Think Mariner Is Just for Individuals? Think Again. 

Host and Senior Wealth Advisor Dan Sharkey sits down with Mike Welker, CFA®, head of Mariner Institutional, to explore how Mariner collaborates with a range of organizations. From helping institutions pursue investment objectives to supporting the financial well-being of their employees, Mike shares insights into how Mariner Institutional strategies aim to serve organizations.

Transcript:

Daniel Sharkey:

Welcome, everyone. Today, on Your Life Simplified, I have an extra special guest. His name is Mike. And he is the head of Mariner Institutional. Mike, welcome to Your Life Simplified.

Mike Welker:

Thanks, Dan. It’s good to be here.

Daniel:

So we’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a really long time. And I’ll just speak personally. I’ve been really looking forward to this since we agreed to kind of get together. So before we kind of dive into exactly what Mariner Institutional does and all of that fun stuff, I just want to first start with your background. So you get a bachelor’s in finance from Rollins College along with an MBA, also from Rollins. Was institutional consulting always the goal? Or what were you thinking back in the heyday of figuring out what you wanted to do with your life?

Mike:

Boy, that’s a good question. Interesting question. So to answer, “Is investment consulting, investment advisory services to institutions what I wanted to do growing up?” the answer is absolutely no. I didn’t even know that this industry existed. I grew up in a small town in Northern Indiana. And I actually got to Rollins College in Central Florida, in Winter Park, Florida, based on a basketball scholarship. So that’s how I went down to Rollins. My dad had heard of the school and thought, “Oh, what a great opportunity. Leave small town Indiana, go to Winter Park, Florida. Broaden your horizons a little bit, maybe play some basketball, have fun.” And so that is what I did. When I got down here, I recognized my basketball career was going to end very quickly. I thought I was a lot better than what I was coming to a Division II school. And had a great time, met a lot of great people, but again, recognized I was pretty much at my ceiling.

But there, Dan, is where I started to fall in love with the capital markets. So the timeframe is important here. It’s like early to mid-’90s. And if you can think back that far, internet’s kind of connecting everybody. The world’s becoming very global. Capital markets, specifically US, and everywhere, are kind of taking off. And I got wrapped up in that. And so kind of my undergrad experience at Rollins and then going into grad school is when I wanted to get into investment management. I wanted to be a research analyst or a portfolio manager. I still had no idea what institutional investment advisory services was. I wanted to be kind of on the buy side, analyst or portfolio manager. So that really was hatched at my time at Rollins. Had no idea what I wanted to go when I went to Rollins, but quickly found out I was very passionate about that.

Daniel:

And so when you got to Rollins and afterwards, highlighting your focus on investments and still trying to figure out, you start with a company called AndCo, which is a precursor to Mariner Institutional, which we’ll talk more about. But you spend basically your entire career there before joining Mariner. How did you find such a … And ultimately, ascending to CEO, which is a minor detail that I’ll just drop in there. But how did you find working with one company for so long? What kept you there? And talk a little bit about your start that kept you located in Winter Park all those years.

Mike:

Yeah. So to go back a little bit, there’s one part of my career that I want to insert there before going to AndCo. So as I mentioned, mid-’90s, late ’90s, I fall in love with the capital markets, want to be an analyst, want to be a portfolio manager. I get an internship between my first and second year up in New York on the floor of the stock exchange. That was a wonderful experience, further putting fuel on the fire of wanting to get on the asset management side. And then I got a great opportunity to work in Central Florida for what was a company called STI Capital Management. It became Trusco Capital Management. But that was a buy side institutional asset management firm. So I got my first opportunity to work there. And that’s what I wanted to do. It wasn’t in stocks, which is where I wanted, but it was in cash management, so it was the least sexy part.

Mike:

Yeah. Exactly.

Daniel:

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Mike:

It was no … But hey, I got my foot in the door, right? So I got a job.

Daniel:

Right. That’s right.

Mike:

Kind of worked my way in. And then it was a wonderful place to learn, get trained. And I was there for about two, two and a half years, so late ’90s going into early 2000s. And one of the career changes I made at that organization as I became a product specialist or a portfolio specialist where I went out to institutional plans … And what I mean by institutional plans is like a corporation or a public fund, a city that would have a pension fund, a hospital, those types of institutions. They would hire our organization to basically manage money for them. And I would go out there and I would talk about the portfolio they had invested in, what was working from a stock standpoint, what wasn’t. And I was really enjoying that. Kind of thinking this was my path to kind of get into that analyst portfolio management role.

