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Phoenix ranks as financial services giant

Employment grows as metro area becomes key hub for banking, insurance, brokerage companies

Russ Wiles
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 28, 2007 12:00 AM

Metro Phoenix isn't close to emerging anytime soon as a global or even national money center, a place where stock exchanges, world-class financial companies and legions of CEOs, investment bankers, stock researchers, accountants, corporate attorneys and other highly paid professionals call home.

Nevertheless, the Valley has made impressive strides in developing its financial-industry base, emerging in recent years as a key regional player for a growing number of banks, insurers, brokerage firms, independent lenders and others.

While corporate headquarters remain as scarce as snow, regional hubs are popping up all over. The Valley isn't often the center of attention for these companies, but at least it usually gets part of the attention.

That's a consolation prize in many industries but particularly so in fields such as financial services, where many jobs pay well and often include health and retirement benefits, with little in the way of pollution, dangerous working conditions or other unpleasant fallout.

"We've become the regional choice (for financial firms) in the southwestern United States," said Barry Broome, president and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council.

Many of the same factors that attract other businesses here also lure financial firms, including good weather, generally decent travel connections through Sky Harbor International Airport and a location in a time zone that's conducive to taking late-afternoon and evening calls from customers.

"At times, when ice storms hit our other cities, we can take some of the call overflow here," said Frank Kolimago, a principal and member of the site executive team in Scottsdale for the Vanguard Group, which manages mutual funds and oversees retirement plans. "We're also in geographic proximity to many of our institutional clients (in the West)."

Vanguard, based in suburban Philadelphia, has grown from nothing to 1,500 workers at the Scottsdale campus over the past dozen years, with plans to hire an additional 300 people or so this year.

Room to grow

Compared with many other large metro areas, the Valley still can point to ample room for expansion and a plentiful pool of labor, driven by a constant influx of arrivals.

"We recently had 1,600 people apply for positions in this office," said Timothy Birkmeier, a regional vice president who's in charge of a new Quicken Loans office in north Scottsdale. The facility is home to 50 mortgage bankers and 10 support staff, with plans to push that to around 400 over the next couple of years.

Quicken Loans' recruiting is made easier by the fact the company's mortgage bankers earn about $75,000 on average after one year, but the firm also had no trouble finding employees willing to transfer from its Michigan and Ohio offices.

"There was quite a bit of competition to get out here," said Sundance Brennan, a 32-year-old senior mortgage banker who moved from Detroit at the start of the year. "You can feel the growth and expansion - it's so positive."

Cedric McCartherens, a Georgia native who most recently lived in Tennessee, waited several years after visiting the Valley on a vacation for a suitable employment opportunity to open up for him in insurance.

"I wanted to be in this area; I knew about the boom," said McCartherens, who opened an Allstate agency in Gilbert last year. "Along with Las Vegas, Phoenix is the fastest-growing area in the Southwest. I wanted to capitalize on that growth."

Raphaelle Tanoe works on a customer-assistance team at a JPMorgan Chase facility in Tempe, where she likes dealing with the public and helping them solve problems.

"Nowadays, you can't do anything without credit in America," said Tanoe, who's originally from Ivory Coast in Africa. "I like making a difference in people's lives, helping them out of trouble with credit."

Much of the Valley's financial bustle is located in or near central Phoenix, north Scottsdale and parts of Tempe and Chandler. The West Valley has been mostly shut out, which is a bit surprising considering the clean slate for campuses made possible by ample raw land, but Broome predicts this area will attract more financial jobs in coming years.

The Valley's biggest financial-services employers are the three largest banks operating in Arizona - Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America - along with financial/travel giant American Express.

Each of those firms operates several campuses in the Valley, including call centers, and each counts an Arizona workforce of 7,000 or more people, ranking among the state's top 20 private employers on the 2006 Republic 100 list. Wells Fargo is the overall financial leader in the state, with more than 12,000 workers in the Valley.

Other top-100 private employers, each with more than 1,000 statewide workers, include brokerage Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, insurer USAA, brokerage Charles Schwab, insurer State Farm, Vanguard, Nationwide subsidiary Scottsdale Insurance Co. and 1st National Bank of Arizona, the only locally based firm of the bunch.

Services backbone

The backbone of the Valley's financial-services presence remains thousands of modest-paying service, processing and support positions. Arizona ranks among the top states for call-center positions, which frequently offer hourly pay in the $11 to $15 range, according to recent announcements.

But there are also many more-lucrative sales, information-technology, financial consultant and administrative posts.

USAA, for example, dispenses a lot of financial-planning advice from its north Phoenix campus, while brokerage Edward Jones runs a national training center for its financial advisers in south Tempe.

JPMorgan Chase operates all six of its major business segments in the Valley, while ING Investment Management oversees $6 billion in specialized fixed-income investments with a staff of more than 20 in Scottsdale.

Portfolio manager positions are among the choicest financial jobs, often paying well into six figures.

The glaring deficiency is that the Valley is home to hardly any financial firms of size and actually has retrenched some with the loss of several banks, a few specialty lenders and a couple of mutual-fund groups.

Most of today's financial giants were founded several decades, if not centuries, ago, and it's rare for big, established firms to get up and move.

But headquarters are home to most of the highest-paid executives, and major administrative offices encourage the formation of legal, accounting and other support businesses, while providing financial aid to local charities and boosting municipal prestige.

"The headquarters of most of the companies you would want are steeped in tradition where they are," Broome said. "Places like New York and Chicago are still the financial centers of the universe."

But countering that, to some degree, has been the Valley's emergence as the No. 2 employment hub for many household-name companies, including USAA, Schwab, Vanguard, Quicken Loans and mortgage-lender Ditech.com.

"I think we'll see more regional corporate headquarters," Broome said. "We're on the radar screen."



Reach the reporter at russ.wiles@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8616.

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