Hall of Fame: Mike Kiley
Mike Kiley has spent his entire career helping people save for retirement. Lucky for them, he didn’t follow his high school dream of becoming a lawyer.
Attending Holy Cross College on a football scholarship, his first aspiration was to go to law school. However, when the time came to decide what direction he wanted his life to go, he found himself too impatient to spend three more years in school.
“I was raring to light the world on fire,” Kiley said.
His first job out of college was with a financial services company that specialized in retirement options for school teachers.
After three years working as an account executive, Kiley found himself frustrated with the limitations restricting his ability to help his clients. So, at the green young age of 25, he started his own company in the hopes of finding the freedom to pursue additional products and services for his clients. Unfortunately, that endeavor came with a whole new set of obstacles.
“I found my age was a real liability in the financial services sector,” Kiley said. “I was simply too young at the time for anyone to take me seriously. If I had known then what I know now, I would have told myself to be a little more patient and let things play out.”
CREATING A NICHE
Not one to stay on a sinking ship, Kiley joined Guardian Life, where he spent the next 11 years building a successful third party distribution program. AXA Equitable took notice of his success and snatched him up to help them create their own third-party life insurance distribution marketing channel. Travelers Portfolio Group brought him on three years later as president to accomplish the exact same thing.
A pattern seemed to be emerging in Kiley’s career trajectory.
“If you wanted to take a product into a new market, I was the guy,” Kiley said. “I liked the research and work that came with developing a solution. It made success all the more rewarding. I found my best plans were the ones I had to fight for.”
Kiley made the transition out of insurance and into financial services when he joined Morgan Stanley. Working his way up the corporate ladder, he became president and CEO of Morgan Stanley Funds Distributors and the CEO of Van Kampen Investments, a division of Morgan Stanley.
But career change came calling again in 2009 when he met Todd Boehly, managing partner at Guggenheim Partners at the time. Boehly was negotiating the purchase of Security Benefit in Topeka in an effort to revitalize the company after it hit a rough patch during the financial crisis of 2008.
With its purchase of Security Benefit in 2010, Guggenheim infused much needed capital into the 129-year-old company but needed to take action to stimulate further growth in order to build it once again into a powerhouse. It was time to bring in Mike Kiley.
RIGHTING THE SHIP
Kiley was charged with developing new products and strategies that would capitalize on the intersection of insurance and asset management—two industries where Kiley had extensive knowledge and experience. He needed to expand both the product line and the distribution reach.
With the help of some new annuities, including an exclusive indexed annuity through Advisors Excel, Kiley helped Security Benefit become a major national player—with market share in multiple segments of the retirement space, reaching nearly $50 billion in assets this year. Security Benefit’s success was built on four pillars that Kiley put in place: innovative product design, top investment performance, cost-efficient administration and a nimble, targeted distribution strategy focused on a dedicated set of key partners.
But Kiley is not one to sing his own praises. He attributes his success at Security Benefit to the quality people he works with who remain loyal to the company mission.
“I am in the happy position of being the face of 2,000 fantastic employees. I have a lot of respect for what others know,” Kiley said. “I learned a long time ago to listen to the experts.”
But listening isn’t always enough. Good leaders must know when to separate critical from subcritical and understand when triage is necessary for survival. Kiley’s ability to act when necessary to achieve results is what allowed him to build on his success stories.
“Three times in my career, I came into a place where I left it better than I found it,” Kiley said. “Good leaders give others the opportunity to shine. We did that at Security Benefit by allowing our existing people the chance to step up—and they did.”
As Kiley looks back at his accomplishments, he can smile with the satisfaction of knowing he has made a difference not only in the companies he has led but also in his community. That smile only grows larger as he looks to the future.
“I am playing on the back nine of my career right now,” Kiley said. “I see a lot of sun and lot of golf in my future. And I never thought I would be as thrilled as I am to be a grandfather.”
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