And that, Dan, is where I ran into my first mentor, who was my boss, who was in the institutional consulting or advisory space. That was a company called Bogdahn Consulting, which became AndCo. And so when I’m going out talking to these institutions, I’m like, “Who’s this other party in the room that’s basically verifying or saying, “Well, that’s true, but let me tell you the rest of the story regarding what Mike is saying”?” And that’s when I found out, oh, there are these investment, institutional investment advisory firms. And these advisors or consultants are hired by the institution to basically hold accountable all the managers that they hire. And that was the first time I had heard about this industry. And so that is where I developed a relationship with that gentleman named Joe. He recruited me over to his organization. And that’s what got me at AndCo.

Daniel:

It’s really interesting that when you begin to kind of peel back the onion, you see the multi layers that exist when dealing with these types of institutions. And kind of a perfect segue to talk about what we’re really here to discuss. And that’s what Mariner Institutional does and all the different facets that you’re involved in specifically. So when we think about institutional consulting, let’s just put some meat on that bone. What does that actually mean for anyone who, as you were when you started in your career, not too familiar with the term? What’s the mission? How do you work with clients? What do you actually do for them? And then how do we put all those pieces together to kind of form a cohesive story?

Mike:

Absolutely. And if it’s okay, do you mind if I go back a little bit and talk a little bit-

Daniel:

Absolutely.

Mike:

… about the evolution? Because I think that’s important. So when I first got in to this institutional consulting or advisory space, and this, again, let’s think it’s around 2000, what our experience was is that really what we were doing is we were being hired by these institutions. And I kind of gave you example what an institution is, right? It could be a public fund, a city, a state, large, a county, something like that, or a hospital, a corporation, those types of institutions. We were hired by those groups to basically tell them how their monies were being invested. And were they doing well relative to the market and relative to a peer universe? Right? So it was really performance reporting, right? Performance monitoring and performance reporting. That’s kind of what it was initially. Over time, maybe five, seven year increments, what happened is that role became much more advisory in nature.

And really then what the consultant was doing was not only talking about the performance and how the funds were doing from a return standpoint relative to market indices, but also saying, “Hey, we think you should modify your asset allocation. Be more in this asset class or less.” So we would start doing asset allocation work. We were doing a lot more manager selection and recommending different managers and then different asset classes. And so that evolved to stock bond portfolios to then stock bond, private equity, real estate. And then you had private equity and then you had infrastructure and all these different investments. So it went from performance reporting to more advisory and really an extension of their staff as they were running these institutional portfolios, which was interesting, to today where really we’re seeing institutions are saying, “Hey, we love what you’re doing here by being our advisor. Can you provide additional services to the people that make up our institution?” Right?

And so that’s been a real big evolution where before, it was more myopic and the services were more contained. Now our institutions or plan sponsors are asking for more services. And again, we’ll get into this, but that’s why Mariner just made such sense for us because they do such great services on that individual side. We can now lean into that and solve problems that the institutional has at the individual level. So that’s a little bit of what I’ve seen over 25 years from performance reporting, more of an advisor, really helping administer and managing the portfolio to now really helping solve lots of problems because the institution wants to deal with less service providers.

Daniel:

Yeah. No, I was going to ask this question coming up in a bit, but this is a perfect segue. Over that, through that evolution, starting with benchmarking, performance reporting, really understanding how we’re doing, do you think that was the first evolution of what we now consider outsourced chief investment officer services? Almost we’ve moved beyond the point of you just providing observations to providing more direct recommendations.

Mike:

Absolutely. There’s no question. And I think that as trust was gained, and then time became very precious for all trustees, whether you’re a paid trustee or not, or whether you’re a CFO or a chief human resources officer, and part of your responsibility is managing this big pool of assets and a lot of responsibility. They said, “Listen, your recommendations have been good. You’ve been a trusted partner. It’s hard for me to get my board to meet. Or it’s hard for me to focus on this. We just want to delegate more of this responsibility to you.” And I think, Dan, exactly to your point, that’s where you’ve seen the evolution of more discretionary services going to the advisor, the OCIO model. And then the accountability is, okay, we have a policy statement, we have a benchmark, we have goals. How are we doing relative to that goal? Are we beating it? Are we in line with it? Or are we behind it on a risk adjusted basis? And what are our fees? And if you’re not doing well relative to those benchmarks, you’re probably going to be fired.

Daniel:

And it’s also, how am I doing against peers? Right?

Mike:

Oh, no question.

Daniel:

A large part of that institutional space is looking at the peer group that you’re involved in and exactly how we’re stacking up against those groups.

