Michael mulcahy was manager of a Canada Trust branch in Toronto when, almost 13 years ago, his employers approached him and told him it was time to retire. “‘You’re too old. Here’s your severance. Goodbye,’ they said,” he recalls.

But Mulcahy, who was just 52 years of age at the time, wasn’t ready to ride off into the sunset. So, he turned that potentially demoralizing experience into a successful and satisfying second career.

A director of the private client group at Dundee Private Investors Inc. , Mulcahy runs an advisory practice in Bradford, Ont., about an hour’s drive north of Toronto, with his wife, his son and his daughter-in-law.

Over those relatively few years, Mulcahy has built a business that caters to a specific clientele, inadvertently becoming a specialist in an increasingly lucrative demographic. His practice is located in the heart of Ontario’s market garden, so most of his 600 clients either toil in the agricultural business or have retired from it. And many of those farmers become wealthy when they sell their land, often making $2 million-$5 million out of the deal.

“Those are probably the most challenging situations we face,” Mulcahy says. “They are overwhelmed with the amount. They don’t know what they are going to do with it. They’re not young people, so they want to make sure that there is money for their survivors. At the same time, they worked hard all their lives and a lot of them want to spend some of it on travel and those sorts of things.”

However, these are not sophisticated investors; they are just as concerned about principal protection as they are about earnings. “They say, ‘Don’t put me into anything risky. But, at the same time, I still want to get my 15% growth’,” Mulcahy says with a laugh. “I tell them there’s nothing in life that’s guaranteed — except death and taxes.”

It’s apparent he has a good rapport with these older, rural clients. Not really a big-city person himself, Mulcahy, now 64, was born in South Porcupine, a mining town near Timmins in Northern Ontario. He completed high school there before heading off to the University of Ottawa, at which he studied business. But after three years, he left university without a degree. “I didn’t enjoy it,” he says. “But this is where I ended up.”

His first financial services career was in banking, working as a branch manager for Bank of Montreal in Toronto, then the Bank of British Columbia (since purchased by HSBC Bank Canada) in Edmonton and, finally, Canada Trust in Toronto.

But when Canada Trust sent him packing — ending his 30-year banking career in the process — Mulcahy, a fellow of the Institute of Canadian Bankers, saw it as an opportunity to act on his lifelong interest in financial planning. He bought a small book of business and set up shop in Newmarket, Ont., just north of Toronto. A year later, he moved to Bradford.

This was in the early 1990s, and most of his clients then were invested entirely in GICs. But over the next few years, as plunging interest rates hurt the GIC market and mutual funds became more attractive, he persuaded his clients to make the gradual transition into mutual funds.

“We didn’t say, ‘You’re 100% GICs, now you have to be 100% mutual funds’,” he says. “Instead, we would suggest they put 10% into mutual funds and see how the funds do. We expanded on that every year.”

Mulcahy’s gentle touch appealed to clients. His original book of 100 GIC investors — mostly farmers and blue-collar workers — grew through referrals over the years. The office now serves 600 clients, with $80 million in assets under management. Mulcahy estimates his average client has slightly less than $200,000 invested with him. His book is about half in fixed-income products and half in mutual funds. He offers the usual range of financial products outside of securities: GICs and mutual funds, as well as segregated funds and some life insurance and financial planning services.

Although most of his clients are in the local Bradford/Newmarket region, about 30% are scattered over a wider area, reaching south toward the Greater Toronto Area, including towns that lie east and west of the city and as far north as Barrie. That makes for a lot of driving to see those clients who prefer house calls, but Mulcahy doesn’t mind. “It depends on the client —whatever they’re comfortable with,” he says. “Besides, I don’t have to see them every day.”

@page_break@He co-ordinates his meetings so he can see a number of clients in one trip. With that kind of service, it’s no surprise the business is growing through word of mouth.

“We’re not aggressively looking for new business, but our referrals are still coming on strong,” he says. “We’re getting a lot of the children and relatives of existing clients.”

Fittingly, his practice, which is located in a cozy converted house on a side street just off Bradford’s main drag, is a family business. Mulcahy’s 37-year-old son, Patrick, is also an advisor, and will take over the practice when his father retires. Mulcahy’s wife, Hilda, and Patrick’s wife, Annabella, handle the office administration. Advisor Shirley Cornacchia is branch manager, and there are two part-time advisors in the Dundee branch.

However, Mulcahy is not exactly sure when he’ll retire. “I’m probably looking at three to five years down the road. I’m planning to cut back to four days a week this summer,” he says, adding with a laugh: “I haven’t told Patrick yet.”

One thing he certainly has told Patrick about is the succession plan. The junior Mulcahy is a certified management accountant who has his own book of clients. In anticipation of taking over his father’s book, he has already started meeting some of his father’s clients.

Mulcahy Sr. says he prefers a phased-in retirement. “I’ve done finance all my working career,” he says. “I’m still enjoying what I’m doing, so I can’t see any reason to get out of it, lock, stock and barrel.”

When he’s not meeting clients or working in the office, Mulcahy enjoys tennis, which he plays year-round in a club in nearby Newmarket. He also plays golf, as the many golf scenes pictured on his office wall attest. Also on his wall is a framed, enlarged photograph of Team Canada celebrating “The Goal” in Moscow in 1972. It’s autographed by the four players in the picture: Paul Henderson and Yvan Cournoyer from Team Canada, and Soviets Vladislav Tretiak and Yuri Liapkin.

When he does retire, Mulcahy and his wife will move to their condominium in the Georgian Bay community of Collingwood, Ont. But at the time of this interview, it’s RRSP season, and Mulcahy has 22 client meetings set up for the week before deadline. He expects to have his RRSP business wrapped up early so he can be in the Caribbean island of St. Martin before the March 1 deadline. That’s what planning is all about. IE