Lauri Binius Droster

Interviewed by Nick Heynen

Q: How did you start with the company and how did you get to where you are now?

Lauri Binius Droster is senior vice president and financial consultant for Royal Bank of Canada Wealth Management division. She also is president of RBC Wealth Management's national organization of women financial consultants and is on the advisory board for the Edgewood College business school.

Age: 44
Hometown: Madison
Family: Married
Education: BS in mathematics from UW-Stevens Point, MBA from Edgewood College.
Experience: She spent six years in various positions in the securities department at First Wisconsin (now US Bank) before being taken under the wing of Maryann Bast at Minneapolis-based Dain Rauscher (now a part of RBC) 16 years ago. She is a certified financial planner and became a senior vice president at the company in 2005.

About Royal Bank of Canada:

RBC (NYSE: RY), Canada's largest bank by assets, provides personal and commercial banking services, wealth management services, insurance, corporate and investment banking and transaction processing services to clients around the world. Droster and her team became part of the bank eight years ago when Dain Rauscher was bought by the wealth management division of the bank.
Year founded: Chartered in 1869 as the Merchants' Bank of Halifax
Local branch address: 10 E. Doty St., #1000, Madison
Web site: www.rbcwm-usa.com
Total employees: 66,000
RBC Wealth Management employees: 5,000
Assets: $622 billion as of April 2008

Q: How did you start with the company and how did you get to where you are now?

A: I started in the securities department for First Wisconsin Bank out of college, not knowing what a bond or a stock was. I had six different jobs during the six years I was there. So I learned a lot and gained wonderful experience in the securities processing industry and securities trading.

But I wanted to work for clients, and I was hired at my current company in 1992 as a sales assistant to a very successful woman broker, Maryann Bast. A lot of people in the community would know her name. She was a terrific mentor and I was very lucky to learn about the business of investing from her, because she believed in me even when I didn't think I could do the job.

We definitely clicked and I was good at managing people, a part she didn't really like doing. I'm a good communicator and I believe in teaching people, giving them things that they're interested in, challenging them. Then if you teach them well, you can delegate. I could never do all the things I do without being able to do that.

Over time I became responsible for different pieces of our business such as monitoring the bonds and preparing annual performance reviews. Eventually I took over for her when she retired in 2004. It was a very smooth transition for the clients because I'd been working with her for so long at that point.

Q: What is the scope of your business and what kinds of clientele do you deal with?

A: I have clients of all age ranges who want help with their investments and making the best financial decisions for their families.

Interestingly, I have clients all over the country. I'm registered in about 40 states because some of my clients may have lived in Madison and then moved, or a client may have passed away and his or her kids who live elsewhere continued to work with me, or a client who was referred to me. I have a couple of clients in Germany, one in Norway, one in Japan.

Retirement planning is one of my favorite things; helping people figure out if they are saving enough for retirement, and making sure they have the right mix of investments.

I have a lot of retired clients as well. We help them figure out where their income is going to be coming from in retirement.

People call me with all kinds of questions, from mortgages to financial aid to what to invest in their 401(k). They want me to give them ideas or strategies that they wouldn't have thought of or known about themselves.

Q: You were recognized as a top female financial adviser by the Wall Street Journal in 2006. How different do you think it is to be a woman in the male-dominated financial industry?

A: It's definitely a male-dominated business. Ninety percent of financial advisers are men.

I don't think that your gender really gives you an advantage or disadvantage in the job, though. I don't think my clients really care one way or the other.

But, we're not stock brokers anymore. It's about building relationships with people, getting to know them, helping them with their finances and with reaching their goals. And women are good at relationships.

The fact that I'm a woman doesn't pertain to my job at all on a day-to-day basis, though. And I certainly don't think about it at all.

When I go to conferences to hear portfolio managers speak or things like that, that's when I notice because it's so male-dominated. "Oh, there's only five of us in this room of 200 people. And there's no line in the bathroom."