Mike:

No question. So any institution … And again, this goes back to the origins and that performance reporting. And you said it perfectly as far as benchmarking and all the different measurement. So if you’re an institution, you can literally say, “Okay. I’m a public fund. And I’m $500 million.” You could say, “Okay. Public funds that are $500 million and below, how does my portfolio from a ranking standpoint compare against other funds that have that similar characteristic?” So literally, decision-makers can say, “Well, one being the best, a hundred’s being the worst, why are we 80th?” Right? That’s not very good. And there could be a legitimate reason.

Well, it’s because you’re very risk-averse. And the markets are up 25% per year for the past three years. But if that’s not the case, then you’ve got some explaining to do. What did you do wrong? But that’s why I think that the performance measurement is so important. It’s because these trustees have a responsibility to make sure they’re making good decisions, to make sure they’re monitoring those decisions. And if they’re spending money, the money is not being spent foolishly. So you can benchmark that. And are we adding value relative to just investing in a passive benchmark?

Daniel:

Right. Well, one of the things that you just touched on, I think, is really important to tease out is this idea of what I’ll call corporate governance or oversight into the individual plan portfolio or institution portfolio. And that is that each institution is going to have slightly different goals.

Mike:

Oh, yeah.

Daniel:

Can you talk a little bit about how there’s not one size solution that fits all? Just how specific that you get for a fighter fire’s pension versus an endowment versus a Taft-Hartley plan? Just talk through the specificity and the oversight that you have relative to what that particular entity is trying to achieve as opposed to, quote, unquote, “The market as a whole.”

Mike:

Yeah. That’s a really, really good question. And I think that’s a real differentiator of Mariner that we fell in love with as we thought about partnering with the right organization strategically. But I think it’s got to start with the client, right? It’s got to start with client. And you said it, Daniel. You may have a firefighter pension and you may have a police pension at the same city, but they are run very, very differently because of the demographics, because of who’s on the board and their risk tolerances, because of funding of the different pension. Maybe the police has been around longer. So it’s a little bit more mature. Not as much money is coming in than the fire. And so you’ve got to look at all those different elements and then create a policy statement that absorbs those inputs and then creates a custom allocation.

What type of managers that you’re using that align with, again, the characteristics of each one of those plans. And that’s just within public funds. You go with the multi-employer Taft-Hartley space. Sometimes they like to be more invested domestically. Sometimes they want to make sure that managers they utilize have responsible contractor policies that they’re working with. And so you have to make sure you’re listening to what that plan type wants so that what you’re building aligns with, again, the characteristics of that retirement system. And so everyone, while they’re similar, they have similar kind of core services, you’ve got to be able to be flexible enough to listen to the client and then create something that’s unique to them.

Daniel:

That’s such an excellent point. And I think that ties to a couple of things that you mentioned earlier about being such a good fit with Mariner. I’ve maintained … Very much like you, I came from the institutional world. Started my career at Cambridge Associates.

And one of the elements that I’ve always maintained is that the structural frameworks that you would use in the institutional world, such as using a fairly robust investment policy statement, such as identifying the liability spending that each institution’s going to need, those practices can be, quote, unquote, “Pushed down to-“

Mike:

Hands down.

Daniel:

“… retail investors.” So can you talk a little bit about how those practices can be utilized on the retail side? Because historically, let’s just take the board members that you might be advising for an entity. They wouldn’t have the same access to your services given the fact that you were institutionally focused. But now that they do … So just talk a little bit about how those same ideas can be applied to Mariner’s retail clients, albeit in a more narrow framework.

Mike:

Absolutely. Well, first, I think you have to remember that whether you’re dealing with an institution, even dealing with an institution, there’s always a board or an executive director or a CIO that you’re dealing with. So you’re still dealing with people, right? You’re dealing with individuals. No different than if you’re in the wealth side, right? You’re dealing with an individual, right? Maybe it’s a larger one. And you’re dealing with the family office and maybe two or whatnot. But you’re dealing with people, right? And what happens with people is you get emotional. Okay? You get emotional. And I think some things that can be pushed down from the institutional space to wealth clients, and you hit it, is, first and foremost, governance and an investment policy statement or just a general governance document, right? That really, it outlines, hey, what does good look to us? Right? What are we trying to accomplish as an institution or as an individual?

Let’s write that down. Let’s put provisions in this document that we believe in. Let’s put a strategic allocation and ranges around that that we’re comfortable with that match what we’re trying to do. Because, again, what happens is when people start to get emotional, and they do, whether you’re in institutional world or in individual world, when the markets get rocky and when the great financial crisis happened, every investor, institutional or individual, were picking up and saying, “Hey, what’s happening? What’s going on?” Right? We were emotional. And I think having a governance document that you can go back to and say, “Hey, we told ourselves that if we got below this range, we were going to have a conversation and rebalance back to our targets,” right? And so those governance kind of structure that I think really were created institutionally, I think, have been pushed down to the individual and the wealth space.

