Helping U.S. Latinos Achieve Their Financial Goals

Speaker 1 (00:08): Welcome to Global Atlantic's Multicultural podcast series. I'm your host, Dan Corcoran. Global Atlantic is a leading retirement and life insurance company that creates innovative products to help meet your clients financial goals. In this podcast, we'll take a closer look at the US Latino population, zeroing in on some specific subsets to understand how a set of common values has shaped these groups, and the best ways in which financial professionals can help them achieve their goals. The Latino market is large, growing and diverse, representing 21 countries of origin. Some Latinos have just arrived in America, others have been here for generations. Some have accumulated wealth, others are just starting out, but all of them share common values that inform their approach to financial planning, a focus on saving home ownership, education and entrepreneurship. Joining us for this discussion is Louis Baras, President and partner of NGO Wealth Advisors. Louis, thanks so much for being here.

Speaker 2 (01:14): Dan. It's a pleasure to be with you

Speaker 1 (01:15): Today, and we're also welcoming back Global Atlantic Multicultural Manager, Javier Pena. Javier, good to hear from you again.

Speaker 3 (01:22): Thank you for having me again.

Speaker 1 (01:24): So we got into some of the broad strokes of this discussion in our last episode, but now let's go a bit deeper. Lewis, when we discussed the Latino population, it's a pretty broad term, meaning there are so many countries of origin and unique cultures within this one population. So how does that affect the way financial professionals should approach this client base?

Speaker 2 (01:44): So there are over 62 million Latinos in the United States who representing almost close to 19%. And of that 19%, you're getting different people from different countries. You're gonna have people from Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, South, and Central America. And so you're right, you have to be more conscious of the different cultures. But in reality, we all kind of share the same values within that culture.

Speaker 1 (02:10): And Javier, along with those similarities and differences, doesn't there also have to be a consideration between generations, whether that's first generation Latinos coming to the US or second, third, fourth generations we're more familiar with the US financial system.

Speaker 3 (02:25): Absolutely. Then, so let me define the different generations who have a better understanding on that. If we define generation, first generation, it typically means those that were born in another country and I immigrate to the U.S. for example, myself, I'm first generations, second generations are those that are born to immigrant parents or parents, and third generations are the children. So let's define that part first. Now we need to keep in mind some of the barriers when we're talking to first generation and their financial journey after being here in this country, arriving in this country, some of the barriers are like ideal requirements, balance minimums, language barriers, poor or no credit history. So they rely on friends and family or alternative financial services that are regulated as much and have much higher interest rate. And some of these services are the most being payday loans have left countless of families and consumers in a never ending cycle of debt that live them completely ruined financially under this circumstances, most likely is nearly impossible to save any money at all for the first generation when they exposed to this financial system. Second generation, they most likely rely on parents to teach them, but if their parents did not have the financial education, they will most likely follow the same lack of financial education.

Speaker 2 (03:50): Dan, I'd like to add to that. So over 60% of Latinos in the US come from Mexican or Mexican origin, right. And so you have to understand, like we were talking earlier, that it depends on what country of origin they're coming from. And the socioeconomic factors also factor in. So for example, I'm in California, and most people that would cross the border to come to the United States were poor when they came in. When a lot of the Cubans came, they might have come in with no money back during the Kennedy days. But the thing is that they came in, they were doctors, they were lawyers, they were accountants that became doctors, lawyers here and how they vote is completely different. Now I'm dealing with a lot of people that are Colombians that are coming to the United States, and I'm dealing with Colombians that are attorneys. And so besides the different level of acculturation and how they're coming, we can't broad base this whole thing. We have to kind of take a look at each person individually and kind of meet them where they're at. So that's really important to also recognize. And

Speaker 1 (04:43): When you think of all those different journeys and all those different ways that they came to this country and all their different stories, how do you cultivate and maintain a Latino client base?

Speaker 2 (04:52): Yeah, cultivating a Latino client base, it's just like any, you know, I want any financial professional who's listening to us that realize it's the same thing when you're dealing with a client who's just gotten outta college, just just doesn't have a lot of money, or is just starting out, or is now an entrepreneur or is now a doctor, or is now an older doctor who saved a lot of money. Kind of the same difference is you can have to meet everybody where they're at. And so one of my goals has always been to help the underserved. Now what does that mean? There are a lot of Latinos that I deal with now that make millions of dollars. They're Latino entertainers, they're professional doctors, their entrepreneurs have big businesses. But my goal has been to work with people like my parents who came to the United States and didn't have access to great financial education.

