"You have magic fingerprints," says the magician, "and now that you've shuffled the cards, I can see your fingerprints on certain cards and predict certain things about you." Nigel Taylor, the person to whom the magic fingerprints belong, looks nervous-not so much about what the cards have to say about him but about them being said in front of a reporter. Taylor has set the stage of our first face-to-face meeting in a Santa Monica, Calif., restaurant co-owned by one of his entrepreneur clients along with, of all people, Arnold Schwarzenegger. In this environment, no one could possibly have a bad word to say about him surrounded as he is by friends, clients-even his fiancee. He is safe, except the presence of this magician is quite literally a wild card. n Why all the nervousness? Maybe because Taylor is seen as a bit of a wild card himself. At 46, Taylor is by many accounts the angry young man of the financial planning profession, known for his vociferous opposition to certain initiatives introduced by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, such as practice standards and the aborted Associate CFP designation. n He doesn't wear this label gladly. In fact, he believes the financial press has unfairly painted him as an arrogant, fiery upstart. He balks at adjectives the media use to describe him: He is never just opposed to something, he is "vehemently opposed"; never just critical, but the "most vocal critic." He was even described in a recent magazine as the Institute of Certified Financial Planners' most outspoken critic, despite the fact that he was president of the ICFP Los Angeles Society in 1999 and led the group to David M. King Outstanding Society of the Year honors. n Not that Taylor needs the press to help him stir things up. He is a prolific debater in chat rooms, in opinion columns and at industry conferences. Anyone who has logged on to his Web site (www.protectassets.com), the ICFP's Web site or Financial Planning Interactive can read outspoken critiques by Taylor, written sometimes on a daily basis. Those who know and love him say he is indeed outspoken and passionate about his practice, his ICFP Society presidency and the future of the profession. Those who know and don't necessarily love him would probably agree.

"When he begins working on something, he gets emotionally involved with it and takes ownership," says Gordon Peay, a friend of Taylor's with the Financial Planning Association in Los Angeles. "He takes it personally; that is the root of some of the controversy. He so firmly believes in what he does that that is the result."

The passionate and conspiratorial way of thinking driving Taylor to love his profession yet lack trust in its leaders has helped him emerge as a compelling presence in the financial planning industry. By being obstinate in his debates, he has helped give a voice to the rank-and-file, especially last year, when they were feeling particularly stifled by the CFP Board and its Associate CFP initiative.

Many say Taylor was instrumental in the board's decision last September to rescind that initiative. Once he saw reports of a rumored "CFP lite," Taylor and a few other members in his society established a Web site dedicated to opposing the designation. He posted comments from planners and members of the board, as well as his own lengthy treatises on the subject. Before the initiative was announced-indeed, before Robert Goss and Harold Evensky of the CFP Board would even acknowledge its existence-Taylor had discovered and announced that the board had registered two trademarks, "Associate CFP" and "CFP Associate." Taylor's persistence helped give voice to the outrage and helplessness felt by members of the planning community, and it paid off. The board not only admitted its error, but also recognized that it had not been communicating effectively with its members.

However, Taylor's successes last year weren't only the result of being an opponent. His work as president and self-proclaimed "Web master" for the ICFP Los Angeles society produced a Web site that gets more than 20,000 hits per month from members and the general public, and functions as a tool to market society meetings and membership. With it, the society doubled and in some cases tripled attendance at regular meetings while cutting meeting costs by 96.9%.

Friends and colleagues in the Los Angeles society credit Taylor for helping them win the society-of-the- year award. "He had a vision at the beginning of the year of what he wanted to accomplish and he accomplished those goals. It's kind of like what you do in financial planning: You define your goals and then you set up a strategy to achieve them. That's what he did," says Randi Levenbaum of the FPA Los Angeles. Taylor considers the award a symbol of legitimacy in the eyes of the profession, but he feels his "troublemaker" reputation still gets more attention.

Taylor was considered a handful even in his youth. Born in Southern England, his mother and father separated when he was 31/2 years old, and he was placed in a series of children's homes, off and on, until age 15. "I was obviously severely maladjusted as a child, but nobody bothered to find out why back in the '50s and '60s. It was easier to label me a bad kid and transfer me back into the homes."

At 15, he was forced into the Boys Service branch of the British Army, where he says he faced racism (his grandfather hails from the West Indies) and bullying from his fellow soldiers. The last straw, he says, came on a night when a group of six boys, who had been reported and demoted for harassing him, graduated and were looking for revenge. "I was left hiding in a broom cupboard in the squadron office clutching an axe for protection in the middle of the night while these guys roamed the barracks trying to find me for a lynching party. They never did find me, but I decided a life of comradeship and discipline' wasn't for me and left in 1970."