And I think if you utilize those, I think it’s very, very powerful so that you take emotion out and you really become way better investors because you’re normally investing when things are down and you’re rebalancing and selling when things are up, right? Exactly opposite of emotionally what people normally want to do, which is normally start investing when the markets are going up. As Warren Buffett said, be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And I think governance documents really allow you to do that because some of the best trades that we have done institutionally has been in the tech bubble of 2000, 2001, great financial crisis. When you think about 2021, COVID or so. When markets have that irrational down, we go back to a policy and say, “I know this is hard for us to do right now. We don’t want to do it in the teeth of the abyss, but we need to rebalance. We need to rebalance.”

And that has been some of the biggest gains in our client portfolio because of that policy statement that I think are definitely applicable to both institutional plans and to individual plans. So I think that’s one thing. I think what we’re seeing more of today is you mentioned performance reporting. I think that’s something that would be good for individual investors. Have a deep understanding of really how their portfolio is doing net of fees. And so I think you’re seeing the convergence of these two worlds come together and say, “Listen, why are there separations of what’s good for any type of investor? Let’s make sure we’re doing what’s good for both of them. And the things that aren’t, let’s not do.” So I think the biggest is that governance and the policy.

Daniel:

How do you balance … Just for individual investors, in some cases, we measure performance in matter of days, if not hours, for some folks. How do you balance the short-term pressures of market performance relative to what the long-term expectations or long-term goals would be relative on the institutional side? And then how does that impact your decision-making as you look over the client base that you have?

Mike:

Yeah. So institutionally, the biggest asset every institution has is time. Okay? It’s time. If you look at any rolling 30 or 35-year period, stocks do better than bonds, bonds do better than cash. That’s what happens. Now, there could be periods where that’s totally inverted and totally blown up, but over time, that holds. And so we have to constantly remind our institutional plans. We have to think of this not in months, not in quarters. We got to think about this in years and decades, right? And that’s hard. There’s turnover aboard. New people come in. And so this is just a big time challenge no matter where you are with investors. But I think you can combat that with data, right? You show data. I think some, Daniel, of what we do institutionally as far as part of our core service is performance reporting. It’s like we’re going to show you a monthly report to give you an update, but please, let’s not make knee-jerk reactions on this.

If we had a perfect world, we probably want to report at minimum once a year because you’re not getting your house valued every month to see what your house value is. And so I think we’re constantly kind of reminding our clients institutionally, “Hey, you got to think longer term because that’s our biggest asset. Let’s utilize our biggest asset. And then we back it up with data to support that.” I think individually, it’s much different because not every individual has time into perpetuity.

Some may say, “Look, I want to retire in three, four years. And I want to start drawing on this.” So it’s a little bit different. And that’s a larger struggle, I think. But you kind of have to always be thinking about, hey, there’s an element of our portfolio. If we don’t have to touch it, we know … Again, if we can use time, it should do really well. Just how are we always factoring that into the equation? And always communicating, being very transparent and providing as much data as we can to get investors thinking about the data and not the emotion.

Daniel:

No, that’s an excellent point. And you just sparked something in terms of I got a little bit of a curveball for you.

Mike:

Uh-oh.

Daniel:

With that … It’s not too much of a test.

Mike:

Be nice to me.

Daniel:

We’re going to keep it above board. So with that idea of trying to think longer term, thinking about rebalancing, thinking about adhering to an investment policy statement when your gut instinct would tell you to do otherwise, right? You’re going to zig when others are zagging. What are some of the mistakes that clients make of all shapes and sizes? And what can be done to overcome or combat those mistakes that you’ve seen over the course of your career?

Mike:

Yeah. And again, I’m speaking more from the institutional side.

Daniel:

Generally. Yeah.

Mike:

But look, I’m an individual investor, so I fall prey to this too, Daniel. So I think I can speak a little bit from there. I think that some of the biggest mistakes that institutions or individuals can fall prey to, and we’re talking about it, is I think get emotional, right? Make a near-term decision. Capitulate, right? We’ve seen it. And trust me, everyone understands why, but you look back and say, “Boy, we missed it. That really impacted the portfolio.” And so that emotional piece is something that you really have to try to get away from. I think something else that investors miss sometimes, and I’m speaking more now institutionally, is that I think you can become over-diversified, right? You’ll see an institutional plan that has significant assets. And they’ll hire multiple strategies in a certain … Or multiple styles within a certain area of the market.

