Licensed Relationship Managers
Use your experience managing and growing a profitable book of business to achieve personal and team goals.
At Key, we work to improve our clients’ overall financial wellness. Our focus on wellness is a different approach to banking, enabling us to transform how we engage with our clients while bringing our promise of ease, value and expertise to life.
Licensed relationship managers (LRM) build relationships and deliver financial solutions to Key’s client base with up to $1M in investable assets. The LRM helps clients gain confidence in their financial wellness by guiding them toward products and services that can help them meet their goals. LRMs effectively manage a book of business by identifying products and services to meet client needs and by referring to appropriate sales professionals in retail, investment services, private bank, mortgage or business banking. At Key, LRMs actively use their Series 6, 63 and L&H licenses and are permitted to write their own business up to $100K.
Successful LRMs have tremendous opportunity for growth at Key. When Key achieves success, its top performers have an opportunity to share in the rewards.
Related Backgrounds
- Banking
- Insurance
- Investments
Core Competencies
- Working knowledge of financial products and services
- Track record for servicing, developing and growing client relationships and building referral sources in insurance and investment products
- Strong financial acumen
- FINRA Series 6 and 63 investment licenses
- Life and State Insurance License
So I started as a teller and I was very committed in that role to uncovering additional opportunities and having that conversation with clients. So beyond that I was told hey you would make a good banker. So for me, that really resonated with me and I felt that I was able to step into that role with confidence because of the experience I had as a teller. From there I was able to be nominated into that licensed banker program and obtain those securities licenses so that I could do that more long-term planning. So that's been exciting for me to build my career path, starting as a teller.
So as a Licensed Relationship Manager, I'm kind of a hybrid between functioning as a banker and then also under the Key Investment Services® umbrella. So as a banker, I'm able to do financial wellness guides with clients, uncover their financial needs and then under that investment umbrella I do a little bit more long-term planning with our clients around their finances.
Yeah so a typical day in the life of a Licensed Relationship Manager would involve onboarding new clients, building those relationships with your existing clients and following up with the clients that you have making those phone calls. So my favorite thing about being a Licensed Relationship Manager is the face-to-face interaction that you get with those clients. So you are able to see the way that you're impacting their life and improving their life by having that continuing relationship and that ongoing financial conversation.
The Licensed Relationship Manager role
In the Licensed Relationship Manager role, you can see how you're impacting a client's life through a continuing relationship and ongoing financial conversations.
Oh, I love being able to interact with my clients and having that one-on-one feel with them. They really do feel and become family and friends. Being able to see their success when I help them with a recommendation after having a guide, is very fulfilling for myself, it feels really good.
Financial wellness is really your relationship with money, and how we help our clients is we find those ways and areas of opportunity and growth to help them better themselves financially. It's basically kind of like going to the doctor, needing to always get checked up maybe once a year. Those are usually the healthy people which I say those are the people that are financially well. Some clients might need to see us more on an every other month kind of basis as a checkup because some of our clients are in crisis. So we always like to check up on with our clients and it's all depending on each client individually.
Our financial wellness platform allows us to dive deep into a client's conversation, learning about them on a deeper level, understanding their financial needs, discovering areas of opportunities, helping them really, and guiding them from beginning to end. It could be as little as the client may have a 401K that might need to roll it over and just knowing where to direct them. So KeyBank has given us great tools and computers which we can actually turn them around, have a client touch, and be very interactive in that conversation, they can choose their own answers.
So if they wants to know if they save, how they would like maybe their checking account to be set up, if you want it to be linked to overdraft protection or not, like how they feel comfortable with giving this information, like knowing what their balances are on accounts outside of KeyBank investments, you have to ask questions like who do you have your credit cards with? Do you know the balances? Do you know the interest rates? And a lot of clients don't know this information so it really opens their eyes like, "Hey, I should know this." So it has been really helpful, not only for us but for our clients. These are things that they should know.
We treat our clients like family. So when they come in, they're able to open up to us, able to trust us, because of our day-to-day interactions with them. We care about their family, what's going on in their lives... life events are very important. What we've done in the past, or we still do to this day, we send out little notes to our clients; People that have just had babies, retirements, death in the family, unfortunately but we constantly reach out to our clients. We want them to know that they're important to us.
What does Financial Wellness mean at Key?
At Key, it's essential to know that we believe that everyone deserves the confidence and peace of mind to dream big. Through research and talking to our clients, we've found that many people are intimidated by personal finances and banking. Our teammates help clients break down those barriers and close that confidence gap.
What I like about the work that I do is that I really get to make a difference in our clients' lives. What's really unique, is banking is something that's universal for everybody. You really get to make that difference, you help them set those goals and you help your clients achieve those goals.
But what was special about my onboarding, I've never been with a company that's actually giving you a welcome kit. So that was very... it brought tears to my eyes and it was just a great feeling to know that I was coming into like a family myself, and I made the right decision. Our team environment here in the branch, we really do bounce ideas off of each other, which is very... it feels really good especially if you're stuck on something, or need a different avenue or different thought process on how to basically achieve a goal. I know we partner a lot with our partners outside, like our mortgage, our Key investment services, things of that nature. So we refer a lot of clients to outside and in return we do get that referral back. So it's very helpful in production and also just team camaraderie.
When I first started here, I didn't have any experience. So I was like, "Okay, what can I do to be successful at this job?" Well, we have numerous practices, we have coaching, we have mentors, we have different training programs, they literally will walk you through it and follow through so you can be an expert. So when we say that we collaborate together as a team, we mean it. Like we are on the same level, you're my manager, but at the same time, we are co-workers, we're trying to do what's right for the clients. There's no title involved, like we are together to make their community better.