Q: In the time that you have been at Dain Rauscher and then RBC Wealth Management, what did you learn about yourself that you didn't know before?

A: I'm competitive. I like to beat the guys. I like to beat the guys on the golf course, too.

I have learned that I'm a good manager of people. I have to be strong and especially now that I have to be a guiding light for my clients and my team, because they're depending on me.

And I've also learned that I'm very lucky to have a supporting husband, who is a cartographer for U.S. Geological Survey in the water resource division.

Q: How has the world financial crisis affected you and your business?

A: It's certainly been tough. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Clients are scared and everyone, including the professionals, are shell shocked.

We've had to do a lot of hand holding, helping people understand what they own, why they're invested in it and what their time horizon is.

We've tried to look for opportunities for people to make lemonade out of lemons, so to speak, such as harvesting tax losses by selling and reinvesting to get a tax break while the market is down.

And we've been helping clients come up with a recovery plan. People want to know what should we be invested in to give us the best chance to recover when things go back up?

Q: What do you think people ought to know about the financial meltdown?

A: I think we're certainly closer to the end than the beginning, at this point. I think the media are always kind of going to the extreme. You keep hearing about the Great Depression as if we're going to have another one. Well, I don't think that's true.

Back in the 1930s, the government did not feel like it should get involved and they were actually raising interest rates, so they were completely doing the wrong thing. This time around, the government is doing everything they possibly can to help the situation. They're throwing money at it like crazy and they're lowering interest rates. This will help at some point.

Yes, this has been a bad situation, certainly. Growth has slowed down and there's a concern that all the money that's being thrown at the situation will heat up inflation. But right now there's absolutely no inflation. The U.S. economy is extremely resilient and in the long run I'm not concerned about the country.

Q: What trends do you see in the industry that have you either worried or hopeful?

A: I think that financial consultants have a terrific opportunity right now to help people because people are scared and need advice. People that have done it themselves are questioning whether they made the right decisions and are looking for help.

The financial services industry has changed dramatically this year, and the bad apples and the risky practices are being flushed out, so I believe it will emerge stronger and healthier. I'm grateful that I work for a company that did not get involved in the risky real estate investments that have hurt other companies. Canadians are very conservative. Our stock price has not gone down nearly what some of the other companies have.

There will certainly be advisers who leave the industry because of the stress of the situation, too. It's hard, you know, it's definitely hard. But, what we have to do is stay in contact with our clients even if you don't know all the answers. You have to still call them and tell them what you think is happening. People appreciate that. I talk with my clients at least quarterly.

I've got a client in Illinois whose mom I actually worked with for many years. He started an account with someone in Illinois in 1995 and never heard from them again. It's just shocking, you know. My team, we really try to stay in contact with people. That's really important. I think we're unusual in that way.

Q: Do you do volunteer work? How did you get into it?

A: All my volunteering is with the Devil's Head Ski Patrol. I teach first aid and skiing to new patrols and recertify existing patrollers. I serve on the board with the ski patrol and I'm the treasurer. And as a patroller you have a commitment to ski one shift a week.

I started skiing when I was 12. I've always been adventurous and admired the ski patrol and decided one day that I was going to try to join.

I met my husband in the first aid class in 1990, and we both love to ski, so it's been a great hobby for us to share together. We love the beauty of the mountains, and it's an escape for me from thinking about the stock market. I've been on patrol for 19 seasons. One time we were trying to find someone who had gone off the run into an area that wasn't open. He had fallen down and hit a rock and was bleeding internally. If he hadn't gotten to the hospital he would have died. Then another time a guy had a major heart attack on the bunny hill with his kids. We had to airlift him.

Q: Which is scarier: helping a skier who is having a heart attack on the slopes get to a hospital, or having a front seat view of the market meltdown for the past several months?

A: The stock market has been more like Chinese water torture. Someone having a heart attack is more like your adrenaline is rushing and you need to move quickly.

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