And you think you’re getting diversification because you’re doing this. And before long, what you’re doing is you’re becoming the market, right? You’re becoming the market. You put some active fees on there. And then you underperform. And so I think that with investing, diversification is clearly very, very important. And you need to be diversified, but you also have to have some convictions, right? You need to go in with meaningful thoughts about what you’re comfortable with and then apply the time discipline to that to let that investment play out. And so I’ve seen that over time where institutions will get very diversified, a lot of managers. And it just becomes very hard to outperform. And so those are two things that I’ve seen that I think that have hurt institutional portfolios. And I think it can hurt individual portfolios as well.

Daniel:

Absolutely. So let me ask about the confluence of individuals and institutions, and also specifically what Mariner Institutional does. So most, I think, people think of Mariner as you’re a huge RIA with tremendous resources, but mainly tailored to individuals. Can you just speak about the types of clients that Mariner Institutional serves? Why that that’s important? And then how much our client base has grown as a result of you and your wonderful team coming on board?

Mike:

Well, thank you for those comments. So Mariner Institutional, I’m going to start there and then talk about what’s so exciting for us as we think about what you mentioned, which was what Mariner is known for, is the mega RIA, super strong on the wealth side. So Mariner Institutional, what we do, and I mentioned some of this, so we work with really every different type of institution that you can think of. And I’ve kind of mentioned some of them. So there’s public funds, so police, fire, general employee pension plans, there’s endowment and foundations, there’s hospitals, there’s higher education, universities and schools, there’s insurance companies, there’s corporations, both public and private. There’s multi-employer Taft-Hartley, union plans. So if there’s an institutional pool of asset, whether it be a pension, whether it be an operating portfolio, whether it be balance sheet, whether it be a defined contribution, a defined contribution plan, but it’s sponsored by the institution, those institutions will hire Mariner Institutional to come in and provide core services to that institution to serve that type of retirement plan. Okay?

And those core services are investment policy statement, asset allocation, asset liability, manager selection, fee reviews, fiduciary oversight. On the DC side, there’s record keeper searches, there’s fee benchmarking, fiduciary checklist, all those things. Now, something really quick about Mariner Institutional that, again, we think aligns perfectly with the wealth side is that within Mariner Institutional, we feel like when you look at those different plan types, public funds, multi-employer funds, endowment and foundations, insurance, we feel like we have some of the strongest fluency or expertise in those areas than anybody has in the country.

So we have extraordinary expertise servicing those plan types. And on the insurance space with the recent acquisition of Cardinal Investment Advisors, who really was probably the best in the US and one of the best globally as far as consulting and advising to insurance companies. And so Mariner really now institutionally has a tremendous capability to serve those types of institutions. And Daniel, the other interesting thing, and we’re passionate about this and it aligns with Mariner’s mission of positively impacting the lives of many, is that when people think institutionally like, “Oh, you’ve got to have a minimum of $100 million or $200 million or 500 or billions.” And we have some very, very large clients, no question about it. Multi-billion dollar clients. But we also want to serve on the defined … Maybe it’s a startup or a micro-defined contribution plan or a mid-size. And we want to do that because we believe so much in the service and the style of Mariner, which is that independent fiduciary best practice.

And so we want to be an option really for any type of institution out there that needs really good service to make sure that they’re taking care of those assets. And most importantly, taking care of those assets so they take care of the people that that institution represents, right? And that totally aligns with Mariner’s positively impacting the lives of many because if we take care of that institution, then guess what? We’re going to take care of the people that have worked at that institution for a long period of time. And so that’s kind of what Mariner Institutional now brings to the table for the Mariner enterprise.

Daniel:

And I think that precisely speaks to the broader context of being able to take the fundamental skills and understanding of how a well-run plan should look or portfolio should look and applying those same attributes to those that may not have the same size of assets.

Mike:

That’s right.

Daniel:

I just think that is such a key and core component of what you’re doing and that what we do on the retail side. You may not have the same amount of venture capital or private equity. You may not have any of that in your portfolio. But the underlying fundamental characteristics that apply to a well-run portfolio does not necessarily have to be impacted by just how big the portfolio is.

Mike:

100%.

Daniel:

And I think that’s a core thing that I want everyone to understand, that if you don’t have that, if you’re listening to this and you don’t feel like you have that as part of your own portfolio now, that, to me, is the secret sauce of really delivering this expert level oversight into the management of whatever size of the pool of assets that you have.

