In today’s episode of Framework, Jamie talks with Christian Nwasike, Managing Partner at Practice Management Consultants, a professional development consulting firm focusing on coaching diverse advisors.
Christian always dreamed of entering the financial industry. But when he finally reached his goal and became a financial advisor, he quickly realized the frequent bias minorities face and the lack of company policies protecting diverse advisors. After filing a complaint with HR, Christian found himself jobless and outside the industry.
Christian took matters into his own hands and developed an organization with two main goals: coach diverse financial advisors to the point of excellence and help diverse advisors build bridges across other racial demographics. Christian’s goal is for every advisor to belong and feel included in their own professional narrative.
Christian and Jamie talk about bridging the racial wealth gap and changing the narrative for minority advisors and the diverse population that’s underserved in our industry.
“An advisor that looks like me would understand my skepticism, hesitations, excitements, and so on and so forth, where if you’ve not walked in my shoes or have a similar lived experience to me, it’s very difficult to give me investment advice.” ~ Christian Nwasike
Main Takeaways
- Listening to the advisors beneath you helps them to succeed. The sometimes prevalent culture of targeting and retaliating against advisors isn’t productive and puts diverse advisors at a disadvantage.
- So often, advisors make decisions or comments about the career path of diverse colleagues when those diverse advisors aren’t in the room to defend themselves. The first step to improving diversity in the financial industry is making sure diverse advisors are always in the room and in those conversations.
- African Americans are the 14th or 15th largest economy in the world, but we see frequent images of black Americans in poverty and desolation. We need to shift the financial narrative.
- To improve intergenerational wealth among minorities, we need more diverse advisors. When clients sit with an advisor who doesn’t look like them and often, as a result, doesn’t understand their psyche, the client gets cookie-cutter advice that doesn’t help them accomplish their wealth goals.
Links and Important Mentions
- Christian on LinkedIn
- Practice Management Consultants
- The Roles Artificial Intelligence (AI) Can Play in Identifying & Flagging Financial Crimes by Christian Nwasike
- IBM Watson
- Wells Fargo
- Allstate
- Framework: Jacqueline Campbell: The Impact of Generational Wealth, Philanthropy as a Wealth-Driver, and Attracting Top Talent
- Wealth Transfer Estimates for African American Households
- Girl & The Goat
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