Expanding on Excellence: Merrill Lynch's Outreach

by Joan Leotta

Several walls at Merrill Lynch's Princeton, NJ corporate campus, are lined with awards for work with deaf clients. For over ten years, the Merrill Lynch financial consulting firm has had a strong relationship with the deaf community. But rather than rest on past laurels, the company has initiated efforts to serve another segment of the disability community: families of children with severe disabilities.

Services for Deaf Clients

Christopher Sullivan, Vice President and Manager of Merrill Lynch's Retired and Assistive Client Services, is the main reason for the walls of awards. Soon after he was hired in 1987 as Wall Street's first deaf financial analyst, word rippled through the deaf community—first informally, then through ads in deaf-targeted publications—that Merrill Lynch could serve deaf clients. In 1990, the firm formally introduced its Deaf/Hard of Hearing Investor Services, a division that has guided thousands of financial consultants in serving that community.

Merrill Lynch trained financial consultants in approaches to interacting with deaf clients, set up TTY lines, began a program of providing interpreters, established a list of deaf financial counselors, and has recently begun using deaf actors in national television advertising. A new web page for deaf clients will be available through the Merrill Lynch site in June. Merrill Lynch's Deaf and Hard of Hearing Client Services has 5,300 clients with assets of $765 million.

"In 1997 Merrill Lynch received a special award for corporate leadership from Exceptional Parent magazine for its continuing work with deaf community," said Sullivan in a recent interview with The Solutions Marketing Group. "I invited their senior management to Merrill Lynch's headquarters. Over lunch, editor-in-chief Stanley Klein mentioned that we could do more for the disabled community."

"What more can we do?"

Merrill Lynch was already reaching beyond the deaf community, providing Braille and large-print statements for blind clients, for example. Still, Sullivan responded to Klein's challenge with this question: "What more can we do?"

Klein told him that in the last ten years severely disabled children were beginning to outlive parents, in greater and greater numbers. This often meant that they were without the financial support and guidance needed to guarantee a comfortable life. Social Security Income (SSI), an option available to disabled Americans, pays only for food, shelter, clothing, and some medicine. Sullivan took immediate action.

"I began to research this area more deeply," said Sullivan. "Planning that includes one's own death is not an easy thing, but there were heartbreaking stories of what happened to persons with disabilities whose parents died without a comprehensive plan." Using data from Exceptional Parent, Sullivan determined that there were about 14 million families with children with severe disabilities, potential beneficiaries of such a planning process. Working closely with Rick Berkobian, Assistant Director of The Arc, Sullivan crafted a five-point plan for Merrill Lynch. The plan is also available for severely disabled adults, or for anyone who needs this type of planning.

Group Approach

The program's unique nature comes from its group approach. Merrill Lynch works with local trust specialists, lawyers, and special "partners" from the disability community who are conversant in the disabled person's special needs. For example, volunteers from The Arc become involved to speak up for mentally disabled persons. The five steps taken for each disabled client are to:

prepare a letter of intent written by parents or other family members, including the child's history, wants, and needs,
choose guardians or advocates,
decide upon a realistic cost for the plan, based on the resources available,
determine a funding plan, and meet with all involved parties to discuss the plan and review the plan at least annually.

"The meeting of all concerned is critical," said Sullivan. "We find that many family members are not aware of the SSI asset limit of $2,000. A grandparent's well-meaning bequest can result in a loss of SSI. Results can be tragic."

The defense against such tragedies is information. Explains Sullivan, "Our internal newsletter [and] a full range of training tools for the consultants, including a huge Intranet web site for our financial consultants, help our employees focus completely on the specific needs of clients with disabilities."

Outlook for the Future

What more can Merrill Lynch do? Sullivan is still asking that question. The company is about to roll out his latest response in the form of a special needs calculator, the first of its kind. Similar to those that allows real estate agents to easily calculate mortgages and interest rates, this model will allow consultants to enter information and compute the amount needed to shore up for the future for clients with severe disabilities. Since the beginning of this year, without any major advertising campaign, there have been over 1,000 hits per month on Merrill Lynch's Families of Children with Disabilities web site.

Sullivan relates that each case so far has been a wonderful success. "One father walked in and asked what he could do for a seven-year-old with autism. When we explained what we have to offer, he was so impressed that in addition to having us work on his son's trust, he opened a three-million-dollar account for himself as well. Compassion in practice is what we are about."

For information on the Merrill Lynch planning process for families with special needs, call toll free 800.637.7455, extension 4361 or visit http://www.plan.ml.com/specialneeds/. The new web site for Deaf/Hard of Hearing Services provides contact information for Deaf/Hard of Hearing Financial Consultants across the country. Toll free TTY lines are open between 8:30 and 4:30 p.m. EST. For more information on Social Security Administration benefits for children with disabilities, visit http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10026.html.