Why Financial Advisors Sometimes Switch Client Niches

These next-gen advisors built new niches with physicians, wealthy executives, academics, special needs groups, and NFL players.

By Anne Field

Targeting NFL players and executives.

Jerry Sneed, a senior wealth advisor with Shelton, Conn.-based Procyon Partners, who manages about $1 billion in assets, serves clients in two key niches. After building a reputation for advising high-net-worth executives, he added another specialty to his portfolio—NFL players. Before joining Procyon two years ago, Sneed had worked for several companies, including Credit Suisse and a family office. At both, he learned a lot about what high-net-worth executives needed.

But it was an introduction by a client to an NFL player that helped him establish his second niche. The athlete who, after four years in the league wasn’t getting signed for his fifth year, became his first professional football client. Sneed enrolled as a registered player financial advisor with the National Football League Players Association. He ended up working closely with the former player, eventually teaching him about finance and helping him get a job as a management consultant.

About 18 months ago, after moving to Procyon, Sneed observed a shift in players’ ambitions when the Supreme Court ruled that college athletes could earn income. “I had an epiphany,” he says. He realized that professional athletes had become much more savvy about building their own brand and developing what he calls “an entrepreneurial mind-set.” At the same time, because he often provided financial education to the children of his executive clients, he realized he could extend those skills to NFL players—teaching them about everything from how to buy a car to investing in real estate deals.

He also finds his work with executives is a big plus. His NFL clients like that he works with affluent people, not to mention the fact that he actually knows very little about football. “They love that I’m not star-struck,” he says. “And they want to learn about what the executives are doing, because that’s what they want to be doing.”