Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Ira Koyner Founder of Triathlon Partners, Discussing Investment Diversification

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

Ira Koyner’s successful thirty-year career as an accomplished financial services professional has been driven by sound risk management, effective communication, and a commitment to education.Ira Koyner is a devoted husband and father, he knows providing for your family is more than a responsibility, it is a priority. The cost of day to day expenses, paying for several college educations, funding retirement and providing lifetime financial support for his son with special needs are his priorities. He is grateful to have them. These priorities are not a burden, but rather a part of a rich and prolific life. Financial goals envelop more than responsibilities. They are the journey and destination, fueled by hard work, perseverance and success. Creating a financial plan that protects your family and secures your financial future doesn’t have to be overwhelming. As your dedicated financial advisor, he is committed to fostering a transparent client-advisor relationship. He is proud that his firm is independent, and not tied to a massive conglomerate’s products, platform and rigidity. His clients have the access to over thirty life and annuity companies, several structured note and alternative investment platforms and dozens of issuers. Triathlon Partners is located in Weston CT, in the heart of Fairfield County CT.Learn more: http://www.triathlonpartners.com/TRIATHLON PARTNERS LLC, is a registered investment adviser. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial adviser and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.Investment Advisory Services are offered through TRIATHLON PARTNERS LLC, a registered investment adviser. Insurance products and services are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents in all appropriate jurisdictions.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-ira-koyner-founder-of-triathlon-partners-discussing-investment-diversification

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of influential entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have back with us Ira Koiner, who's the founder of triathlon partners and we'll be talking about investment diversification. Iro, welcome back to the program. Thank you very much, Mike.

It's great to be here again. Yeah, I wanted to learn a little bit about your perspectives on diversification because I feel like a lot of investors confuse owning multiple financial products with being diversified. So what is the difference between product diversification and true asset diversification? That's a great question. And, you know, as a previous client to a lot of bulkback bracket firms, I would open up my statement every month or quarter, and I'd see 30, 40 different holdings of mutual funds and ETFs. And I knew from my college days that the sort of diversified portfolio needed 30 assets is like 60 years old. And when we look at what we're holding now, you're not holding 50 individual stocks. You're holding different indexes.

And guess what? Those indexes have 100, 500, even mutual funds have 50 to 70 different stocks. So these things are diversified anyway. So just having diversified assets and 30 or 40 of diversified assets just really is some sort of redundancy. and just makes the asset management aspect more complicated than it has to be. And a lot of people then go to the next category of, well, let me hold bonds and stocks. That's diversification. And that's something that I don't believe.

I believe bonds are pretty much an illusion because the point of diversification is to mitigate the risk in your portfolio. And they're supposed to reduce the number of numbers. negative years or reduce the amount of negative years. And to me, there are products out there that do that better than bonds, right? So I look at diversification as I want assets with product. So I want product out there that have different volatilities. So having products based on volatility, low volatility, high volatility gives me that diversification I want. And the products with low volatility have some fantastic bells and whistles that are free. They're embedded in the product.

You can't lose money in a year. Or the first 10% of a loss on the asset in the product is reimbursed to you in the year. Or it's 20% or 30%. There are these floors that reduce the number of negative years and the size of negative years that you can have. And that's, in essence, what you want. want in a portfolio. No one says, I want a portfolio that's 60, 40 stocks and bonds.

They'll tell you, I want a portfolio that doesn't lose as much money or minima as the market or minimizes the losses when they actually happen. And I still want equity like gains. And there are products out there that give you equity like gains, even with these fantastic floors of, you know, limiting the losses to go down. and their products out there that give you increased gains more than a one-to-one when the market appreciates. And I think a lot of advisors maybe don't know about them. Maybe they're working with firms that don't offer them to their clients, but they are very powerful.

And as an independent advisor, I find the best of the best out there and bring them to my clients and able to explain why when the market drops 20 percent and they look at their statement and the loss is half. as much. But when the gains are the same or 90% of what the market's done, they are so happy and so pleased, right? And keep in mind, you can be invested in all equities. If you have bonds, your returns are never going to meet what the stock market does. So I think volatility is an interesting approach as it relates to diversification. I think most advisors are talking about diversification, they're saying 6040, 70, 30, this class, that class. So I like that you talk about volatility. How do you educate your clients on volatility without making them feel like afraid or fearful? Well, volatility is actually a mathematical

concept, right? And something that people I find actually do understand is when they look at the bell curve or a normal distribution. And you just show them how. things perform when you have those floors and you run different simulations and you show them answers. And they'll understand the concept of that floor. For instance, in a RILA or an IU, RILA is a registered index linked annuity or a fixed indexed annuity or something like an insurance product, like an indexed life policy where they have these floors and they understand it. But then when you're able to actually quantify it, using models, and they look at it, and they're like, wow, this is really powerful. They understand

it. Right. So this is something that has to be sit down. You have to have a presentation, and you have to be able to show it and realize that you can earn much more in a less risky asset then what a traditional advisor might deem as being a diversification, because diversification for a traditional asset manager, just isn't bonds. It's private equity, it's credit. And let me tell you something, those things are very volatile, right, of commodities, very volatile. So from that standpoint, adding more volatility to your portfolio in the name of diversification, It doesn't make any sense. Diversification is supposed to lower your volatility.

