This content was created by Alan Akina. This content was uploaded by Alan Akina. This is a YouTube interview titled "Alan Akina with Howard Dicus 2008" (created 2008-12-19) featuring Howard Dicus interviewing Alan Akina, president of 101 Financial. The conversation covers 101 Financial’s mission serving middle-class Hawaiian families—financial education, debt paydown strategies, and basic personal-finance '101' topics. Alan explains the company is a for-profit, statewide operation (about 6 years old at the time) with roughly 5,000 clients and ~140 agents, works with local banks (Central Pacific, First Hawaiian) to handle fees, focuses on educating clients rather than selling securities or insurance, and positions the firm as helping banks acquire and develop middle-market customers.
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This has been a time when a lot of people are rethinking where they get their financial advice, and a lot of people who don't get financial advice are thinking they ought to. So it's a good time for you to meet Alan Akina, the president of a local outfit called 101 Financial. Merrill Lynch, you're not. You're occupying a completely different space. Why don't you explain it?
Our market is the, the good, hardworking middle-class family People that are trying to get ahead, they're living paycheck to paycheck, having a tough time managing what's coming in, what's going out, and the pile of debt. And so that's where we come in and we provide the education for them to help them to get their financial life totally organized and out of debt as quickly as they possibly can.
You know who would really like this idea is Senator Daniel Akaka, who's— for whom it's always been a goal to have more financial literacy. And he's very fond of saying that there are a lot of people who are needlessly impoverished That is to say, they don't need to be poor, but they become poor because they don't understand how to pay down their credit bill or something like that.
Absolutely. And, and that's where we come in. There's a huge, huge group of people out there that just want to be able to have that financial peace of mind to pay off their credit card. They want to pay off their car, and they want to pay off their mortgage. They're not trying to get rich in the stock market or this and that. They just want to have that peace of managing their finances and being in control.
Now, did you structure 101 Financial as a for-profit company or a nonprofit or what?
Yes, it's for-profit.
And how can you manage that?
Well, we, uh, we do a good job at hiring the right type of agent to service our clientele. We're very picky, and what we do is we actually pick our best clientele to come work for us.
That's interesting.
It is, and the reason for that is because they know our system, they live it, they're on it. And they are just so happy with it, they're sharing it with everyone. And we are totally built on word-of-mouth referrals.
And if you can make enough money for somebody, then you can make enough money to charge a fee and collect it.
Yes. So we do charge a fee to our clientele. And we have a great setup. We worked with several local banks here, Central Pacific Bank, First Hawaiian, and they take care of the fees for us. Our clients pay for it over time. But it's a great win-win for our clients to get on our system and not have to come out of pocket with any cash.
It occurs to me that that also is an interesting service to the banks, which are constrained by the arithmetic of their own economics to focus their own efforts mostly on people who have a lot of money to invest at the expense of perfectly good customers who just don't happen to have such fat wallets.
That's right. They might not have $100,000 or $200,000 to invest in the market, But what they do have is a great income, and the banks love that. And so what we become for the bank is almost like an acquisition arm for the middle market.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And also the development of future customers, because the people who have a lot of money later, they don't all start that way.
Absolutely. They love our customers because they have great credit, they're on time with their bills, and they have the ability to leverage and borrow more in the future.
Now I take it you're agnostic. You don't do it just for one bank, but So, anyone who wants the service, you're available for them?
Pretty much. We deal with even some credit unions, but for the most part, our clients choose either Central Pacific or First Hawaiian.
How long has the outfit been in operation?
It'll be 6 years next month.
And do you have a rough idea of how many individual customers you serve? It probably goes up and down, but—
Yes. Currently on our books, we have close to 5,000.
Really? I was expecting a number in the hundreds. That's really quite a large number of people.
We actually have over 200 We have 140 agents that work for us on every island.
Oh, so this is a statewide operation and not just in Honolulu?
Absolutely. We're very big on Kauai, Maui, and on Oahu, and growing on the other islands. We even have clients on Lanai.
Do you find that with some of them you have to start with, with certain basic things that we all should have been taught in school but we weren't, like how compound interest works and so forth?
Yes. Hence, the name 101 Financial. It really means the basics. Getting back to managing money. Getting the right accounts set up. Most of the clients that we work with here in Hawaiʻi, they have multiple accounts at all these different banks. And I guess that's what we were taught early on. But we teach them how to focus. Get all your money going to one account so you can track everything. And you're more accountable that way.
Do you find, as some other financial advisors in different market spaces have told me that in recent weeks, because, I mean, everybody on Wall Street is nervous, why shouldn't people in Honolulu be nervous too? That you've been getting calls from people either seeking reassurance or asking if there's any way you can get them out of this and into that?
Yeah, well, we don't do any securities trading or selling of any type of insurance products, anything like that. What we do is we just help people to— we educate them to manage their money properly. And our focus is to help them to pay down their debt. And so, they still have their retirement accounts, and we don't really mess with that. But our goal and our focus is to show them there's a much better return, possibly, if you pay down your highest interest debts first. So, a lot of people come to us with multiple credit cards, a car loan, and a mortgage. And their combined blended interest rate on all of those loans are in the double digits, anywhere between 10% and 12%. Is what the average rate is. So if we can help them to accelerate that paydown, then they're in effect going to get that same rate of return on their money.
Yeah. Do you ever get into the business of helping to renegotiate debt or position it, acting as an intermediary? I know some people are in that business as well.
No, we're not in the credit counseling service business. We're strictly educational and consulting, and we just look at what they have and We help them to do more with the money that they have. We teach them to look at their money like their favorite pie. So, my favorite pie is a chocolate haupia pie from Ted's Bakery on the North Shore. And I don't want to waste any piece of that, or even the whipped cream. So, I eat it all up. And we want them to think of their money as a pie. And so, every month, they have so much money in this pie. And we look at their money and say, okay, how do you slice that pie up? The majority of people here in Hawaiʻi that we work with, 50 to 60% of that pie is carved out to pay debts. Then they have to live on the other 40 to 50%, and which gets pretty tough because we can't control gas prices, we can't control the food, but the one thing we can control is our debt. You see, the biggest part of our debt is not the principal but the interest. So they have to pay back every dime that they borrowed. The principal has to be repaid. But the interest portion is where we attack, and we can cut significant parts of that interest cost off if they follow our system and manage their money right.
That's a real good explanation, and I bet that does help a lot of people.
Absolutely. We're excited about it.
Well, Alan, I appreciate you coming in to tell us about it. So you've learned 2 important things today. You've learned how you can get help from 101 Financial if you need it, and you've also learned that you and I and Alan all like the same kind of pie. Alan Akina is the president of 101 Financial. It's everybody's business.
