It’s fitting that at Vestigo, Casady is still finding ways to change people’s lives, because acting as a “change agent” was one of the hallmarks of his career.

A key moment in Casady’s career came in the 1998 Scudder-Kemper Zurich merger, which at the time raised a lot of eyebrows in the financial services industry. Many didn’t understand why a direct-sales company like Scudder would want to take on Kemper’s advisor-sold products, in an industry that seemed to be moving definitively towards the direct side.

Casady was one of five members on the Management Committee at Scudder, Stevens and Clark, as well as a board member. He recognized that the firm’s outdated partnership structure was dragging on the succession ownership process, and isolating Scudder from the global marketplace. Merging allowed the new firm to transition from 95% US-based into a global mutual and institutional funds business, all while saving costs and making way for a new generation of leadership talent.

Still the deal flew in the face of ‘90s conventional wisdom that direct-to-consumer sales was the unavoidable future. Casady even went so far as to shepherd a study that concluded that as people became wealthier, their finances become more complex, and the value of financial advisors would increase.

Sounds an awful lot like current life-centered planning trend in our industry bucking the inevitable “rise of the robos.” But at the time, Casady appeared to be out of step with the industry trend. “I can still remember being on the cover of ‘Barron's,’ called out by the belief that I was all wrong,” Casady says. “But we merged the companies together, we put the boards of the mutual fund companies together, we merged products together and we only sold through the advice channel. Once the next recession hit, post the technology stock bubble burst, around 2002, you saw basically the industry falling inline to that same thinking.”

Seeing Around The Corner

Casady reflected back on what one of his biggest “themes” was as a leader and he said, “I’m often early.” The Sudder Kemper merger was a great example. Barron’s called him out on it yet just a few years later, it was viewed as a great move.

“Frankly, some of the consolidations at LPL is another example of being early. In the end it all worked out fine but there might have been a year or two years or even three years where the marketplace would say ‘what in the world are these people doing?’ Or ‘why are they doing that?’ Or ‘maybe Casady has lost his edge along the way,’ said Casady.

Casady said he knew that while his timing might have been off, the firm would eventually get to the right place. Yes, it worked for Casady but here’s a caveat for advisors--timing is critical. Sometimes you can have a great idea that’s too far ahead of its time—and it’s a bust. Being “too early and right” is just as bad as being wrong. Hey, nobody said leadership was easy!

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