Speaker 2 (05:39): And so the way I've maintained them and kept them for so long is that we do a lot of handholding. One of the keys to my longevity in this industry, working in this community has been to move from financial planning to financial doing. We would come back and we would give advice to our clients, Hey, you need a life insurance policy, or you need to open up an ira, or you need to, you know, to do something. In fact, it was difficult because once we gave them advice, I was a family advisor for a long time, but once we did that, life got in the way. They weren't able to do it. They didn't have the education, they didn't have the knowledge, they didn't have the language skills. They were barriers to there. So we helped them do a lot of the work for them. So that's how I've cultivated, maintained. So it's a lot of handholding, a lot of doing, and the planning is the assumptive, but the doing was what made sure that we actually created an impact with these people in these communities.

Speaker 1 (06:29): So Louis, what advice would you give to a non-Latino financial professional when working with this demographic?

Speaker 2 (06:36): I actually feel that anybody can help the Latino community. And if you actually see the growth of this community, there's a lot of business that you can do in the community. And as long as I, I go back to as you don't impose your culture, your values, and try to understand from where they're coming, meet the client where they're at. Imagine that if you're dealing with an immigrant who's just come here to the United States, how would you treat your grandmother who didn't have a lot of education? Maybe your grandmother needs a lot of explanation. You need to actually speak to them. In layman's terms, same thing. Latinos are very loyal and they're not loyal just to other Latinos. They're loyal to people who are there to help them. And they understand that Latinos don't tend to just wanna work with other Latinos. Latinos wanna work with somebody who's gonna take care of them and be honest with them, be ethical with them, be transparent with them, and you will get their loyalty just because you don't have the same look or you don't speak Spanish. And again, my parents didn't speak English, but they had a son who was a translator. Almost every Latino who has parents who don't speak English has somebody in their family who will translate for them. That's why I wanna make sure that everybody who's listening to us, if you're not Latino, you have just as much opportunity to work in this community. They're loving wonderful people.

Speaker 1 (10:03): What's the Hispanic mindset of retiring in their country of origin? Or do they wanna be here in the us?

Speaker 3 (10:19): Yeah, in my experience in working with employers that offer retirement benefit plan, I can tell you that at first, when the concept gets presented to Hispanic, no matter their position or role, it's always very new and unfamiliar. But once it gets explained in a cultural relevant way, they tend to embrace the concept and it start seeing the importance of saving for retirement. It's kind of the aha moment for them when they understand the concept of retirement. Let's keep something in mind and remember this, when we talk about retirement, that doesn't exist in our country of origins in Latin America. The concept of retirement for many people in the Latino communities, I will never retire. I'll work my entire life. So that is something that's changed with time as they adjust to the financial system, the us, and as long as Itec gets explained in a cultural relevant way.

Speaker 3 (11:13): So retirement planning also for some foreign workers may involve moving back to their homeland or sharing retirement funds with family members. Some of them are very worried about where retirement funds are held and what's going to happen when they either reach a benefit event, meaning they leave the company or they have a death benefit event. So they get really concerned about that, that change a little bit the dynamic of understanding or wanting to start saving for retirement. So if that concept doesn't get explained clearly to them, they might be a loss in translation because they won't be able to understand how important is retirement. So they will maybe be able to make a sound decision on retirement services for them.

Speaker 2 (11:52): I'd like to add to that. You know, it's right now according to depend on what study you read, but less than a third of Latinos actually put any money away for retirement through their work, right? Through any kind of 401k, ira, whatever. And a lot of the first generation people that come to the United States maybe who have very, very young children, they always talk about how they're gonna come to the United States, make a lot of money, they go back and retire in their own country. Well, that rarely happens, to be quite honest with you. Once they come to the United States, they realize that this is where they have the most opportunities. Once their kids get older and go to the school, the kids become acculturated.

