If you had to guess which financial topic concerns young people the most these days, it’s possible that your first guess wouldn’t be pensions.

Yet, for Min Gyu Lee, who works with nearly 500 MZ generation clients — which in Korea refers to the people often identified as millennials and Generation Z — that’s where most questions focus. That’s because there’s growing tension among young people, says the six-year MDRT member from Seoul, South Korea, about how much they’re paying into the national pension program and how much they expect to receive from it when they’re older.

“This condition is due to the country’s declining birth rate, management of returns by public corporations, the average life expectancy increasing considerably faster and rising inflation,” Lee said. “As a result, we are facing a total crisis, and the younger generation is growing more concerned about retirement.”

Bringing science to finance

Fortunately, Lee has experience and expertise that can put his clients at ease.

In college, he studied economics and was particularly drawn toward learning and reading about economic psychology. Afterward, he received a certified financial therapist license and began offering clients a financial psychology test to better understand their own complex perspectives on money.

“If you look at the test results with clients, speak about them and pick a path, they learn things they didn’t know before and gain a new perspective about themselves, making our conversations simpler,” he said.

Since becoming certified, Lee has provided financial therapy to 100 clients. Those clients are now at least doubling and at most quintupling their wealth because of their work with Lee.

Meanwhile, Lee empowers all clients concerned with pensions to understand the challenges involved and to manage their finances themselves. This knowledge leads them to correct their own behaviors to encourage saving and reduce their anxiety about the future of the pension program.

Boosting clients’ financial IQ

That isn’t to say that pensions are the only thing on clients’ minds. Lee, who describes his role as assisting clients with increasing their financial IQ, sees significant investing interest among MZ generation clients, but they frequently focus on yields without considering the ability to generate results above inflation and preserve asset value. To guide them, Lee first educates clients about the fundamentals of investing, then recommends suitable products according to the individual client’s parameters.

“It is not necessary to change their investment strategy,” Lee said. “They just need to change their mindset and choose the proper product for themselves.”

One advising experience still sticks with him: Five years ago, a client in his second year at university started asset management with Lee through short-term investments of about 200,000 won (about $150) per month. Through Lee’s guidance, the client became proactive at managing their own finances and now, working as a third-year elementary school teacher, has built more than 40 million won ($30,000) in assets.

“Normally clients wait for me to contact them, but this client continually reached out to me first, and initially I felt I couldn’t manage him,” said Lee, who recently hired an assistant to help manage his cases. “As a result, I prepared and studied for our weekly meetings, which led me to effectively manage earning rates and engage in increasingly in-depth conversations with the client.”

Recently, the client even asked Lee for information about becoming a financial advisor himself. Though he ultimately decided to focus on his role as a teacher, the client has become a strong referrer to Lee, who felt he also had played an educational role, driving understanding, motivation and inspiration.

Excellence in communication

While at one time Lee relied solely on offline activities for providing his advice, he has progressively moved toward communicating via Zoom and social platform KakaoTalk and connecting with clients through bimonthly seminars. It’s part of what Lee sees as a broader effort by Koreans to advance a more time-
efficient society.

Lee’s communication skills are so strong that his company uses him as a new employee trainer, delivering seminars with titles like “Youth financial mentoring” and “2030 MZ generation salary management portfolio.” While he became a lecturer just four months after joining the company — a result of his standout performance as an advisor and having previously expressed an interest in teaching — at first his limited experience required filling his lectures with information from senior advisors or the internet. Nearly a decade later, the seminars consist of insights gleaned from his own experience.

“This has made me a more skilled lecturer and also helps keep my clients engaged in meetings,” Lee said. “I think this is what sets me apart.”

Looking ahead, Lee hopes to continue to broaden his impact. He hopes to initiate projects focused on multiple generations, involving family business succession and wealth management. He also hopes to personally play a role in the continuous relationship between advisor and client.

“In the future, I hope my children will take over my profession,” he said, “and continue to handle clients across multiple generations — third, fourth and fifth.”

Kyuho Nam writes for Team Lewis, a communications agency assisting MDRT with content development for Asia-Pacific markets. Contact mdrteditorial@teamlewis.com.