Taylor then found himself homeless, doing a series of menial jobs and sleeping in a field and then, when he could afford one, a car. He worked his way to a room in an apartment and a job as a telephone engineer for the postal service, and began participating in and winning disc jockey competitions on a part-time basis, eventually pursuing it as a full-time career, first in Vienna and then touring throughout Europe. The DJ career made him what Jung would call an "extroverted introvert," he says. Taylor took on an aggressive, even arrogant air as a means to keep up with the competition and the crowd. He says he also learned how to constantly observe people; to read how they feel and what they want.

In 1986, Taylor left the whirlwind life of a DJ and came to the United States to work with a friend in the 403(b) market. The connection may be more logical than one would think, he says. "It seems like a stretch but it's not. Salesmen don't sell product, they sell themselves. What do you think I'd been doing for the past 15 years?"

Taylor quickly made himself at home in the insurance profession and began branching into other areas of interest, most notably the 403(b) plan market for employees of nonprofit organizations. "The retirement planning naturally led to other issues of importance for my clients, namely estate planning." His career was going fine, until he had an embarrassing moment in 1991 that became a turning point. A prospect brought her husband, "a big-shot tax lawyer," to meet with Taylor. "He started asking me questions. A tax lawyer has vastly superior knowledge to an insurance agent-and I was an insurance agent who only sold 403(b)s. He literally ran circles around me, made me look stupid and showed me the door," Taylor says. "At first I was upset. You can turn that into a negative and let it eat you up."

But he didn't. In Taylor's "if you hit me with a stick, I'll hit you back" mindset, this incident was incentive to gain more knowledge about the profession. Prior to that point, his only formal education was an associate-level training by the British Army in preparation to be a radio relay technician. After that incident, Taylor attended local courses offered by the College for Financial Planning, as well as other industry programs.

He became a CFP licensee in 1993. He has since worked to promote its value to other professionals in the insurance and securities arenas who claim to be financial planners, but are seriously lacking in a solid education in financial planning. "I thought I was doing pretty well, but honestly I didn't know an awful lot about it, which is why I fight for regulation."

That fighting spirit, and prodding from fellow Los Angeles-based planner Gibb Kerr to join the local ICFP society, has entrenched him in the politics of the profession as well. "We're known as a radical society, but nothing we say is really that radical," Taylor contends. When many in the profession were fighting for practice standards, members of the Los Angeles society were lobbying against them. Several members of the society oppose the CFP Board's ambition to become a self-regulatory organization. When there are conspiracy theories floating around the profession, there is a good chance that they are floating around Los Angeles-they most likely originated there. "Southern California is the most litigious (area), so maybe we take our fiduciary duties more seriously than they do in Anytown, U.S.A.," Taylor says.

Taylor was against the merging of the ICFP and the International Association for Financial Planning, though despite prior threats of not becoming an FPA member, he says he will join. In fact, he is this year's chairman of the FPA Los Angeles. "The membership has decided. This isn't Nigel's society, it's the L.A. ICFP. As long as FPA remains CFP-centric, and lives up to their agreement, we will have a united front and move into the new millennium. If they stray off that course, I and a few other fellows will go off and form a new society. But we have to go into it in good faith."

With the merger completed and CFP lite laid to rest, Taylor had been campaigning for state-by-state licensing and legislation. Now he has decided to take himself out of the political forum, at least for the time being. "I'm cutting back on the pro-bono work and doing more Nigel work. For the past two years, I've been marketing the ICFP, not Nigel. My practice has been devastated the past two years because of my work with the ICFP," he says.

Not that he regrets it. He says his volunteerism has helped him gain experience and expertise, give back to the profession and gain a reputation. "There are two ways to make it in this business. One is to slash and bash and churn and burn nonstop until you have an incredible book of business. Then there is a slower method that people take. My client base is going to increase soon." His fee and fee-offset practice has a current client base made up of an odd mix of everything from pensioners, entrepreneurs and Internet start-uppers to teachers and lower-income families from his 403(b) days (because "they deserve my loyalty," he says). "That's my problem with practice standards, because you are doing a lot of work for which you aren't going to get paid."

