Brian Hein embodies many of the characteristics associated with Alberta. He’s brash, outspoken, informal — and he’s from Saskatchewan.

Hein is president of Calgary-based Hein Financial Group Inc. , a full-service planning firm that operates under the Assante Financial Management Ltd. banner. Based on the idea that even really smart people don’t necessarily know what to do with their money, Hein has built Hein Financial to take care of all his clients’ needs. His business offers clients financial planning as well as insurance products and group and pension programs.

A 28-year veteran of the financial services industry, Hein established his firm in North Battleford, Sask., with the aim of caring for clients’ “serious” money. As his clients matured and moved west, the firm grew and spread west, too. It opened an office in downtown Calgary 15 years ago, which is now the firm’s head office. It still has the office in North Battleford — Hein spends about a week there every month — and a third office in south Calgary. With slightly fewer than 20 advisors and $300 million in assets under management, the firm is now seeing its client list expand farther west into British Columbia.

“The practice just evolved; we didn’t plan it this way,” Hein says. “You come across clients who need something you’re not good at, so you find someone who is and you partner up.”

Hein works with every member of the Hein Financial team to ensure each client receives the right service. It makes for a close-knit group that, Hein says, has a great time together.

Hein, 50, has always prided himself on building strong personal relationships with his clients, and with Hein Financial he has amassed a team of specialists who can take care of whatever needs a client may have. Hein himself has earned a bachelor of commerce degree from the University of Saskatchewan, is a certified financial planner and registered financial planner, and also holds the chartered financial consultant and chartered life underwriter designations. But beyond his professional qualifications, Hein attributes his success to a very real desire to get to know his clients, citing his “dazzling wit and charming personality” as benefits the competition can’t offer.

“What we offer [in products] isn’t that much different from the guy down the street,” he says. “It’s about who we are as a team. You can’t be an expert in everything, but you can hire good people and build a team that works off each other’s strengths.”

Hein is, in fact, offering something different from much of his competition: a safe and conservative investment approach. There are still a lot of individuals, Hein says, who want to trade on a hunch or a hot tip. But risk has a downside. “If you want a 50% gain,” he says, “you have to be prepared for a 50% loss.”

Hein’s conservative style means the firm doesn’t use leveraging strategies and does not place sector bets. “We deal with wealthy people who take risks in their work,” he says. “They don’t want a gamble; they want to take that money off the table.”

Whether his clients are business owners nearing retirement or younger professionals early in their careers, they all get the same conservative approach. Hein wants to handle all of his clients’ “serious” money, although he doesn’t begrudge clients who want to take more risks. Hein Financial simply won’t be the firm that handles those investments.

Hein Financial’s low-risk investment style means the firm is having an easier time in the current drama than advisory offices that promote higher-risk investments. At times like these, Hein says, it’s “almost like working at Disney World.” People’s emotions are on edge as the markets bounce between highs and lows.

“For us old guys in the industry,” Hein says, “we’re just strapping clients in and making sure the safety bar is down, so the clients don’t jump or fall out of the roller-coaster.”

For now, Hein says, it’s a matter of holding down the fort and giving clients as little to worry about as possible. He is confident the investment industry will come through the current crisis stronger than ever: the longer the market stays down, the longer the cleansing, the better off the industry will be down the road.

@page_break@“There’s still a market to help people with financial planning, but it’s become an industry of money gatherers,” Hein says. “If you’re doing the right thing for people, you can be around for a long time; if you’re just feathering your own nest, you may not survive.”

While no one can predict how this year’s events will transform the financial services industry in years to come, everyone is seeing losses for now — no matter how ethical their practices. But it’s important to keep clients steady until the purge is over, Hein says. Although Hein is a firm believer in developing a detailed financial plan and sticking to it, he is even putting those on hold.

“What we do is pretty simple,” he says. “We look at Point A, where the client is now, and Point B, where they want to be down the road. Then it’s just a matter of getting them from Point A to Point B.”

But when the value of a client’s assets can change so wildly in the course of just a couple of hours, figuring out where Point A is becomes more of a challenge.

As for determining the final destination, Hein suggests following the client’s passion. “Everybody has a story,” he says. “I find it fascinating to hear how people got to where they are. I can find out what really is the passion behind the person, and it’s that passion I have to plan for. That’s what’s driving them.”

Looking around his Calgary office, it’s obvious what Hein’s passion is. One day, he says, he’d like to write a few books or spend more time woodworking in his workshop. But for now, it’s apparent it’s his relationships with clients that he relishes most.

Every day he sits at an old, roll-top desk made for him by a client whose children still work with him. Decisions are made and friendships cemented in the President’s Club, the dark wood bar at the back of the office. Hein’s own office is furnished with a big leather couch, and decorated with a poster of Russell Crowe from Gladiator, currency from around the world that he’s collected himself and received as gifts from clients, and a crystal ball. The Hein Financial office, while unmistakably a place of business, is designed to be a space in which clients feel at home and open up.

Hein’s clients tell him things they wouldn’t tell anyone else. “People would rather discuss their sex lives than their finances,” he says. “We get pretty in-depth about their whole world.”

The very affable Hein seems to have no trouble finding clients to work with him and his team. Lately, he has been getting new clients — referrals from current clients of friends who were unhappy with their previous advisors. Other new business comes in the form of maturing children of existing clients and individual employees of group and pension clients. The firm has no minimum investment threshold, and new clients are accepted based more on personality than asset level.

Hein wouldn’t have it any other way. IE