Speaker 2 (12:33): And there's no way the kids are gonna go back to Mexico because they're not gonna be comfortable there. The other thing is that because there is no retirement from probably where they're coming from their country, they're gonna work until they die pretty much. And there's not really a lot of retirement there. Not a lot of type of retirement plans. We do have to do a lot of handholding, education and training. And not only that, they don't understand investing because one is to open up and long part of the 401k because the process is so intimidating for them. Now they have to join. Now they have to decide how much money do I put in my retirement plan?

Speaker 2 (13:16): And within, sometimes there's a lot of belief systems or superstitions, they're afraid that what happens if the owner of the company goes broke, right? They don't know how big the company is, and are they gonna take their money because they're not seeing it, their money's being taken from their paycheck and they're wondering if the company goes broke, will they lose their money? They don't have a lot of comprehension around that. Now they have to go online and they have to go and pick their investments, right? And sometimes they don't know what a target date fund is or what they have to select. And so again, it gets very scary. And right now I'm talking to a lot of Latinos who are calling me and saying, Hey, I love to talk to you. I'm in a 401k, but my account's down. And they don't realize they've been investing in equities. And they see that because of the market they've invested, their accounts are down 20, 30% and they wanna take their money out of the 401k, which is the worst thing that they can possibly do, right? So this is where a financial professional can provide a lot of education and a lot of value to a lot of Latinos. And not just Latinos at this point, obviously, but again, this is where the value for our financial planner is in times like these that we're currently having.

Speaker 1 (14:18): And Lewis, you said it, there's a lot of misunderstandings when it comes to the financial system, but there's also a lot of misconceptions and distrust, especially in this community. So what do you do about that?

Speaker 2 (14:29): I would talk to them and say, on a scale of one to 10, how important is family to you? Oh, it's a level 10. Well, I see that you're earning a good wage, your spouse is at home working part-time, and you got two young children. And I would say, you definitely need life insurance because your wife is dependent upon your income. And they would say, Yeah, but I don't know. I'm not really interested in insurance. And then again, I, at the point I was not selling insurance, I was showing that there was a need because he was an income earner and he had two young children.

Speaker 2 (15:13): I go, Okay, great. On a scale of one to 10, how important is your family to you? You tell me 10, but you realize that if something were to happen to you, you wouldn't have enough income to support your family, to take care of your family. Now, because I'm Latino, because I know the stuff that Latinos don't talk about, we said, you know, there's this thing called essential, right? A lot of Latino men will not buy life insurance because they're afraid that if they die, the money will end up with a wife, but the next boyfriend or the next guy in her life is going to end up with the money and not the kids. Now knowing that I would talk about, oh, but, and they would never bring that subject up, but I would bring it up and I'd say, Listen, I, we would laugh.

Speaker 2 (15:52): I go, You're concerned about the Sancho, right? And then they would laugh and I would explain to them in very lenient, in terms of what an AB trust was and how the wife would get half of the money, the money we could leave it to their children where the wife could take care of it for their kids and yada, yada yada. And guess what? We would place insurance 100% of the time where prior to that it would be very difficult to place, right? So I wrote a book called The Latino Journey to Financial Greatness, to talk about those limiting cultural beliefs that Latinos have. And it was actually written, not even for the Latino population, it was written a lot for financial professionals so they could kind of understand where they were coming from.

Speaker 2 (16:36): I'm gonna give you one more example. So we have this thing called quinceañera , right? So I grew up in Southern California, Mexican parents, but I went to ucla, I got my mba, got cfp, I find out. And this impoverished communities where some of the Latinos were living, even though the people didn't have money to put away for retirement or for life insurance or for education planning, they would have a quinceañera for their kids and the women would pawn their wedding rings to be able to have like a sweet 16, but it was for a 15 year old, right? And they would spend 20, $30,000 in impoverished communities. And I came in, Oh my god, what a waste of money. They can send it for education, they shouldn't be doing that. But again, I failed to realize growing up in this community, how important this was.

Speaker 2 (17:22): And it was important not just for the family, but for the grandparents and for the Theos and everybody. So by doing proper planning, we showed them that it was important to also, if they were gonna have quinceañera, but to also think about what was coming. If they wanted to send their children to college, if they wanted to say for retirement and what it would cost, we would still actually plan for the quinceanera. But instead of spending 20, $30,000, we would maybe budget for $15,000 or figure out how to do it much less. But it's for somebody, somebody who's an outsider look and says, How can somebody so poor spend so much money on something when they're not providing for their financial needs? Right? And I learned that it was really important, again, to meet them where they're at, but also to show them what also was coming and how can we plan for everything and how can we make it work.

