Dean Murray
Title: Trust Officer, Cape Ann Savings Bank
Age: 47
Experience: 23 years
Like many high school graduates, Dean Murray left his hometown of Gloucester to attend college, but he always knew he would return someday. Murray earned a degree in English, but his technical writing concentration proved advantageous in the trust department at Cape Ann Savings Bank, where he says part of his job is translator for his clients. Since Murray joined, the department has grown from $100 million to just more than $266 million in assets under management. Murray, now in his 23rd year at Cape Ann Savings, recently took on the grueling challenge of attaining his certified ginancial planner designation. He sat down recently with Banker & Tradesman to chat about his beloved Gloucester, community banking and hitting the books once again.
Q: How did your community banking background help you when you went for this designation?
A: In trust and financial services at a small bank, you have to do everything. If you go to a big bank, you might work in a small area of the trust department, you might do just income taxes, but here, you really have to know everything: taxes, investments, estate planning, wills and trusts. You have to be fluid in all those things.
And since it was a small trust department, I had the ability to learn right from the ground up, like our operations, money coming in, money going out, balancing the department. Those things do come in handy now because when questions arise, at least I have a good background on the operations side.
Q: Why did you go for the CFP?
A: The bank and I decided that it would be mutually beneficial. Certainly, from a personal standpoint, it’s a very well-respected designation. It could be the most respected designation, if only because the CFP board of standards does a really good job of monitoring and the exams are very difficult. They cover the seven areas of financial planning, the ethics and every part of my job that I’ve grown to know. It gives clients the comfort to know that this is a nationally recognized certification. And we can show a level of expertise that the big banks also have.
Q: You told me that you had to clear your schedule for a year, you had to study, you had to take a course just to sit for the exam. What was that test like?
A: The exam itself is very cumbersome. It covers all the different areas of financial planning. You have your basics: budgeting, income expense sheets, establishing client relationships. Then you have retirement planning, investments, risk management, health insurance, life insurance, estate planning. It’s not a surface-level exam at all. It’s designed more toward how these products and different areas of financial planning integrate into clients’ lives. A good part of the exam involves scenarios and case studies. They’ll give you maybe 4-6 pages worth of information about a hypothetical client. Then they’ll attach maybe 15 or 20 questions about that case scenario. They love questions on the exceptions, rather than the rules.
I’ve been lucky enough to work in a small bank where I’ve always had exposure to all these different areas and always felt like I was very fluent in all these different areas, particularly retirement planning. But it is challenging. There’s no question about it.
Q: Why do you have to apply for renewal every two years?
A: It shows that you’re on top of all the changes occurring within the financial industry. Our tax law and our tax structure are constantly changing and evolving. The fiscal cliff was a good example, when a lot of the tax law that President Bush had put into effect was set to expire. From a financial planning standpoint, you’ve got to stay on top of all those things and know how that affects your clients and their finances.
The recertification is maintaining those education requirements. You can do it a number of ways: you can go to seminars, teleconferences. You can read articles and pick up a few points here and there. The whole idea is that you’re staying on top of what’s going on in the industry.
But that’s true of so many different industries. Everyone wants to know whatever you’re doing, wherever you go, that people know what’s going on.
Dean Murray’s Top Five Scenic Spots In Gloucester:
- Good Harbor Beach
- Stage Fort Park
- Gloucester’s Back Shore
- Wingaersheek Beach
- Folly Cove
