We believe in using the services of highly qualified third-party investment managers who can provide a strong research capability, comprehensive strategy development and implementation, and constant monitoring of the market environment.

Capital markets have become more dynamic, sophisticated, and unpredictable. I believe there is a greater need for diversifying not only asset classes but also investment strategies. This might be implemented for a given client through one manager or multiple managers. Overall, our approach will generally use a blend of passive and active strategies, with allocation to active strategies in client portfolios helping to mitigate risk and volatility. We are focused on helping clients achieve competitive returns through full market cycles, while seeking to mitigate the steep drawdowns that can occur in severe bear markets.

Our investment approach is goals-based, and we evaluate portfolio progress against specific objectives for each client. We also use tools to assess a client’s risk exposure, including stress testing of portfolios. For retirement clients, we examine cash-flow projections under different scenarios. Retirement-income plans are generally based on a variation of bucket planning, involving very low risk exposure for income needs in the first few years of retirement, with strategies that increasingly focus on growth in the later years. To summarize, I stress to clients the principles of asset-class and strategy diversification, a dynamic and active approach to asset allocation in concert with more passive core strategies, and an emphasis on risk management that can help clients stay committed to their long-term investment plan.

How would like clients to see the experience of working with your firm?

My objective is to have clients see me as a valued partner who has a genuine interest in helping them reach their long-term financial and life goals. For business clients, this extends to being seen as a significant resource for their business needs. As I mentioned, I grew up in a tight-knit and supportive family environment with a focus on personal integrity and accountability. These are core values that I strive to bring to all of our client relationships.