But Taylor is best known for his work in the areas of retirement, estate and asset protection planning. Not yet a U.S. citizen, Taylor has found a niche working with European clients doing business in California. He is fluent in German and Swedish and registered as an investment dealer and adviser in Europe. Handling offshore estates, in addition to protecting other clients in what he calls a litigation-obsessed city, has led him to become somewhat of an expert in the area of asset protection.

His Santa Monica, Calif.-based practice does not take assets under management currently, but he anticipates he may have to in the future. He says his practice is in a transition period. For the first time in two years, he is actively taking on new clients and hopes most of them will be of the high-net-worth variety. "Most of my clients until now haven't wanted to deal with anything other than having a portfolio of mutual funds you can move around," he says. With new, wealthier clients, he says, come new and different demands. He has also started working with younger doctors and lawyers who are looking for assistance in debt reduction.

Taylor's career is in transition as well. Like so many in the profession, he is contemplating whether to remain a sole practitioner, become part of a larger institution, or develop a partnership or agency. He also has lately been encouraged to develop Web sites and ghostwrite articles for other planners-a direction in which he could see his career heading if he receives enough interest, he says. "That's the wonderful thing about this business-the possibilities are endless," he says. In the meantime, Taylor is working on taming his reputation. This year, he will marry his fiancee Maria, and the two look forward to settling down and having children. "Maria has really helped me. If you think I'm bad now, you should have seen me 10 years ago," Taylor says.

"You could think of him as a diamond in the rough, but over the years he's become very polished around the edges," says Martin von Kanel, a friend and colleague. "He knows his place and can talk with people and has made relationships with adversaries. I think over time, he'll begin to realize that no one is out to get him." Levenbaum agrees. "Because he has received some criticism from colleagues and friends, he has smoothed out some of the rough edges."

Taylor agrees, to some extent. "I lack diplomacy, if you want to put it that way. You can't go through what I went through and not come out as damaged goods. Diplomacy comes with age and experience. When you first get into this and you think no one is listening, you kick down the doors and scream at the top of your lungs. Nowadays, when I send out an e-mail to 1,000 people, I know a certain number of people will read it. I can say things more quietly."

Moreover, Taylor believes his edges aren't so much rough as misunderstood, as in his dealings with Goss and Evensky. Though he has publicly criticized their decisions in the past, Taylor says he likes and respects them both. "Everyone thinks that I am like this with Bob and Harold," he says, using his silverware to demonstrate two tracks crashing into one another. "Really, we're like this," he says, laying the fork and knife parallel. "We want the same things. We just go about it differently."

Goss agrees, and thinks of Taylor as one of the profession's emerging leaders. "Nigel and I share common passion for much greater levels of involvement among CFP licensees. He is an engaging and thoughtful fellow, has a lot of energy and a wide range of interests." That energy makes him a vital member of the debate, adds Goss who, like Taylor, is sometimes frustrated by the apathy among many practitioners. "I welcome the debate and think that's healthy. I think a profession is characterized by great differences of opinion. I also think a profession is something that's characterized by professional courtesy and civility. I would say that for any CFP licensee," he says.

Taylor admits he has a big mouth, but thinks everyone should when it comes to something they care about. "I don't care whether you're for something or against it, you should have an opinion about it, express that opinion and represent your membership," he says. "I would love to see more participation. There are some brilliant minds out there."

Many who know Taylor think his is one of those brilliant minds. Some have even suggested that he would be an ideal candidate for the CFP Board of Governors. Levenbaum believes Taylor would be an ideal candidate for a spot in a professional think tank, if such a thing existed. "I see him as a watchdog of the profession rather than a leader," she says. "I don't think anybody realizes the number of hours Nigel has put forth for financial planning and financial planners. His practice has suffered because of it. It takes a very special kind of person to do that," Levenbaum adds.

"There are some people who think his opinions are too biased, but I think if it weren't for him, we wouldn't know as much as we do about the profession," von Kanel says. "He's been instrumental in ensuring that the designation maintains its integrity."

Though Taylor says he isn't interested in leadership-especially not in the near future-he also acknowledges that it will be tough for him to keep his nose out of the politics of the profession. He says he has 1,000 e-mail addresses and a Web site that costs him $20 per month, and that is all he needs to get the word out. "It's important stuff. You don't want to be ruled by radicals, whether from the left or right."

Back at the restaurant in Santa Monica, the magician has little to say . It seems even he doesn't know what's in the cards for Nigel. The relief on Taylor's face is unmistakable. He relaxes, and tells me: "I love this business. I really do. And you can quote me on that."

-Melissa Phipps

To Read The Article's Sidebar, "The Planning World According To Nigel Taylor, CFP®

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