Mike:

I appreciate you bringing that up. That is so true. And the other thing too is the fact that we are upstream on some of those bigger plans. We can scale that down, right? We’re able to bring that down so those plans can get access to maybe managers or to maybe different vendors that they couldn’t have before at much better pricing, right? And that makes the outcome better for that institution, which is what we’re about, right? Better outcomes for our clients.

Daniel:

No, that’s incredibly insightful. In the institutional space, we all know, for those that are familiar, the David Swensen Yale model. And he wrote a book called Pioneering Portfolio Management, which is read by every institutional investor probably in the world that operates in this space. He also wrote another book, which was wildly less popular, that is for retail investors, but it advocates for the same exact things that we are talking about now. Anyone who hears on CNBC or on LinkedIn, “This is what wealthy institutions do with their money.” And what’s always made me smirk a little bit about that is that you said something just a second ago, access, fee compression. All the things that retail investors are never going to have at the scale that institutions do, but it does not mean that they can’t operate with the same strategic thinking the way that you and your team and, from a research standpoint, that Mariner Institutional operates for some of those largest plans like you’re talking about.

Mike:

There’s no question. And I think that, again, just because of the dollars allocated, it may be … And everybody’s seeing this. And Daniel, you just hit on the head. Now you’re seeing the democratization of alternative investments and moving downstream. And so you’re seeing that happen. You just got to … That doesn’t mean it’s good, but I do think with the advent of technologies, more and more things are coming to all investors that are going to make that experience better. And I think to your point, if you take a strategic lens and have good governance, you know what you’re trying to accomplish. And if now these additional, whether they’re vehicles, whether they’re different service providers, if they can help you exceed your objectives, then absolutely you should consider utilizing them, right? Because that’s going to be good for whatever investor we’re talking about, an institutional or an individual.

Daniel:

And it just speaks to why having an advisor is so important-

Mike:

No question.

Daniel:

… in whatever space that you occupy yourselves in because not all private credit funds are the same. Not all alternatives are the same. Having someone to filter the barrage of options that are now available, I think, is tremendously important.

Mike:

100%.

Daniel:

I also think it speaks to over the course of your 20-plus-year career doing all of this. The movement to a more direct recommendation that people on the retail side have been used to for years is tremendously important. Stop giving me options because there’s too much information for us to actually sort through, but give us a direct … And that’s what it sounds like we’re doing for all our institutional clients, and using that same methodology for everyone on the, quote, “Retail side.”

Mike:

And that’s interesting. I’ve never thought about it that way. And you’re right. We even have non-discretionary relationships, but our client will look at us and say, “Who should we hire?” Right? And we’ll tell them who we should hire and they’ll take our recommendation. But what’s interesting is that’s kind of the institutional world kind of coming, as you just mentioned, more to what’s been consistent on the wealth side for a longer period of time. That continued convergence. I do want to say one thing that is really exciting besides what we’re talking about here as far as the ability to apply certain things to whatever investor group we’re talking about, which is way different than it was 10, 15 years ago, which I think is positive with being fully informed. But from an institutional standpoint, a lot of the plans that I mentioned that we work with, they’re made up of people. And let’s specifically talk about public funds and let’s talk about multi-employer Taft-Hartley plans. Okay? Let’s talk about those two institutional plan types. Here’s what’s, I think, really, really compelling about Mariner and the story.

So many times, and I’ll just focus on public funds right now, but many times you’ll have a public employee start working for that municipality right out of school, right? Right out of school. And many times they’re passionate about being a public safety officer or working for the city, but what they’re really attracted to is the retirement plan, right? That’s a major element. And so from when they first start working until they retire, they never have to think about retirement because they have this pension that’s being managed by the plan sponsor, right? And if markets are good or bad, the plan sponsor has to come in with contributions to make sure that that pension is going to be solvent to pay whatever that individual is entitled to. But if that person goes in at 20 and they retire, and after 30 years, they’re 50 years old. And so they retire and they’re going to get this pension check. And we see it all the time, Daniel. That person retires like, “Well, what do I do now? For three decades, this has been managed for me.”

And so what we’re seeing, which is the right question, is we’re seeing plan sponsors say, “We need to do more because we offer this great benefit, and that’s why people are here, but we’ve taken care of them for 30 years. And now they’re leaving and they’re kind of going into this wilderness experience,” right? So what’s exciting with Mariner is now … I talked about those services before. Now we can come in earlier and start to do education, right? We can start talking about financial literacy and wellness and how you need to start thinking. And so that when someone is getting ready to retire, they’re informed, right? They’re informed. They understand the power of working with an advisor and why that can be something that really helps protect, preserve, and grow their retirement assets so that they can live for another three decades happy and fulfilling. And so we never were able to offer that, and now we are. And our clients who are starting to embrace it and see it couldn’t be happier because of the problem that it was solving, right?