Let's add products that lower volatility. So can you be too diversified? And I'm sure the answer is yes, but talk a little bit about, you know, diversification by definition could be, you know, two or three, you know, segments or it could be 20 or 30. So where do you draw the line in how diversified you're making your recommendations? Well, I like to look at it as a from a product standpoint. Now, again, you have to have that relationship and engage with the client to make sure their liquidity, their access to cash, and their short term to medium term plan matches up with what's out there.

But there are things like structured notes. There are things like these RILAs, these registered index annuities. There's things like if they have life insurance and you have an IUL, there are regular equities that you can hold. All these different products in some sort of balance, right, all add a different dimension to your portfolio. So the assets that I have in a traditional brokerage account for my clients in asset management is between five and seven. it's not complicated. It's very clear. I lay everything out on the table for my clients. And then when you go to these other products, this is what diversification is. Diversification is supposed to reduce volatility. I add assets that reduce volatility.

It's not the number of holdings you have. That's something that, you know, people have to understand. And that takes some trust and to sit down to sort of teach that diversification is not how much you have, right? It's how good things, how good the things you have are. You know, it's the quality versus quantity. That whole approach, I mean, I think that probably could be applied to so many things in life, but especially here. You don't need a huge quantity. You need the correct quality. That's right.

That's right. You know, you talk to someone who lives in their dream house. Well, would you rather have your dream house that you're currently living in or would you rather have three houses that you don't really like? Right? Because there are three houses and three different zip codes. What would you like? Right.

And, you know, people, you know, I build portfolios that are supposed to and that we try really hard that are going to meet your financial goals and objectives. So we want the best of the best. You know, I'm sure when you work with clients over the years, you have many that come in with that product mindset. How do you help them shift or understand the difference between a product mindset and that asset class mindset so that they're not being told, oh, that's wrong. You need to think of it this way.

But they understand the differences between those mindsets. And then once you get to that point, now you can design that portfolio for them to consider. That's a great question. You know, the biggest obstacle I find really is people have this preconceived notion of product, right? And the more products, all these products, they have different fees, big fees I'm going to be paying. And, you know, some of them from a historical context are, you know, correct. But the market has evolved tremendously. you would mention something like an annuity in the market.

And clients are just very misinformed about what an annuity is. It's not something that pays you a lifetime income. It could be, but what an annuity really is is a tax-deferred product. And nowadays, these products that are offered to RIAs, to investment advisors, the terms and the fees are just like the terms and the fees you have in an asset. account like a brokerage account. They're not something that an advisor should get paid seven or eight percent up front like they used to and then you never hear about, hear from them again.

So it's sort of educating them about the history of the market, why these things have changed and how they're really to your benefit as well as they do need to be actively managed. And this is why you need my assistance on it. These are not set it and forget it products. Yep, never is. Like we were talking previously about there's never one set of recommendations that works for everybody. You know, I think that volatility and risk is one of those key pillars that people need to keep in mind. Another might be taxable versus tax free versus tax exempt. How does that bundle of concepts factor in to your diversification recommendations?

Well, it's very important. And it really depends who the individual is. A lot of my clients are recently divorced, and people don't realize after you get divorced, you're following as a single person, not a married couple. So your tax brackets get cut in half, right? Which is, you know, very surprising. And you start paying a lot more money in taxes. You know, how do we make sure that we minimize the amount of taxes you're paying?

What do you hold in each account? Are you holding, you know, coupon-bearing assets? In assets you're paying taxes on. That's why I'm not a big fan of fixed income. People holding earning 4%, 4.5% fixed income in a taxable account and they're a high-earning single individual. Well, guess what? Your 4% return is really a 2.5% take-home. That's not really beating inflation, right?

