Mark Goldberg drives to make Royal Alliance No. 1 once again.

In hindsight, the appointment of Mark Goldberg as president of Royal Alliance in the spring of 2001 seems like a case of really, really bad timing.

Although no one could predict it at the time, Goldberg was walking in the door of the broker-dealer at about the same time that one of the longest bear markets in history was just starting to take hold on Wall Street. Considering that his mission was to revitalize a firm that several years earlier was the largest independent broker-dealer in the advisor industry, it would seem the deck was stacked against him.

Yet as he looks back, Goldberg is hardly bitter about the circumstances he was confronting. Indeed, exhibiting some of the energetic optimism for which he's known for among the company's employees, Goldberg says he feels the timing was fortuitous.

Adversity "gives you the opportunity to question and reassess-to reposition old assumptions and old strategies," he says. "Change is an enormous leverage or fulcrum from which to leverage improvements."

Not that he's oblivious to market conditions. Goldberg says advisors affiliated with Royal Alliance are in an uphill battle like everyone else when it comes to generating revenues and capturing assets. Early this year, he went to visit one of the firm's top reps, Kevin Myeroff, who is president of Cleveland-based NCA Financial, and sit in on several client meetings. "Sitting there with clients talking about their portfolios after three down years isn't easy, even if their clients outperformed the market," he says. "These people [advisors] having a tougher job than the most of us."

Yet he feels the limp market has also forced advisors, as well as Royal Alliance, to get back to basics. For Royal Alliance, that has meant a concerted effort during the past two years to improve technology, expand training and education offerings and generally upgrade support services for advisors. The effort resulted in at least one payoff: a 400-rep net increase in advisors last year, bringing Royal Alliance's total to 2,800 nationwide.

As for the advisors themselves, Goldberg says they're naturally beset with doubts about themselves, their strategies and the market. But those who are successful will look back upon the last three years as their defining moment as advisors. "There has been a great weeding out process," he says. "The people who are standing today in the industry are the winners. I don't believe they fully realize it yet, but they will."

He also feels that when the dust clears, Royal Alliance's successful advisors will not be the ones who were the best at accumulating clients or assets. "It is that person who is delivering that care and advice, that is listening to the needs and wants of a client, who is helping them make the choices they need to make."

Second Time Around

Goldberg has a good feel for the peaks and valleys Royal Alliance has been through for more than a decade because he was there for a good part of that time.

A native of the New York City area, the 41-year-old Goldberg grew up in the metropolitan suburb of Long Beach, Long Island, the third oldest of six children. With parents who were active in the community and a house full of children, Goldberg says the family dinner table in his house was always a place of lively conversation-maybe one reason why he's made face-to-face visits with Royal Alliance advisors a priority in his two years as president. "There was one requirement in our house, and it was, you had to have an opinion," he says.

After graduating with a degree in economics from Yeshiva University in 1984, Goldberg worked in life insurance sales and then as a cost and productivity analyst with Bowery Savings Bank. He then took a job as an analyst in 1989 with Integrated Resources Equity Group, later renamed Royal Alliance when it was bought a year later by SunAmerica. He arrived at the company just about the time it had declared bankruptcy. Goldberg stayed on, however, and was part of a core of executives that was able to turn the company around in four years. It was during that recovery period that Goldberg, whose responsibilities gradually grew, was put in charge of starting up a fee-based advisory services division.

By the time he left in 1995-to go on hiatus in Israel with his wife and children-Royal Alliance had been restored as the largest independent broker-dealer in the business. "We were a firm that was regarded as a business that soon was going to end," he said of the early years right after the bankruptcy.

Over the next several years, Goldberg worked as a consultant out of his home in Israel. Royal Alliance, meanwhile, was caught up in the events surrounding SunAmerica's merger with AIG and regulatory actions stemming from scandals at a couple of its branch offices. Both proved distracting.

He maintained contact with SunAmerica, however, and in 1999 he agreed to take on the job of setting up a SunAmerica broker-dealer in Tokyo. After nine months, he was asked to return to become an executive vice president with SunAmerica Financial Network, the predecessor of what would become the AIG Advisor Group. Then, a little over a year later, he accepted an offer to return to Royal Alliance as president.

"As ironic as things turned out, I saw it as an enormous opportunity," he says. "It has been my goal from the day I accepted the job to make it number one again."