And that’s a very big deal. We’re solving problems within the retirement space to allow both the institution and the individual to have better outcomes, right? We took care of you while you worked here. We care so much about you. We want to make sure that you’re taken care of post, right? And that’s great, right? And what does that do, man? You’re positively impacting lives. And that’s what we’re jazzed about at Mariner, both institutionally and from the wealth side. And that’s exciting for us in this next five, 10, 15 years, right? Because that didn’t happen 20 years ago. Remember, we were just performance reporting. Then we were doing asset allocation advisory work. Now we’re trying to say, “Hey, how do we really maximize and optimize what we’re trying to do here?” Right? Which is make sure that that retirement plan can meet its objective and take care of everybody that’s helped this city or that’s helped this union or that’s helped this corporation exceed all their strategic goals. So I think that’s really cool. And that gets us jazzed, big time.

Daniel:

Yeah. And I think that when you think about the institutional space in general, it’s not just the number of clients overall that you have. You hit the nail on the head. All the participants are truly what those plans represent.

Mike:

Yes.

Daniel:

And from Marty’s vision, when the firm was founded in 2006, until now, that this idea of positively impacting the lives of many, it’s not just those entities as a whole, but the people that they serve. And now, to your point, we’re providing that solution from kind of soup to nuts. You’re not being left behind when you’re no longer part of the plan. And that’s a tremendously valuable thing.

Mike:

Totally.

Daniel:

It’s also just the constant evolution in which makes the partnership all that much more-

Mike:

Totally. From hire to retire and beyond. We want to make sure that that journey is successful, right? And by the way, one thing that’s important is Mariner Institutional. And so we’re 150 or so people dedicated to servicing the institutional space of $450 billion of assets, institutional assets. We focus on the institution. Okay? We know what we’re good at, which is taking care of the institution and the services that I talked about. When those additional services are needed, what’s awesome today is we pick up the phone and we call our colleague who’s experienced, who’s a professional and knows how to then deal with individuals or talk about financial wellness broadly or participant education. We bring in professionals to then serve that need, right? And that’s also wonderful because we can’t be great at everything. It’s hard enough to be really good at one thing, let alone a lot. And so that’s another benefit of a well-resourced organization, that we can draw on a lot of solutions and services from our colleagues to serve our client.

Daniel:

Yep. No, you’re 100% right. And I just have one more thing for you, then we just do a quick lightning round-

Mike:

Uh-oh.

Daniel:

… about you personally as well. They’re easy questions, I promise.

Mike:

All right.

Daniel:

But this also works both ways because what I mean is that we have wealth clients historically who may have sat on a board of directors-

Mike:

That’s right.

Daniel:

… or who have sat on a charitable foundation. And they’ve said, “Hey, can you help us with …” And historically, we weren’t particularly able to. We didn’t have the resources to deal with plans of that size on the wealth side. And now you see this convergence between wealth and institutional that can service all those different pods of people and, again, just continue to impact the lives of many. So you’ve been really generous with your time, Mike. So I just got a couple of quick lightning round questions for you. So talk a little bit about your early mentors and who helped shape your career.

Mike:

Oh, boy. Early mentors and who helped shape my career. Well, first of all, my dad was very instrumental kind of in decision-making in my life. And I also had a father-in-law who was a big believer in me and was a big mentor. Both of them were business owners, and so understood some of the trials and tribulations of starting and building and growing a business. So they were wonderful mentors. When I was recruited from the asset management firm to the institutional advisory space, the gentleman that had started that business, and it was a startup, his name was Joe Bogdahn. He was a mentor to me and really helped me grow up and really kind of help shape a lot of my core philosophies. And so I would say those three have been real instrumental in my life as far as mentoring and helping me professionally develop into the person I am.

Daniel:

Really interesting. Books. What are some of your favorite? Does not need to be finance related. What are some of your favorites and anything good that you’re reading right now?

Mike:

Yeah. So I do love to read. I read all sorts of different things. So right now, there is two kind of work-related books that I’m reading. One is Rethinking Work. The other is The AI-Driven Leader. So those are two books that I’m working through. The other one is kind of a fun one. And I found out about this. I think I was reading The Wall Street Journal or something. But it’s called Business Adventures by John Brooks. And Warren Buffett and Bill Gates said it was their favorite book that they had read. And I’m like, “Well, that’s got to be kind of interesting.” And so it-

Daniel:

Yeah. It’s good company to keep.

