Adviser establishes niche among deaf

Many financial advisers develop niche markets; Lee Kramer is one of the few who cater to deaf clients.

Mr. Kramer, 46, is president of Kramer Financial in Frederick, Md., which manages $80 million. Seventy percent of the firm’s 2,000 clients throughout the country are deaf.

Communicating by telephone through an interpreter, Mr. Kramer, who is also deaf and was born of deaf parents, says he took an interest in financial matters from an early age.

“I would ask my parents questions about investments and how stocks worked,” he says.

“They kind of didn’t know,” Mr. Kramer adds. “I asked deaf friends. It seemed that no one could really give me answers to my questions. That’s when it hit me that there was really a need within the deaf community for education and exposure to the financial world.”

Coming from a family that includes many doctors, Mr. Kramer majored in pre-med biology at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. But after taking a break before going to medical school by working at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston as a cancer research investigator, “I realized I was more cut out for the business world,” he says.

Instead of going into medicine, he earned a master’s degree in business administration from Northeastern University in Boston in 1985 and went to work in the branch office of a brokerage firm in Worcester, Mass.

He started his first practice in Newton, Mass., and he still has a large client base in Massachusetts and the Northeast. In 2000, Mr. Kramer and his wife moved to Frederick so that their three children, who are also deaf, could attend the Maryland School for the Deaf, which is located there.

He began primarily with hearing clients, which presented its own challenges. Mr. Kramer used an interpreter to make cold calls.

“They had no idea I was deaf,” he recalls. “When they showed up, they were surprised to find a deaf man. Some were awkward or unsure at the beginning. But once they saw my service, they told friends. I got a lot of referrals from them. Many of them are still my clients.”

As word spread throughout the deaf community, Mr. Kramer was able to expand his practice to other parts of the country.

He added two other deaf financial planners, and he operates an office in Austin, Texas, in addition to the Maryland office. Mr. Kramer and his two advisers have clients in 48 states.

He has found that the deaf have a strong need for financial advice. Many who came to him after using other advisers had investments that were unsuitable for them, such as commodities.

“They had no idea what kind of investments they had, how the investments actually worked,” Mr. Kramer says. “They weren’t able to be educated by their advisers, due to lack of communication.”

While providing financial advice to deaf clients is similar to advising others, there are some specific issues with which to contend, he says.

“Because the deaf are so close-knit, they’re very cautious about their personal information,” Mr. Kramer says. “It took me a while to build the trust of the deaf community, for them to feel comfortable revealing their financial information.”

Also, he adds, the deaf tend to earn less than hearing people: The average assets for his clients vary from a few hundred dollars to millions. But Mr. Kramer hasn’t instituted an account minimum.

“It’s really important for us to have our clients have accessibility to investments,” he says. “It’s hard for us to turn people down knowing that they can’t just go to any other hearing adviser.”

Beth Benedict, who is deaf, has been Mr. Kramer’s client for four years.

“We’ve always had a problem deciding who to see,” Ms. Benedict says through an interpreter. “[Mr. Kramer’s] very knowledgeable, and we can communicate well, so it’s a perfect match.”

She credits him with helping her and her husband “stay calm” during the market turbulence of the past three and a half years.

“He explained the history of the financial market,” Ms. Benedict says. “That helped us a lot to understand the whole situation better and just to be patient.”