He left Morgan Stanley and started his own shop in 2013, and he noted the vast majority of his clients followed him. MOR Wealth Management is affiliated with independent broker-dealer Commonwealth Financial Network, and Ramer says the firm manages the wealth for about 150 families with net worth in the seven- and eight-digit range. “We don’t have a particular niche other than families who need a full array of financial guidance regarding financial, estate, risk management and family succession planning.”
MOR asks its clients to donate at least 0.3% of their earned income each year to charitable causes. Not all prospective clients are on board with that.
“Fortunately, because of the type of people we work with, everyone already exceeds that minimum threshold anyway,” Ramer says. “Every once in a while, I come across someone who says that offends them. If someone says they don’t want to be told how much they want to give to charity, we say, ‘That’s fine, then we’re not the right firm for you.’”
Beyond making charitable financial donations, volunteerism is the second part of MOR’s community-minded equation. The firm’s website highlights 15 nonprofit organizations it’s involved with, including some where Ramer servers as a board director.
“I don’t work 80 hours a week in my business, and as a result our business doesn’t grow as rapidly as it could,” Ramer says. “I work about 60 hours a week, and if I donate 10 to 15 hours a week in the charity world, that’s still a lot of time during the year.”
One of Ramer’s sidelines is music, and until recently he was a voting member for the Grammy Foundation. He was a singer and musician through college, and later got into music production and remained involved with that after he started his financial career. “I did it for so many records that someone told me I’ve done enough work to be eligible to become a voting member of the Grammys.”
He submitted an application and got his voting rights. But voters need to do a certain amount of work in the music industry during a certain time period to remain eligible, and Ramer wasn’t eligible to vote for the upcoming Grammys because he lost the privilege when he took a break from music after he left Morgan Stanley and focused on establishing his own firm. He has since resumed his work in music, and he expects to get his voting rights back within a few months.
Meanwhile, Ramer’s top focus remains MOR’s twin mission to help its clients and change the financial industry’s mind set to whatever extent it can. “We’re out there and encouraging people to try to follow our lead and be better environmental stewards and to be more community-minded,” he says. “I don’t know if little itty-bitty MOR Wealth Management is going to change the world, but I know I’ve turned some heads, and that makes me proud.”