FinServe Ambassador Champions the Power of Independent Advisors

Along with his wife (Kennah) and two other partners (Warren and Jennifer), Parham runs Innovative Wealth Building (IWB), an RIA firm headquartered in California, MD, but with a reach that spreads across the country. It’s a successful business that operates alongside many of the giants in the financial services industry – a fact that always pushes RIAs to continually seek new ways to grow and scale. The journey between these two worlds is one that Parham himself has navigated.

“When I went to college, I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up,” he says. “I was lucky enough to land an internship at Northwestern Mutual when I was 20 and as those summer days just flew by, I realized this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

After his experience with a large national firm like Northwestern, Parham’s professional career started out a bit smaller as a financial advisor for First Command, a boutique firm mostly serving the military community. He was eventually promoted to district manager and associate director of training, helping to welcome many other new advisors to the field, before deciding to take a leap over to Prudential, one of the largest firms in the industry.

“Working at Prudential really opened my eyes to what was out there,” he says. “At my previous company, I hadn’t gotten much of a chance to experience life outside of the fishbowl. During my time at Prudential, I learned a lot more about the industry and the vastness of the opportunities that I wasn’t even aware of. I also began engaging in more complex planning with high-net-worth clients, something I’d never gotten to do before, and I wanted more of that.”

Independence in Practice

Once his contract with Prudential was up, Parham decided to make another leap: from the corporate world to the field of independent advising. This was the genesis of IWB.

“After almost 10 years in the industry, I knew what I liked and what I didn’t like, and I knew that I could use those ideas combined with my strengths to build a financial planning utopia for my clients,” he says. 

“When you’re independent, you can do what you think and know is best for your clients. Instead of having to keep your opinions to yourself and toe the company line, you’re free to chart your own path.”

The transition to independence, as Parham describes it, broke down into three core promises to the clients he worked with: better investment services, better technology, and lower fees. The first two sprung from his newfound freedom as an independent advisor to make the decisions he felt were right for himself and those he served, and the last was made possible by the lack of overhead that larger companies have to factor into their service models. While the process of building the new firm was a multi-year endeavor, he says he noticed the difference right away – as did many of his clients.

“The first sign that we were moving in a good direction was that by the time we had finished transitioning all our clients over to IWB, many of them were already recommending us to other people,” he says. “When we first started, we didn’t even have a website. Now, we get requests through it for new client introductions multiple times a week.”

However, Parham also isn’t shy about the challenges that independence brings – including a massive amount of decision-making that can sometimes be overwhelming.

“When you’re independent, you don’t have a parent company to fall back on. If things aren’t excellent, nobody’s on the hook for that but you,” he says. “It’s a big world with a lot of choices, and if you’re not careful, you can fall victim to decision fatigue. It’s like birthday shopping for a significant other: there are so many options out there, but how do you decide on the best one?”

The Armor of Knowledge

In the midst of all these choices, however, Parham says one thing has helped keep him on course: the education he received from The American College of Financial Services.

“Being an RIA instead of working for a broker-dealer is like swimming in the ocean as opposed to a pool. It can be lonely, and there may even be sharks in the water. Working with The College has shown me there are lots of people out there just like me, and has allowed me to collaborate with others in ways that have proved to be mutually beneficial for all parties.”

Parham says that he was initially self-taught when joining the industry, but began his learning journey with The College through its CFP® Certification Education Program to earn the coveted industry-standard mark. From there, he took advantage of The College’s interconnected programming to branch out to the Chartered Life Underwriter® (CLU®),  Chartered Financial Consultant® (ChFC®) and Wealth Management Certified Professional® (WMCP®) designations.

“The College’s education has been like body armor for me,” he says. “The WMCP® especially gave me the knowledge and confidence to work with more up-market clients and higher-net-worth individuals I’d never spoken with before, and I’ll absolutely be a lifelong learner.”

One of Parham’s more recent acquisitions is the Retirement Income Certified Professional® (RICP®) designation, which he says has helped him focus on the critical needs of clients at or nearing retirement, including Society Security claiming, long-term care and longevity risk, asset management, and wealth transfer. However, it’s also given the tools to approach another pool of clients as well–those who may be young, but are already looking to set themselves up for the future.

“A portion of my clients are from the West Coast and the Los Angeles area–people in their 20s and 30s who may be high earners but not rich yet–and many of them don’t know that small steps today can reap big benefits for tomorrow,” he says. “Almost everyone wants to retire, and even people who don’t think they’ll be able to will usually jump at the chance if you show them it’s possible and what to do about it. The difference between having a $900,000 nest egg and having maybe more than $3 million in the bank can sometimes be as simple as a few small adjustments–and that’s the knowledge the RICP® has given me.”

Maintaining RIA Excellence in a Changing World

Building and running an independent practice is a lot of hard work, Parham admits–but when asked if he ever second-guesses his decision, his answer is a definitive no.

“Going RIA has led to an almost unbelievable improvement in my career and in my life,” he says. “If you do it right and prepare for it properly, you’re going to wonder how you lived without it. People ask me if the grass is greener on this side of the fence, and I sometimes tell them that if you go RIA, you might realize you didn’t even have any grass on the other side to begin with.”

Parham compares the business of running an independent practice with the idea of owning a home as opposed to renting one: when renting, you might not have to be as focused on all the things to do, but owning comes with a greater sense of pride along with the responsibility. He does acknowledge, though, that further change and evolution is needed both in the profession and in society.

“The RIA space is probably less diverse than the broker-dealer world, and our industry as a whole isn’t as diverse as many others,” he says. “When you look at the wealth distribution in America and the types of people who generally hold the wealth, you get a sense of why that might be, but it’s not just that; many aspects of the industry just aren’t meant to cater to certain populations who may want to get into it.”

Parham cites paid family leave as one such policy, as many companies in the financial services industry still may not offer it to their employees–especially working mothers.

“We’ve made some progress, but overall financial advising as a profession isn’t set up to accommodate many people’s lives and circumstances. As a result, the financial services industry tends to have a very high rate of attrition. We need to rewrite the rules, and that’s where the RIA space comes in. Here, I can be more flexible and do things that I believe are the best practices to attract and retain diverse talent. I can really be a part of the change.”