A multifaceted market — With Iván Watanabe

The Latino population may have common language and culture, but each Latino client has different financial needs and goals.

Iván Watanabe knows that not all Spanish-speaking clients are the same. He works with many Latino clients as managing partner of Opus Private Client in Rye Brook, N.Y.

Watanabe’s mother is from Venezuela, and his father is a native of Japan. His parents met while attending Bradford College (now known as Northpoint Bible College) in Haverhill, Mass. After getting married, they settled in Haverhill, where Watanabe was born. 

“I had a wonderful, wonderful childhood in Haverhill,” he recalled. 

With his Latino and Asian background, Watanabe jokes that he “identifies with whatever ethnic group is most convenient.”

“But I’m probably way more Latino,” he said. “I am much more connected with my family in Venezuela. I think that’s probably common for most biracial households, that they follow the mother’s customs. I am much more connected to Venezuelan culture. I speak fluent Spanish. When I was a kid, I used to speak fluent Japanese as well, but then I lost my ability to speak the language after I got out of going to Japanese school on the weekends.”

Venezuelans are the 12th-largest population of Hispanic origin living in the United States, accounting for about 1% of the U.S. Hispanic population in 2021, the U.S. Census Bureau reported. But that group has been increasing. From 2000 to 2021, the Venezuelan-origin population increased 592%, growing from 95,000 to 640,000. At the same time, the Venezuelan foreign-born population living in the U.S. grew by 554%, from 75,000 in 2000 to 490,000 in 2021.

“Part of the reason for the immigration is that there has been a tremendous amount of turmoil in Venezuela over the last decade,” Watanabe said. “It has been extremely sad for me to see a lot of my family members have to move to other countries and start life anew. But a lot of Venezuelans who are having to force themselves out of their country are taking root in some wonderful places. I love seeing my family having success in countries like Chile and Spain and here in the U.S., where they have been accepted. They’re super hardworking people, and I think they definitely add to the culture in those places.”

The Great Recession posed a challenge

Watanabe was an intern at BNY Mellon during his senior year at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. His mentor at BNY Mellon, a Latina executive, invited him to attend a networking event.

“She said there would be some other Latino professionals there and it would be a good place for me to meet people,” he recalled. “I went to Staples, had some business cards printed that said I was graduating from Holy Cross in 2008, and I went off to the event.”

Watanabe gave one of those business cards to a financial advisor he met at the networking event. She gave that card to her supervisor, who offered Watanabe a job.

Starting in insurance and financial services during the Great Recession, at age 21 and with no connections, “was extremely challenging,” Watanabe recalled.

“Both of my parents are immigrants, and I don’t have a lot of family living here in the States, I don’t have a ton of connections to sell life insurance to, or have investment or retirement planning conversations with. So my natural market, as they call it, was basically nothing. Combine that with the market in 2008. I graduated in May 2008 in the recession, and I was 21 years old. Nobody wants to have a conversation with a 21-year-old in that environment.”

Watanabe credits “great mentorship and leadership” that enabled him “to kind of grind it out for the first few years.

“Now I’m excited to have a career in this space.”

Watanabe’s career hit a turning point when the firm he worked for was acquired by a larger firm. 

“It was a more successful firm, and the reason why this was a turning point for me was that I saw other successful professionals who were actually succeeding in my business,” he said. “In my first firm, there was a handful of successful advisors. But in the firm that purchased us, everyone was successful. Being around successful people introduced me to what was possible. I think, just by osmosis, I was able to acquire their habits and learn how to build a successful business.”

A solid client base

Today, Watanabe lives and works in Westchester County, N.Y., north of New York City, where most of his client base is Latino.

“About 70% of my client base is Latino executives in finance, accounting or technology,” he said. “A good portion of my clients are in the medical space. My wife is an anesthesiologist, so I’ve carved out a solid niche in the medical space as well.”

No matter what a client’s ethnic background is, everyone needs the same financial foundation, Watanabe said.

“The first and foremost tenet of our practice is to educate our clients about how to understand their money,” he said. 

“I think everybody needs a baseline education on how money works. I think people are not getting the level of education they need or should have around the basics such as how taxes work, what different types of retirement accounts are available, how to use leverage, how to understand investing, how life insurance works — just a broad education on the way money really works. Even though many of my clients understand how corporate finance works, they don’t necessarily know how these things apply to them individually.”

Some Latino clients are reluctant to talk about life insurance because of cultural superstitions about discussing death, Watanabe said. 

“I think many people don’t even understand the topic of life insurance because they really haven’t been educated about it or they’ve never had a conversation about it,” he said. 

“Other people tell me that because they have group coverage through their employer, they think they’re all set. I see that when clients get their eyes opened to what the need for life insurance is really like and what opportunities life insurance provides, then we can really dive into their desires, and we see that generational wealth and legacy planning become real objectives for them. Life insurance is one of the best ways for us to make those objectives come true for them. We make life insurance a priority in their planning.”

Serving the generations

Most of Watanabe’s clients are first-generation or second-generation Americans.

“So you’re bringing those cultural biases to the planning process or bringing their household conversations about money into the process,” he said. “One of our most important conversations with clients is how they see wealth. What is their experience with money? What were the finances in their household like? What was the conversation about money in their family?

“Some clients come from a scarcity mindset. Some don’t talk about money. Others are very comfortable talking about money, and they talk about it with their friends and family. We see some who invest together with their family members.” 

Not every Latino client is the same, Watanabe emphasized. There are differences depending on their money experience.

“Most of my clients come from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Colombia,” he said. “I find that the money conversations are different among all of them. If you’re talking with someone who recently moved to the U.S., they have a completely different tilt than someone from Mexico who had third-generation wealth and created a business in Mexico and has since come to the States. The differences are not so much country-specific as they are specific to their individual households and their experiences around money during their lives.”

Advisors who want to serve Latino clients must understand how money influences their households, Watanabe said.

“I often find in the Latino community that there’s a big concern about planning for the sandwich generation — adults in their 40s who plan to take care of their parents while taking care of their young children and accomplishing that while planning for their own retirement,” he said. “That’s a fine balance we have to play within. Because in certain communities, there are those who will never have to take care of their parents and the parents actually set their kids up financially. So that is a multifaceted situation we must take care of. We help people take care of their parents, their children, and themselves, and then we start working on building multigenerational wealth so they can accomplish their goals, set up a legacy for their kids and be the first grandparents to take care of their grandchildren — and maybe provide for two or three generations below that.”

Life insurance helps create that multigenerational wealth and provides opportunities, Watanabe said.

“That’s why I’m such a big advocate of life insurance,” he said. “It allows us to be able to create generational wealth for clients in so many different ways without having them sacrifice for some of their other goals.”

Susan Rupe is managing editor for InsuranceNewsNet. She formerly served as communications director for an insurance agents' association and was an award-winning newspaper reporter and editor. Contact her at [email protected].