Mike Schwenker, the producing manager for Sorrento Pacific at Four Points Financial, the broker-dealer unit of Farmers and Merchants Bank in Burlington, Iowa, signed on in March 2006 to resurrect a dying program of just $6 million in assets. That's just one reason he is known in his community as the guy who'll lend a helping hand—and have fun doing it. Here's how the advisor takes his charitable spirit to the no-investor-left-behind philosophy of a brokerage program that wouldn't exist without him.

When Schwenker signed on to lead the program, the bank's existing advisor quickly left, taking as many clients as she could with her. To make matters worse, Schwenker wanted a paperless office and the bank's third-party marketer at the time, Investment Centers of America (ICA), didn't yet have that full capability. These dual upheavals halved the program's client list to around 100. "I was new here, I was changing broker-dealers and I had the former rep taking accounts," Schwenker sighs. "I had to spend a lot of time talking to clients about what was good and being honest about what was not so good," about the program.

A $6 million book of 100 clients isn't much for a third-party marketer (TPM) to get excited about, but Sorrento, which was then only a year old, offered the technology Schwenker wanted and took the bank on. "I needed a lot of help and attention and I knew I'd be a project for someone," he says. "I wanted a paperless office and to be able to interface between trading screens, customer notes and calendars. I didn't make the change just for the sake of it." Schwenker interviewed eight or nine TPMs and Cambridge, a large broker-dealer. "Everything we were looking for Sorrento had," he says. "If we went to them today with $6 million, I don't know if they'd be interested, but they were starting from scratch at the time too."

Over the next five years, Schwenker has increased the program's assets by some $10 million a year, to $46 million, despite the financial crisis, with the help of just a junior advisor, Brandon Kipp, a licensed banker and a sales assistant. He's projecting that the program will hit $100 million by 2016. By contrast, the bank's trust department has managed a little under $100 million since 1961.

The brokerage now has 600 clients, although many accounts are small. "I have an awful lot of people with small accounts, although I'm just as passionate about $50 monthly contributions as I am a $1 million account," Schwenker says. His client demographic varies, from small-business owners to young couples to families, blue- and white-collar workers and a handful of millionaires. Mostly though, like Schwenker, "they're good, hardworking Midwesterners who tell the truth in good times and bad."

A Wage Slave?
That folksy bonhomie is a mainstay of Schwenker's success. He landed his job through community involvement on a number of boards including the Lion's Club, where he met his current boss, John Wagner. (The Wagners became good friends and introduced Schwenker to his wife.) "He told me he wanted to revive this dying patient," Schwenker says of the program. Drawn to helping those in need and wanting to work with Wagner, he took the job. Schwenker previously spent a decade at North Western Mutual and was manager of Catholic Financial Services' Iowa territory.

Another attraction of the job for Schwenker was a steady paycheck. Brokerage is part of the trust department, which Wagner runs. Both Schwenker and his junior rep are paid salaries as employees of the bank, with the prospect of an annual bonus depending on how the entire group performs. "In a small community it can be tough to be on commissions," says Schwenker of Burlington's 20,000-strong population. "A salary plus an annual review is what works for us in Southwest Iowa!"

While they sell commissions, the revenue goes to the bank instead of to Schwenker. "Many banks have tried this unsuccessfully, but for us it works. We're motivated not by the dollar, but to do the right thing by our clients, and that wears well with them."

That has also helped abate the usual territorial rivalry in banks between the trust and the brokerage departments. "Maybe a trust client will be more suitable for us and maybe we have a client who needs help paying bills or passing on assets," Schwenker says. "Many brokers would hang on to those clients, but we're salaried, so if a client needs trust, we'll move the client to trust. We don't have the ability to pay clients' bills or help get them into assisted living, but trust does."