So from that standpoint, it's very important to make sure you look at this stuff. tax-deferred products are available to everyone in an unlimited amount in terms of the amount you can put in every year. People think the default solution is a Roth. Roth has a lot of limitations. It's great, but it has a lot of limitations. Not everyone can contribute, can't contribute as much as you want. And if you convert, you've got to make sure you know what tax bracket you're paying your conversion on, because that is all taxes income the year you convert. And so I like to get people into products that, you know, depending upon their tax bracket,

that are going to grow tax deferred and quite possibly get money out tax exempt, right? Because taxes are always there. And if I could save my clients money on taxes on the way in, during, or on the way out, we are a couple of steps up on the ladder to reaching your goals before we even start. which is very important. You know, you mentioned Roth conversion, and that's a whole topic in and of itself, but just talk a little bit about some of the key points that people just should keep in mind, because I would suspect that there's kind of a sweet spot of, you know,

if you wanted to consider a Roth conversion, you should do it with X number of years ahead of retirement. So if you were planning to retire it, let's just pick the number 70. well, you should do the Roth conversion before you're 68. You need to have time to let the money grow within the Roth tax-free. And then, like you said, you need to be aware of the tax triggers where should you convert your whole account one year? Maybe not because it's going to spike it. You might need to sequence it out. So what are those key points people should be aware of when you're going to sit down and talk about that?

Well, I tell them straight up that conversion to a Roth is. it's a tax game, right? That's all it is. And we have to be comfortable at the tax rate that we're going to be paying right now when we convert that money that we're going to the government, that money comes out of hopefully they have money in an account somewhere and it's not coming out of the conversion money. And you just have less money to grow. You know, it's really about maxing out your current tax bracket to that level. So, right? Now, you know, I'd like to do it when people are reaching right below that 32% tax bracket if they're a married couple or if they're single because the tax market below that is 24%. So you're really talking about eight cents on the dollar you're saving. And, hey, if someone said to me, Ira, you can lock in 24% federal taxes on the marginal rate you know, for the rest of your life on your retirement savings, I'd say that was pretty good.

If someone said, hey, how about 32%? I would say, I'd take my chances. And that's really what you have to do. And you don't do it all at once. You do a little bit every year. It helps your cash flow for the amount of taxes you have to pay, as well as you try to maximize your bracket. It's the same thing when you take the money out of your 401K.

You take the money out, not based on the RMD, You take it out based on based on maximizing your tax bracket. You don't have to spend the money when you take it out, but you want to make sure you're paying the least amount of taxes on it. Yeah, great point. And speaking of that, how do you weigh the tax implications with these kinds of approaches, especially with high-income households?

Because you mentioned, you know, Roth is great to consider, but sometimes there's limitations when you've got a higher income client. That's right. Well, you know, something that, you know, I find is very useful. And with high income individuals and high net worth individuals is let's come up with a retirement spending strategy. People are always concerned about savings for retirement. And that's great. But you also want to make your dollars go as far as possible when you're retired.

And they simply just have the wrong assets and the wrong accounts, right? You want to take advantage of if you have accounts that grow tax-free or Roths, you want to make sure you're not paying 32% tax on those annual or those annual or monthly or semi-annual bond payments, interest payments, right? And in your taxable accounts, you want to have capital gains type assets because they're, taxed at a lower tax rate. The max capital gains rate is 20% plus the NIH, which, you know, brings it up. But, you know, most people are taxed at 15% for their capital gains. That's a much less, that's a much smaller number. Plus, when they pass away, their beneficiaries get a step up basis, which is fantastic. It's tremendous. Having a stepped up basis on a bond is useless, right? Putting that in a 401k is a much better place when you retire.

It's a total switcheroo, right, of when you're saving versus when you're retiring. But it's very important because if you can really knock your adjusted gross income down when you're retired by doing strategies like this, you can start doing a ton of fantastic tax planning, which you'll save your beneficiaries, a lot of money. Nate, perfect. Let's wrap up with this thought, Ira. If you could teach each client

just one truth about diversification, what would that be? Well, the truth about diversification is you do it so that the fluctuations of your portfolio are minimal.

Yes. So what do you do? buying more assets doesn't give you diversification. That might help with a correlation between different assets. But if you really want lower volatility to make sure your assets are there when you retire, you have to hold products that lower your volatility because there's nothing worse than saving all through your working career. and then the year before you retire, the market drops 20%. That is a big punch in the gut because you're going to have to work a couple of more years

or your retirement's not going to be as robust as you plan. So having diversification doesn't cut it. Having protection is what cuts it and really helps you reach your goals on your schedule. It's not dictated by the market. It's dictated by you. You want to have that control. Yes, excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming on and talking to us again about this really,

really vital topic. If someone is interested in reaching out and connecting with you, what's the best way that they can do that, Ira? Well, our website has all my contact information, and you can make an appointment straight on there. www. www.riathlonpartners.com. or a great resource is my YouTube channel, Triathlon Partners TV, and you will see just a ton of information in different videos of financial topics to educate you to give that strong baseline education for you to have a better idea of when you go talk to a financial advisor, what you want to know and the things that you think will be beneficial that quite possibly your advisor's never brought up to you before.

Excellent. Thank you so much for coming on. It's a real pleasure talking with you again today. No, this has been tremendous. Mike, thanks for having me and have a blessed day. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www. www. influential entrepreneurs radio.com