Speaker 1 (18:06): It's so important for the bigger picture of this story, but let's get specific about the financials here. When you talk about 401ks, life insurance, equities, bonds, new business formation, what's the best analogy that you use to educate Latino clients around retirement or insurance products? Javier,

Speaker 3 (18:23): When I was in my previous life, I was working with a lot of individuals to help and understand the concept of retirement from a 401K standpoint. 401K is a foreign concept for them. So one of the things I usually use when I was speaking to somebody about the benefit of retirement or the benefit that the company offers to you in a 401K plan, you know, some companies offer a match. So the idea of the match was something that I try always to explain clear, because that's, you know, we said don't leave money on the table, don't waste the money.

Speaker 3 (19:06): They're giving you a match. So there is this concept about al or comradery, which is kind of the co-mother or the co-father or what they call here, the body. You will always, especially Hispanics, since we're a close knit of people like we are all the time together and doing things together from things, we have your body at work that is your confident is the person that you joke around is the person that will bring you food if you have a comradery. A so I always said with them, I say, Hey, let me ask you these question right now, and I want the answer straightforward from you guys. Ask your compadre, your body that is sitting by you, if he's going to pay you 1% or 2% from today until you retire. And you know, we always laugh. Like they laugh, like yeah, they will look at each other like, no way.

Speaker 3 (19:53): I mean, I love you too much compadre comradery everybody, but no way. I'm not paying you $25 per paycheck for the rest of my life. So that's the analogy I love to use because it click with them to understand why so important for retirement and the benefit that the company is giving them. The other thing about this is that some of the misconceptions that many Hispanic have when they come to this country is that this trust of politicians and institutions, and the reason why is because the countries that we're coming from, we don't trust the banks, we don't trust financial institutions. So telling somebody, Hey, you know what? Gimme $10 of your paycheck for the rest of your life. It's something like, why would I do that if I don't know if this company is going to go broke or what's going to happen with my money?

Speaker 3 (20:37): So I love that. And it became like an aha moment for them to understand. So the analogies of using the compadre or your body to be able to help you to understand the concept, it helped me tremendous with that concept for them to start contributing or start understanding at first, unless the next time when I will come and business say, Okay, so are you ready to start contribu? Are you ready to save for retirement? And I felt like after that point of understanding the conversation around other financial services, it became a little bit easier because there's money growing and growing and growing. So they started trusting you. So, which is part of our job to get that trust from them. And that's the way you connect with the audience.

Speaker 1 (21:15): And Javier, you touched on the misconceptions of this part of the population, but let's talk about financial professionals themselves. What are some of the common misconceptions of the Latino demographic that financial professionals should really understand to better serve that market?

Speaker 3 (21:28): Yeah, I think the big one is we need to understand that Latinos are not a monolithic group. I think Louis have addressed that before and should not be treated as such. We need to understand and incorporate those cultural nuances into the messes that it will resonate with the audience. Also, there is this misconception about Hispanics do not know how to save. it's a misconception cuz when you think about that some of the Hispanics that are in this country, they are helping their family back home. So they know how to save, they have the capacity to save for a budget are for their home here in the US and helping their family. All what they need is a understanding on the vehicles that they need to have besides the normal ones that they are exposed to saving and checking account to be able to save more. There is an absence of financial literacy but not financial discipline. So I think those are some of the misconceptions that are key for people to understand when engaging the Hispanic market.

Speaker 2 (22:50): Dan, can I add to that? I think some of the misconceptions that we're all poor, I actually have clients that are earning from anywhere from 5 million to $10 million a year, believe it or not. I would say that probably half of my Latino clients are in the top 1% of all income earners in America. And a lot of 'em are sometimes first generation because they're very entrepreneurial because they come here with no education and they've just been risk takers and they've built these businesses and we're showing them how to do the intergenerational transfer to the children so they can continue these businesses. So they want to come here, they've got great values, they're hard workers, they just want to take care of their families, they wanna be very successful and not everybody's blue collar. And so again, I just wanna make sure that most people that are listening to us of financial professionals, that I will share with you that sometimes when someone walks into my office and jeans and a t-shirt, they probably have more money than the people walking in with me that are wearing a suit and a tie because they're spending more money.