Mike:

Well, yeah, it’s good company. And I never heard of it, but it was written in the mid-1960s. And what’s fun about this book is that it talks about taxes and it talks about insider trading, things that are 100% relative today, but kind of the perspective of what it was like back in the 1960s and just lessons learned. So pretty interesting. So those are three books that I’m reading right now. And then I love sports stuff. I also love Dan Brown, you know Dan Brown, and Daniel Silva, those types of books. Any John Maxwell book. I could go on and on, but-

Daniel:

Well, I was just talking about this, if you like sports books, with a fellow coach. I’m coaching my son’s football team.

Daniel:

If you’ve never read The Junction Boys about Bear Bryant, highly recommend. It was when he started that Texas A&M. But for anyone who’s looking to develop grit, character, the personal fortitude, read that book and see what people went through to play football, and you’ll have-

Mike:

That’s awesome.

Daniel:

… a new perspective on life.

Mike:

I will. Thank you for that. And Boys in the Boat, great book, kind of a sports book. I love Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, kind of the sports stuff. So anyways, yes, we’d go back and forth all day on those, Daniel.

Daniel:

I love it. What does a good day off look like? And what are some of the hobbies that you have there down in Florida?

Mike:

Oh, boy. A good day off for me. Look, I love … So happily married, almost 23 years, have three kids. When my wife and I can go to one of their events, whatever it may be, watch them do what they love to do, I just get … That makes me very happy. I get a lot of joy out of that. Selfishly, I love golf when I can play golf. Florida, we’ve got a lot of golf courses in Florida, Central Florida, so love to play golf. Love to exercise. I do like to read. My happy place, geography-wise, I love mountains, so I love kind of the West. The Tetons are my mountain range. So if I could be maybe with my wife, Kristen, and look at the mountains, kind of a beautiful day after a hike, maybe a cocktail, that’d be a good day off, Daniel.

Daniel:

Well, it just shows you the power of the mountains for a kid raised in Northern Indiana and spent his life in Winter Park, Florida.

Mike:

There you go.

Daniel:

The draw is that. I’m a Colorado Buffalo myself, so I completely get it.

Mike:

You get it. You get it. Yeah.

Daniel:

I get it. And I live in Boston, so it just tells you we’re both-

Mike:

There you go. There you-

Daniel:

… not exactly fulfilling our mission here. What advice would you give a younger colleague or student who’s looking to follow a similar path that you had?

Mike:

Yeah. So first, in this world of kind of remote work, I would, first and foremost, say if you get hired by an organization, figure out how you can get into the office, right? Figure out how you can get in the office. Learn the relationships, ask questions, which kind of leads to the second part, is intellectual curiosity. For those young workers coming into the workforce, be curious, ask questions, raise your hand, be present, be open to doing different things and learning and kind of finding out maybe what your true passion is.

Remember, personally, I want to be an asset management. I want to be a portfolio manager. And here I am, an institutional advisor 25 years later, and loving it. Never worked a day in my life. Didn’t know what that was, right? But raised my hand for different opportunities along the way. So be curious, be open-minded, ask a lot of questions, understand the power of relationships. And you can only do that by … I know it’s convenient to work from home and be on Zoom calls, but you miss so, so much, right?

Daniel:

Completely agree.

Mike:

That would be some advice to young professionals.

Daniel:

That’s wonderful advice. And then last one here, what do you wish you knew about investing, consulting, asset management, et cetera, that you wish you knew 20 or 30 years ago when you were just getting started?

Mike:

Remember, mid-’90s, markets are one directional. I think just there is no free lunch. I think just understand basics. I think that there are so many people invest like they gamble. You put a chip down on red. You expect an instant win or lose. And I think investing is more than that. Do your work. Understand what your tolerances are. Again, time. Don’t be emotional. I think those are all things I’d go back and tell myself in my mid-20s on, hey, these are some disciplines that you need to incorporate if you want to get into the money game as far as being an investor.

I know that the cliche as far as don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Understand what diversification means. I think all those are important. And I think also don’t get swept up in the crowd, right? I think you’re going to hear a lot of noise about what everybody’s doing. And it’s easy to kind of follow along. Sometimes go against that, right? Do your work. Understand what you think makes sense. And if that’s not popular, that doesn’t make it bad, right? Know those things. I think that would help you be a better investor.

Daniel:

No, that’s wonderful. Wonderful guidance. So thank you, Mike, for being so generous with your time. We have been speaking with Mike, who is the head of Mariner Institutional. If you enjoyed this podcast, please check out the 400 or so other that we’ve done. Please subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, wherever you get your shows, and make it a great day.

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