Today we’d like to introduce you to Amir Monsefi.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I started in the business 30 years ago as a financial advisor trainee at Shearson Lehman Brothers in Downtown LA in March 1993. In 1995, I moved to a local discount brokerage called Kennedy Cabot, where I built my practice in a small full-service advisory department at the company. Kennedy Cabot was eventually bought by Waterhouse Securities, and after a series of additional mergers, became part of TD Ameritrade. From 1999-2002, while continuing to build my practice at TD Ameritrade, I attended the Fully Employed MBA Program at The Anderson School at UCLA. Almost immediately upon graduation, I went into management. For more than 20 years, I have served in a dual role as an advisor and a manager at, both working with clients and coaching, training and developing financial advisors of all levels of production and experience. I have held numerous managerial positions at TD Ameritrade, UBS and most recently at Merrill Lynch, where I managed the Century City, CA office until 2020.
Eventually, it became clear to us that, in order to serve clients in the way we felt was best and to create the type of business model we wanted, we needed to start our own business. In November 2020, my partner, Sharon Nassir, and I left and started AIRE Advisors. We decided to start AIRE for a number of reasons:
First, we felt strongly that advisors should not earn commissions or fees to recommend one investment over another. We wanted to remove the conflicts of interest that can arise from commission business. As a fee-only advisory firm, we simply charge each client a fair and transparent annual fee for our services, and we are never paid anything from any investment we recommend.
Second, we felt that, as advisors, we should not be partial to advising just on stocks, bonds and some alternative investments, as is the case with most of the larger firms. We wanted to be able to advise clients on their entire financial picture and all investments everywhere – not just assets held by us. We now advise clients on their real estate assets, 401k assets, and even assets held at other firms. We have a truly open architecture structure and can advise clients on their entire financial lives without the conflict of interest of commissions.
Third, we wanted to remove bureaucracy and spend more of our time on what matters to clients. We found that we were spending more than 40% of our time on unnecessary paperwork that took our time away from client service and our duties. We now have far less bureaucracy in our daily activities, which allows us to make changes more easily, be nimbler, and manage portfolios in a completely customized manner.
Fourth, we wanted to create our own educational content and messaging and deliver our own message to our clients and the public. During the past 10 years or so, the regulatory environment at the major firms had become much more stringent, so that advisory teams had a very difficult time creating their own specific messaging. It had become clear to us that, in order to truly educate the clients on what we felt investing and the markets were all about, we would need to create a lot of content that we were not able to create at a major firm. We wanted to more openly and regularly communicate with clients and to create thought leadership and relevant educational content. Some examples of what we have started to work on include:
o A client booklet for clients to give to their family or beneficiaries case of disability, death or emergency – who to call for what, a listing of all assets, insurance, and other important information.
o A monthly newsletter – real educational thought leadership to constantly remind and teach clients about best practices in investing and wealth management.
o A series of seminars for clients with kids ages 6-17 educating them on money and finances, from start to finish.
o Quarterly webinars and seminars for clients.
o Educational books and articles on all aspects of money and wealth management.
In short, we wanted to create a firm where our primary goal is not profit maximization, but client satisfaction.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Yes and no. It has been a smooth road in the sense that there was never a single moment throughout this journey that we thought we had made a mistake. We absolutely always knew we had done the right thing and that this is exactly what we needed to do. So that, in itself, gave us a lot of peace throughout the process.
Having said that, creating a firm from scratch – even with our 30 years of experience each – was far more work than we could have imagined. For the last 5 years of my career at Merrill Lynch, I managed an office with more than 50 advisors and 85 people in total while also advising all of my own clients. It was like having two full times jobs that I had to get done in one day. So, coming into this, where it was only me and my partner initially, I thought it could not possibly be as much work as my prior role, but it has been a far greater challenge and much more work.
There were times, during the first year in particular, when the stress was almost unbearable and that the work would never get done. But we eventually turned the corner around the one-year mark.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
We created this firm from the client outward, meaning the entire foundation of our company is based upon what we feel should be the ideal client experience:
• We believe that advice should be given without the conflict of interest that can arise from commission incentives. As a fee-only advisory firm, we serve as a fiduciary and never receive compensation or incentives of any kind on any investment. (This does not apply to life insurance, as there is currently no other way to purchase life insurance other than through a commission structure.)
• We believe that we should advise clients on all aspects of their financial lives and on all types of investments (not just stocks and bonds), including real estate, alternative investments, 401(k) assets, and even assets not under our direct management. We aim to serve as a single source for all advice related to our clients’ wealth.
• We believe that most public markets are quite efficient and have factored in virtually all information and predictions. Therefore, we invest by managing risk, planning and understanding the importance of asset allocation rather than by predicting or listening to the latest hot news stories.
• At the heart of our investment philosophy is the belief that clients who are on track to meet their financial goals should invest more conservatively and manage losses rather than take too much risk to strive for greater returns. This does not mean that we avoid losses altogether but that we prefer more diversified portfolios over concentrated ones.
• We believe that it is essential to continually educate clients on the true nature of investing, ignoring hyped misinformation and instead understanding how investor behavior can impact finances to help avoid financial stress and pitfalls.
What matters most to you? Why?
What matters to me most is the peace of mind of our clients and the happiness of our associates. These are the two main things that give us purpose and drive what we do every single day.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.aireadvisors.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aireadvisors/