So what I love about my job, is just the fact that I get to engage with the clients that I serve every day, and I'm able to see how the conversations that we're having from time to time impact them and promote that financial wellness that we're looking to build with them here at Key.
Why Key (retail banking)
You can make a difference in your community by helping clients achieve their goals. It's a collaborative team environment, and Key will provide you the training and tools to be successful.
Well, we're fortunate at Key, we've seen all kinds of different backgrounds that our bankers have brought to Key and have made them successful as personal bankers. We've had people from the hospitality industry. We've had people from education backgrounds and certainly from financial services. We've also had people that have never had any banking or financial services experience at all that have been successful as personal bankers. The critical aspect is that they have that desire to help and assist clients. They have the desire to want to be a part of a team. They understand that this is a sales role and that is not something that intimidates them, but it's something that they find motivating. And that they're willing to listen and ask questions. And again, we have all kinds of support mechanisms in place and resources and tools to allow our personal bankers to be able to provide that financial advice despite not having the personal background in finance that they might not have.
My advice to anyone who is interviewing for retail banking, just be honest, and be yourself, really. Being able to be upfront in the beginning. For example, I got with my manager and when I spoke to her during my interview process, she asked me what was my career goals? My career goals was to take on leadership and to one day be a Branch Manager. And within two years I've been accepted into what's called our LEAP Program. It's our Leadership Excellence Acceleration Program. And I'm currently enrolled in it and thanks to the help of just being open and honest and being upfront, my manager was able to nominate me.
What made me join Key was the fact that I was able to see a clear career path from where I was at and where I wanted to go. So I knew that Key was invested in that Licensed Relationship Manager position and that they are helping those bankers that want to be Licensed Relationship Managers grow in that area. And also, you know, I'm able to continue my journey and hopefully at someday become a Financial Advisor. So there's a very clear career path from beginning to end, onboarding till to now. So I would say with the leadership that I've worked closely with, that they are in constant communication with me, making sure that I am on that career path that I want to be on. So they have made it clear how my work impacts the branch and that motivates me to dive deeper with the clients and to continue that career path with Key. So that's what I love is that our leaders are in constant communication with us making sure that we are where we want to be now so that we can be where we want to be tomorrow.
Career opportunities in retail banking at Key
Every day you'll learn banking from a transactional standpoint to a sales aspect and deliver real client impact. You'll see lots of different experiences and interactions, and each of those interactions represents an opportunity. There are dynamic roles for individuals who thrive in a highly interactive environment and love working with clients.
Well, the personal banker role has evolved tremendously over the last several years. If you think about what's happening in banking more broadly, clients are coming in less and less to the branches as a result of being able to do more and more of their banking transactionally, at least through our digital channels. So the role of the banker has really become more and more important, because we're not seeing our clients face-to-face as often as we used to. So it's very important that our bankers, of course, understand what brought a client in that day, take care of that need, address that need, but then it's about figuring out what else is going on, right? Learning about what else is happening in their life, asking a broader set of questions. And that's where we help them with our Financial Wellness Review experience, which is a digitally-assisted, interactive conversation that allows our bankers to go beyond, to truly understand what's happening in that family's life, upcoming financial needs, how they're progressing against their financial goals, what challenges or fears that they might have, and then to be able to deliver personalized recommendations and advice.
Yeah, skills that we're looking for in personal bankers are skills to be able to wanna help people, right? And be able to connect with clients, be able to ask questions, listen, leverage the tools and resources that Key provides our personal bankers. We're not looking for people to be financial experts across all financial products or services by any means, what we're looking for is the ability to have a conversation, to lead a conversation, and to be able to understand how we can help improve that client's financial life.
How the Personal Banker role has evolved
The Personal Banker role has evolved tremendously. Clients are coming into the branches less, so our bankers must understand what brought a client in that day and learn about what else is happening in their life, asking a broader set of questions.
Yeah, so my role as a Branch Manager, I am the coach. I'm the one that's really leading the team to the charge. You know, I'm constantly on the forefront trying to get my team to where they need to be. A typical day, I'm not sure if there's even such a thing. You know, we have our daily structure. Everybody gets together in the morning. We talk about what we're going to do. We set our goals and our strategic priorities, but once the doors open it's all about the customers and the clients that are coming in. So our day is really about helping them. It could be a variety of different things that we encounter throughout the day. The biggest thing is just rolling with it, knowing that you're staying on top of it and doing what's right for our clients.
The type of person that thrives on my team is somebody that's constantly on the move, they can handle change, they're excited for change. The person that really thrives is the person that can manage their calendar. They can stay up-to-date. They know what's coming and they can roll with the punches. What sets the Branch Manager role apart is that we really take a holistic approach to our small business clients. Instead of just kind of taking their order and giving them what they ask for, we really want to know how the business works and we want to support them in that business growth. Especially now with the pandemic businesses are coming, there's PPP loans, there's SBA opportunities for them. We want to help them navigate that and be the point person for their small business wellness.
Day in the life of a Branch Manager
A Branch Manager focuses on branch staffing, performance coaching and branch operations. As a leader, a Branch Manager motivates their team to provide excellent client service in all interactions, analyze clients’ needs, and recommend financial solutions that help Key clients achieve confidence in their financial wellness and achieve their goals.
We have LRM opportunities across our 1,100+ full-service branches.