Speaker 2 (23:48): The ones with a suit and a tie and driving the Mercedes-Benz are spending more money than the people who are in their jeans and a t-shirt and they own a business. So the people that are blue collar workers, I don't focus a lot on budgeting because like Javier you said they're really good at that. I actually work with them, believe it on working on skills on how to create more money, how to earn more to take care of their families. I always talk about what I create was called the cash concept. I wanna give them the knowledge, abilities, skills and habits to earn more in the United States. And so when we sit down, that's part of the planning process that I work with them as well. There's also a lot of business for financial professionals and as far as I'm concerned, the more financial professionals helping this community save more. It's what we're trying to do.

Speaker 1 (24:31): And Lewis, what obstacles do you believe Latinos may face in getting their voices actually heard and in feeling represented by financial professionals? I mean, how have you and other financial professionals succeeded in meeting their needs?

Speaker 2 (24:44): Yeah, I think that goes back to the misconception that there isn't a lot of money out there for families to invest. You know, Javier talked about how in the same family you have and, and it's in my family, in my wife's family, in one household they have the mother and they have the brother and the sister and their kids are living there, right? And we're talking kids, they're in their twenties and thirties. My brother-in-law, sister-in-law are in their fifties. But if you add up all the income in that household, it's about half a million dollars. Nobody's earning six figures. But if you add up all that household and it's like, how do you help them? Well, sometimes you have to help them as a family. And so that's what I've done and I've built a very successful practice that continues to grow. I think the niche in helping Latinos, and sometimes what you're doing is you're planting seeds for some of the young Latinos that are starting out.

Speaker 2 (25:31): But sometimes you start helping the younger Latinos that are gonna come in and see you at your office. But guess what, once you build their trust, they're gonna bring in their tio, they're gonna bring in the tia, they're gonna bring in their abuela, their abuelo, who's actually the owner of the business that's making millions of dollars. And you don't know. But I always go back to if you treat everybody with dignity and respect and that all they're trying to do is the same thing that you're trying to do, is you're trying to make sure that you feed your family, take care of them, have savings in case of an emergency. We wanna make sure that in poor communities, that people aren't holding car washes or selling t-shirts to bury our own children, right? We're trying to provide dignity. And I think that there's a lot of stuff that we can do to help them. The reason why I came back to the community to help our community, because I thought my parents never had access to people who really cared. I think that what we need to do is make sure that when we're talking to people, we don't start with a product. I think we start with the people first and then the process, and then implement with a product, right? And I think that's the most dignified way to help any community.

Speaker 3 (26:29): Hey Louis. So one thing that I know and I noticed maybe is that for many Hispanics, they don't wanna go to a financial professional, a financial advisor, because first they don't think that they have the money or the asset to go and second because they think they're, it's too expensive to go to one. Is that something that you address?

Speaker 2 (26:46): I do. You know, let me just share with you sometimes like playing around, you know, lovingly playing around is when somebody says, Oh, I saw you on television or whatever, I read one of your books, or when I make a lot of money, I'm gonna go see you. And I said, that's really funny. It's like saying, you know what? I'm sick right now and you tell your doctor when I get healthy, I'm gonna go see you. And I go, It doesn't make sense, right? And the idea is right now, if you don't have money is the time to come and see me cuz you're not healthy. My job is I'm a financial doctor and I'm gonna make you healthy and I'm gonna make sure that I can take care of you. That's the first thing you know, we have a concept that our office called Turn the Turtle.

Speaker 2 (27:19): And imagine that what that means, Javier, is that sometimes there are people that we can't help that doesn't naturally fit into our business model, right? But Javier you and I are walking down the street and all of a sudden we see this turtle that's upside down. You see their little legs moving around, it's upside down. Unless you and I bend down to turn that turtle over, that turtle will never be able to turn itself over and it's gonna need help. So I have a staff of over 20 employees and I tell my staff, if you get a call from somebody who saw me on television or read a book or whatever needs help, but maybe we're not in a position to help them stop what you're doing, guide them find out. Because sometimes people need help from a nonprofit organization or they need budgeting and we don't do exclusively just that.

