New position: Senior vice president, director of sales, Raymond James Financial Services, St. Petersburg. Previous position: Executive vice president, sales and marketing, PlanMember Financial Corp., Santa Barbara, Calif.
By FRED W. WRIGHT JR.
Published February 16, 2004
In his newly created position as senior vice president and director of sales for Raymond James Financial, Kent Christian has more than 3,100 financial advisers he plans to meet. They're scattered throughout the United States, in 1,500 offices.
"Certainly, it is an objective of mine to ultimately visit folks in every state where we have an office," he said. "From a practical standpoint, you can see that would be somewhat daunting."
Christian's responsibilities cover Raymond James' two largest divisions - the investment management division and the securities division. For now, just a couple of months into the new position, Christian said he is busy becoming oriented to his management team and "understanding what the team is working on currently, making sure we're beginning to set action plans."
From his eighth floor office in the Raymond James headquarters complex in Carillon office park, he has a view southwest of St. Petersburg's skyline and the tilted dome of Tropicana Field. To the west, "I basically have a decent view of where Roosevelt Boulevard dumps onto Ulmerton Road. I do get to see some big planes dropping into St. Petersburg/Clearwater International Airport."
Born in Atlanta, Christian grew up in Tampa and considers himself a "semi-native." He graduated from Chamberlain High School, where he met his wife-to-be, a classmate. Their second date was the senior prom, he recalled.
Christian attended Duke University in Durham, N.C., where he earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1983. Upon graduation, he went to work at NCNB (now Bank of America) in Charlotte, N.C., in the bank's capital markets group.
"My entire career has been in investment/financial services," he said.
He spent 17 years with NCNB, including a stint in Tampa from 1984 to 1991 where he worked first in investment sales, both retail and institutional, then as sales manager for capital market sales. In 1991, he relocated to Dallas, still with Bank of America. After a year there, he was assigned to develop the bank's Texas outreach and expanded the work force there from 17 to 180 people. In 1996, Bank of America returned Christian to Charlotte, where he was ultimately national sales director, responsible for 1,100 sales people and 42 offices in 22 states.
He left the Bank of America in 2000 and took a position with PlanMember Financial in Santa Barbara, Calif., as executive vice president. "It gave me the experience of being able to actually run a business from end to end," Christian said. "It also gave me, more importantly, a lot of exposure and insight into the independent contractor side of the brokerage business."
This last key area of expertise made him an ideal fit for Raymond James Financial Services, which is the independent contractor side of Raymond James Financial, Christian said. The brokers pay their own office expenses and in return keep 80 to 90 percent of the commissions they generate, two to three times the share of an employee broker.
Christian said working in financial management has built-in rewards. "I truly believe that what financial advisers do for their clients, when done thoughtfully and professionally, is absolutely critical to that client's well being," he said. "It provides them choices in life. That's absolutely what motivates me in my job - helping our financial advisers be more effective in taking that approach. Then we all can say we've done some good things in our lives.
"I see myself in this role as a keeper of that value and hopefully a driver of that value with the firm and with our financial advisers," he said.
Christian, 42, lives with his wife, Suzanne, and their three children in the same Tampa neighborhood where they lived previously. With a 2-year-old in the house, as well as an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old, Christian said he is busy supporting his children in their activities and hobbies. In his spare time, Christian said he and his family like to snow ski. While living in Santa Barbara, Christian and his wife explored the winemaking regions of California, and he said he hopes to revive that interest in Florida.
