Robert Lindner

Robert Lindner's search for a career that gave back to the people around him and provided a service they could not do without led him first to the insur­ance business. Today, he finds that satisfaction as the founder of Marietta, Georgia-based Lindner Capital Advisors—a firm with more than $600 million in assets and 200 affiliated advisors.

Marrying young, Lindner (a self-described "people person") sought insurance for himself and was impressed by the agents handling his policy. "I thought to myself, ‘That's what I want to do—work with people, find out what they need and then provide it to them,'" he explains. "I thought that would be a great way to make a living."

He started out at Paul Revere, a major player in health insurance at the time, and began building a business based out of Georgia. As his business matured, so did the financial industry. Lindner branched out into financial planning in 1988 and then, in 1996, incorporated Lindner Capital Advisors as an investment advisor to serve a select group of independent and insurance company-affiliated broker-dealers. He had the idea that he could not only help clients with their financial needs, but also guide other insurance agents who were gravitating toward financial planning. To this end, he began positioning his firm to support agents' planning needs and eventually developed Lindner College and the Lindner Elite Advisor Forum (LEAF)—forums that provide education about planning and wealth management issues to advisors.

As part of his drive to expand his business, Lindner earned degrees and certifications as well. These include a graduate degree in financial services from The American College and the Accredited Investment Fiduciary™ professional designation awarded by the Center for Fiduciary Studies, Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh. Lindner also holds designations as a Chartered Life Underwriter, Chartered Financial Consultant™ and Accredited Asset Management Specialist™. He also is a licensed CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ practitioner.

That learning put him on the path to the next stage in financial services: "As we made the transition from serving clients to serving other advisors, it became clear to me that the future was in the broadest and deepest of all these disciplines—and that was the growing field of wealth management," he says.

Wealth management seeks to align a client's values with his or her wealth and resources. "Being people-oriented to begin with, wealth management made a lot of sense to me," Lindner explains, "It shows how much the financial industry has grown that we have such all-encompassing and flexible services and tools these days."

Lindner's own values are focused mainly on providing advisors with the best practices in the financial industry. As an advisor running a firm that mainly supports other advisors, he wants to provide the best possible services in a way that can immediately help others realize all that is important to them. "My dream was to build an organization that could have an impact on the lives of others in a most positive way," he explains. "And with this firm, today, I think we've done that—though I don't plan on stopping any time soon."

Lindner has combined wealth management with the discipline of asset-class investing as offered by such firms as institutional advisor Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) and Goldman Sachs. DFA, a pioneer in asset-class investing, offers a variety of customized funds that are intended to track certain risk and reward parameters—enabling investors to better control the outcomes of their portfolios via diversification. "Lindner Capital Portfolios are designed with extensive diversification and steadfast exposure to a wide variety of asset classes," Lindner explains. "With those characteristics, it's our belief that our clients experience far less portfolio volatility given their objectives."

Portfolios are specifically designed to be consistent with each client's risk tolerance, investment objectives and time horizon. Retirement, tax-managed and 401(k) solutions are designed specifically to meet each client's goals. In order to provide the investor with individualized solutions, an investment policy statement is prepared for all clients with specific information covering client objectives and constraints, target returns, risk tolerance, time horizons, anticipated withdrawals, contributions, and taxation and regulatory issues.

While Lindner does offer these services to some clients served by the firm itself, he primarily provides such strategies for the advisors with whom the firm works. Lindner selects advisors, many from the insurance industry, who have an aptitude for wealth management and then provides them with turnkey wealth management services developed over the past quarter century.

A good deal of Lindner's approach is supported by wealth management coaching firm CEG Worldwide. Lindner has known the managers of CEG Worldwide for a number of years, and he has worked with the firm to help provide a full panoply of best practices to his clients and advisors. Concludes Lindner: "We think we're on the cutting edge of the best wealth management efforts available, and that's why we work with the best. CEG Worldwide is the best in my opinion, and I think our advisors would agree."

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