Speaker 2 (30:32): Yeah. And Daniel, I don't know if this will make it to the podcast because I know we, we spent a lot of time here, but what is the number one value that we told you that Latinos have? I believe it's family. Family number one. Exactly. So I will share with you just one quick question. When people come to me for retirement planning, and I'm meeting with a husband and wife, I will ask them, on a scale of one at 10, where is your marriage? And they go, Well, what are you talking about? What does that have to do with retirement? We're seeing that a lot of people are divorcing in their fifties and sixties, and sometimes we're putting many, I wanna make sure that the family unit is really strong and most men actually are oblivious to their marriages. And sometimes they'll tell me, Well, my marriage is not perfect, but it could be a probably at an eight.

Speaker 2 (31:11): And I've had women tell me, Latina women tell me, you know, it's probably at level five. And I said, Well, where would you have to be to contemplate divorce? They go, probably a four. And the man's sitting there and he's looking at me like, How come she never told me this? Right? And so sometimes instead of using that money to put more money in the 401k, believe it or not, we spent a lot of money on marriage counseling because the goal is if their marriage is stronger, they're actually going to visualize a future being together with their kids and their grandkids. And so you find that once we start working on marriage counseling, that, and we don't do the marriage counsel and obviously we send 'em to a marriage counselor, that they are more committed now to their future and putting more money in their 401k because they never express and never told you, Hey, maybe this marriage may not work and maybe we'll be saving this money for divorce attorneys instead of our family. So it's, again, I go back to, I'm meeting clients and I'm trying to tie their money to their values and we do it with Latinos and they get it and they go, This guy's not trying to sell me a product. He's not a salesperson, he's a real financial professional. He's really here to take care of my family over the long term.

Speaker 3 (32:16): And one more question for you, Louis. From a product understanding annuities and life insurance, when would you say that conversation need to start? Of course, we know annuities is for 50 plus, but when that conversation or education need to start,

Speaker 2 (32:32): Well, that conversation's actually easier to start because once I've had a conversation about their vision and their values, and then they've expressed what we're gonna do, now I have a plan. So now I wanna go back, then I wanna see where they're at, right? I'm gonna take a look at, I'm gonna do their budget, we're gonna take a look at their personal balance sheet. I'm gonna look at what their assets are, what their liabilities are, and what they have available, what kind of discretionary income. So now once they visualize where they wanna be, and they've told me where they wanna be, and then we know where they're at, we've gotta figure out what the gap is and how are we gonna make that gap narrower. And it's usually gonna be, I wanna make sure that we're gonna get you there. So this is where the execution part comes in right now.

Speaker 2 (33:10): I'm gonna give you one last one Javier I tell them this, You wanna grow, I always give 'em the analogy of a house, right? And I ask 'em, here's Southern California. If you're gonna build a single story house, you just need a six inch foundation, okay? But if you wanna have a five story house, you need a deeper foundation. And if you want build a skyscraper, a skyscraper, the foundation must be very deep. They can go in downtown LA, they can see these skyscrapers being built in. You can see the big old holes, right? And I said, So you tell me what do you want to build for your family? You wanna be a shack, a single story house with skyscraper? They go, No. And the analogies, we wanna be a skyscraper. We wanna really grow as a family, fantastic. You're hiring me to make sure that your personal financial foundation is very deep and I have to take care of the stuff that you're not even thinking about.

Speaker 2 (33:50): That is what happens if you pass away. What happens if you get hurt? What happens if you have no savings? What happens? You have no estate plan, you own a house. That's when I'm having those conversations. So I'll ask them, what type of life insurance do you have? Well, we don't have any. I have a, A group policy. They'll say, I have an accidental death and dismember through work add and it costs me five bucks a month or something. And that's when the conversations come in. Because again, what I wanna do is I wanna show up that financial foundation. I wanna make it very deep, very profound so they can grow. So that's what we also have those conversations at that time.

Speaker 1 (34:22): So Louis, what's your experience with working with the Latino market? If you're not Latino, obviously you are, but is there a trust factor between these groups? What can you tell us about some advice you have on how to enter this market?

Speaker 2 (34:34): Dan? I honestly will share with you that I don't think that there's a trust factor. I think that there's any kind of factor. It might be a language barrier for maybe first generation, but if you have been referred by another Latino and you're not, you know, let's say somebody else, some other Latino has referred that Latino family to you, there's always somebody there that will be translating for the family, right? Other than that, Latinos really want to work with professionals who are going to treat them well. And they're really smart about if they're being treated with respect. And as long as you're respectful to them, you know, and again, I go back to sometimes in the Latino community, we have a lot of blue collar workers, but their blue collar self-employed professionals, meaning that they're plumbers. My dad was an ornamental iron mill iron worker. I mean, my dad right now is in the top, probably 2% of American.