Out With The Status Quo

Goldberg's first few months at Royal Alliance must have been reminiscent of his childhood days at the family dinner table, because he spent that time getting opinions-from just about everyone. He went on road trips during which he spoke to the firm's reps. He spoke to many of the 250 employees at the firm's midtown Manhattan office. He spoke to many of the 325 managing executives who head Royal Alliance's branch offices.

What he found was pervasive uncertainty on all levels. "With change, people have a lot of reasons to have doubt," he says. "There were a lot of questions about where the organization was headed. Were we going to grow again? Were we going to deliver more value-added services than we had in the past?"

The first thing Goldberg did was ensure that a communication system was in place that kept everyone fully informed as changes did happen. So he asked for a copy of every communication that had been sent by the home office over the previous six months. What he got back was a six-inch thick stack of papers, memos and notices.

The firm's advisors, it turned out, were being bombarded with so much paper they were missing some important pieces of information buried within. It resulted in a total reorganization of the firm's communication system, including a streamlining of mailed materials and the expansion of Web-based communications that could be accessed at any time.

He also emphasizes face-to-face meetings, and spends 20% of his time visiting the firm's field offices. At headquarters, he holds quarterly employee meetings and runs a monthly "breakfast with the boss" with employees who are celebrating birthdays in that particular month.

"He is very pro-active about communications," says Mark Quinn, Royal Alliance's senior vice president and general counsel. "For example, he was shocked when he got here to find out we didn't have an up-to-date list of broker e-mail addresses."

Karen Morstad, first vice president of marketing for AIG Advisor Group, agrees that Goldberg's enthusiastic mingling with advisors has been a key ingredient in the firm's turn-around strategy. It's also provided him with unique insights into the business that is helping refocus the firm's strategy.

"He's very visible, and if a rep were to call and ask him to take part in a client dinner or presentation, he jumps at the chance and does it," she says. "That's as opposed to other organizations with leaders who may not have the time or wherewithal to be on the front lines."

Goldberg says he feels advisors are now having an easier time staying informed-meaning he confronts less confusion and uncertainty when he hits the road. "They know when, where and how all the information is coming," Goldberg says.

That set the stage for the nuts-and-bolts changes that were yet to come. Such as the launch of the Vision20/20 fee-based advisor technology platform, which took a hodgepodge of advisor tools and merged them into a unified, more user-friendly package.

"What Mark did was long sought by advisors, and that was to put everything in one place," says Art Tambaro, Royal Alliance's executive vice president. "It's now all on one basic platform." Tambaro adds that about $1 billion in advisor assets has been transitioned to the platform among all six AIG broker-dealers since it was launched in July 2002. Indeed, Royal Alliance has become something of a laboratory for programs that the parent eventually seeks to roll out across the entire AIG Advisor Network.

In the area of recruitment, Goldberg oversaw the launch of a program that allows the managing executives of local offices to undertake their own recruiting. The program, designed to give managers greater control in growing their local operations, is now the firm's chief recruitment engine. Goldberg says 60% of recruiting is now done by managers building up their own offices. Recruitment has also been boosted through acquisitions, including the purchase of PIM Financial Services of San Marcos, Calif., which brought 100 new advisors into the Royal Alliance fold. Goldberg says acquisitions will continue to be a key part of the firm's growth strategy.

"He's always trying to push things along," says Gary Bender, Royal Alliance's vice president of recruiting. "For him, the status quo is not acceptable, and we're always kind of pushing the envelope."

To boost the firm's offerings of value-added services, and to give advisors help with practice management, the firm launched the Royal Academy a year and a half ago-a suite of videos and turnkey seminar packages offered to advisors at virtually wholesale prices. And to get some kind of handle on the firm's service quality, Goldberg had Royal Alliance start keeping count of the complaints it receives from customers.

In 2002, he says, the firm handled 1.3 million service requests-including 750,000 calls and 35,000 account transfers-and logged about 387 customer complaints. "Frankly, that's too many because it amounts to one-and-a-half per business day," he says.

As for the overall growth plan, Goldberg seems to have a five-year schedule in mind. He states that his goal is to be the largest independent broker-dealer within three years. Yet when asked to elaborate on those quantitative goals, he stops himself, and rephrases his outlook. "Our goal is to be the best firm in every measure-the quality of our financial advisors, the ability for the firm to service and support and provide quality service and the ability to facilitate growth of their individual organizations."

For the firm's reps, his strategy is already paying dividends. NCA Financial's Myeroff admits that he has been with the firm since 1986 and learned only recently of many of the services it offers. "In the last 12 months, Royal has added more value to my business than in the last decade-and-a-half," he says.