David Fischer of Independent Financial Group talks culture, future growth

David Fischer, co-founder of Independent Financial Group, along with his co-founder Scott Heising, have built a successful broker-dealer that has remained independent to this day. The firm recently had the chance to sponsor an award at the InvestmentNews Awards ceremony, as well as be nominated for multiple awards. We had a chance to catch up with Fischer to learn more about how he's built a firm that values culture and long-term growth.    

InvestmentNews: What does it mean to you and the firm to be connected to the InvestmentNews Awards?

David Fischer: We were honored to be nominated, and not only for the broker-dealer of the year, but for the our fellow advisors. I think it's good for the industry, right? It makes everybody strive to be the best. And it's celebration obviously of our achievements and also a celebration of the industry and all the all the innovation and all the all the amazing advisors and all the innovative things that people are doing. 

At the end of the day, we're all taking care of clients and helping them achieve their financial goals, and I think that's really what it's all about. 

How do you think about your firm’s own journey?

Fischer: My partners and I had taken a leap of faith in going independent on our own in creating this business in 2003. We had worked for some pretty large companies.

And Scott Heising, our CEO today here, he kept on pinging on me and saying, “Dave, this is crazy. You're head of recruiting for all of AIG (at the time was the 8th largest company in the world), and I'm handling all the financials. Your team is bringing a lot of advisors on.” But, the old folks are leaving because they felt it's gotten too corporate. Service was not great for clients. 

Heising said, “My gosh, we've grown up in this space. We know the business really well. Why don't we go out and do our own independent broker-dealer, set it up, take our knowledge base.”  And that's what we did, 23 years ago.

But the way we had set it up was, "let's get back to having fun again and get the balance back in our lives and create a great culture and create a great company to build and to last." And that's really what we've done. 

That feels like a big shift from what was going on at the time.

Fischer: It was all about this personal service model rather than call centers. Let's incorporate the family and get to know these folks on a partnership basis. Let’s be true business partners, but get to know them as well - their families and their kids and their wives. Now, we invite our advisors into our conferences and their spouses are invited, the kids are invited.

The advisor and his son can come down and sit in the front row for a keynote speaker or come down and have breakfast with dad and see what this business is all about.

IFG now is the second-largest privately held independent broker-dealer based on revenues (behind Cambridge). We think we're truly, authentically independent. There's no there's no motives here, we're not pushing anything. We think we're working in the client's best interest and the reps’ best interest to provide a platform of amazing service and support and giving them the breadth of amazing products.

How do you protect your culture?

Fischer: Dating back to when Scott and I left AIG - I started right out of college. I worked for Private Ledger. I went through the Linsco merger. I saw that happen - the disruption it caused, people getting laid off, and people scared.

Now here we are, a successful company. Of course we've been approached (for potential sale), we've listened a couple of times, but that was I think just more for flattery than anything else. Since then, we really want to protect it.

One of the ways we're protecting it is we've developed a rep ownership program here that we launched this past year. Reps can actually buy a piece of IFG. We're offering units to buy, like a limited partnership. Reps are buying into the company, which shows we're trying to be this perpetual company. We're introducing an employee stock ownership plan as well here.

We're trying to add 100 advisors a year now, all doing a half a million or more. That would be about a $50 million clip times five years. That's going to get us to a benchmark, let's say of 600 million, and then ultimately we're going to try to take it to a billion dollar company.

But again, it's not mass bodies, but it's quality. And the quality that I'm talking about is our average production per rep now is right around $600,000, which is in the top five highest average production per reps in the industry. 

What about your role with the firm? 

Fischer: We want to keep delegating and keep hiring talented people, such as our new president (Kevin Keefe) that we just hired. Scott and I can delegate more, enjoy a little bit more flexibility with our schedules. I’m here every day, and I love it. 

I'm 62, Scott is 65. We've got a long ways to go. But that's the goal, and we think we're positioned very uniquely right now in that we're one of the few remaining truly independent, privately held broker-dealers.