Speaker 2 (35:26): And not only wage earners, but he was also, uh, with assets. And if you met my dad, you would think he would be really poor. He's always in jeans in a kind of torn up shirt cuz he is always welding. I think if you're not Latino, you just have to, to decide are you willing to help a community that needs help? And maybe nobody's thinking about helping them, but I still think that from a business perspective, non Latinos would be wise to also add that niche. There's over 62 million Latinos in the United States. They're everywhere and they need help.

Speaker 3 (35:54): I totally agree with what Louis is saying, and I will say in the Midwest, when financial advisor, they are not Latino, they're intimidated to speak into a Hispanic because they have these misconceptions again that they don't speak the language. It's not that they don't speak the language, they speak the language, but they're not comfortable with financial terminology. And that's where some of the kids come into the equation, even though they don't understand what they know how to translate or interpretate that for the parents. So don't shy away to work with the Latino Hispanic population because they, you think that they don't speak the language. They might be able to speak the language, they just don't understand some of the financial terminology

Speaker 2 (36:45): . Well that, let me give you another epiphany that I had. So because I, I actually go speak across the country and I sometimes will speak to Latino groups and I used to ask the wrong question. I would be in an audience of Latinos, a couple hundred people, and I would say here, how many people here don't speak English? And probably more than half of the audience would raise their hands. I got smart though. I realized that I spoke to my parents in English, but they only spoke to us in Spanish. Their grandkids spoke to them in English, but they, you know, and my parents, my dad read the LA Times and he spoke only in Spanish. So I just wanna share with you, I would now ask a question, who here does not understand English, not speak it, understand it? And I would have only one hand go up.

Speaker 2 (37:27): And so I just wanna share with you that if you're a non-speaking, you know, non Latino professional, trust me, if you're speaking to them and as long as maybe you're slowing your speech a little bit, they understand you because they live in the United States. They're working in the United States. They got a driver's license right now, they'll bring their kids because it's just sometimes they don't know how to translate certain words. I don't know. I use Google Translate and my first language was Spanish until five years old. It's only been English. And I sometimes when I wanna say certain things to my clients in Spanish, I'll use Google Translate because I don't know how to do say it in Spanish when there's a will, there's a way people just wanna work with honest, ethical people who will respect them. That's it.

Speaker 1 (38:06): So gentlemen, before we go, just some final thoughts about what we talked about today and what you want to think about going forward. Javier will start with you.

Speaker 3 (38:13): I just wanna thank Louis for being part of this podcast. His insight is valuable for us. Helping Hispanic population with their financial need is really important. And I think the opportunities out there just need to find it.

Speaker 2 (38:26): Yeah, I, you know, I, I just wanna share that I wanna thank also Javier at Global Atlantic for giving me the opportunity to speak here. I think that this community is growing leaps and bounds at some point. It's going to be a really powerful community, and the way it's going to be powerful is when they start taking care of their finances and save and actually have that intergenerational wealth transfer and the only people that really can help them, our financial professionals.

Speaker 1 (39:36): A really great conversation, some great thoughts and really great advice from our two subject matter experts. Louis Javier, thank you both so much for joining us.

Speaker 2 (39:45): Thank you, Dan. My pleasure.

Speaker 1 (39:47): And for our listeners, be sure to continue this journey through multicultural markets with us in our next episode where we put the spotlight back on the Asian American population. Until then, I'm Dan Corcoran. Thanks so much for listening. Global Atlantic, Your Thriving Practice Podcasts are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts as well as by visiting global atlantic.com forward slash professionals.

Speaker 4 (40:22): The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the guests on this podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of Global Atlantic Financial Group. Global Atlantic Financial Group, Global Atlantic is the marketing name for the Global Atlantic Financial Group LLC and its subsidiaries including Forethought Life Insurance Company and Accordia Life and Annuity Company. Each subsidiary is responsible for its own financial and contractual obligations. These subsidiaries are not authorized to do business in New York.