Investing With Integrity - The Number ONE Show of 2023! Kurt Cornfield
What was the MOST DOWNLOADED episode of Season One?
This one right here: CONGRATULATIONS to Professor Kurt Cornfield with #LibertyUnivesity
for securing the number one spot on the Investing with Integrity podcast season one.
If you missed it, take a listen now, who knows, with your help he just might retain the top spot for season two!
Transcript
Well, welcome to the Investing with Integrity podcast. My name is Jeff Talarico. I am your host. Today I am honored to have my guest, Professor Kurt Cornfield with Liberty university. Now, don't let his title confuse you. Kurt is no stranger to the financial services industry. In 1984, he joined Morgan Stanley and spent the next 10 years there before moving to Merrill Lynch, where he spent 24 years and retired in 2018. Over the course of his career, he developed a deep passion for holistic financial planning, focusing on incorporating biblical wisdom into the advice that he gave. Now, Kurt was instrumental in developing the first CFP board registered program that integrated biblical wisdom into the coursework. It is through his program that graduates of Liberty University are prepared to pursue both Certified financial planner and the Certified Kingdom Advisor designations. Kurt is passionate about encouraging all students and emerging advisors to pursue biblical wisdom in their advising careers. In February of 2023, at the annual Kingdom Advisors Conference, Kurt was presented with the Larry Burkett Award, which recognized the incredible work that God has done through Kurt at Liberty University. Kurt and his wife, Nancy, have been married for 43 years, have three children and three grandchildren. So, without further ado, let me welcome Professor Kurt Cornfield to the show. Kurt.
Welcome, and I'm so glad you're able to join us today.
Kurt D Cornfield (:Thank you so much for having me, Jeff. It's my pleasure.
Jeff Talarico (:Awesome. Well, you know, the thing that I like to start out with all our guests is I want to just know what is something that not very many people know about you.
Kurt D Cornfield (:So I pulled this one on my kids when that same, my students, when the same question comes up and believe it or not, when I was in college, which was back in the late 70s, I was on a relay team and we set a world record. So the kids can't believe that, but I got to pull out the old files and show them the details from that world record that we set. So not many people can say they once held a world record, but I guess I can do that.
Jeff Talarico (:There you go. So then what brought you into the financial services world?
Kurt D Cornfield (:Well, that's a long question, but I started out my career, my career right after college, and I thought I wanted to be in the kind of sports management space. I liked fitness. I ran track and cross country in college and was really interested in just helping people stay healthy and the fitness thing. But back then, it was just a little different than it is today. And I did wind up working for the YMCA. In three different locations the four and a half years after I graduated from college. And the way the why works is that, you know, once you get to a certain level, it's probably time to move to a bigger why. And I was in my third why when it was time to move to a bigger why. And my wife and I had been married a few years then. And we just put down roots in the community we were at the time. It was Corning, New York, about four hours west of New York City is where we lived. And I worked for the Y there.
ork, and that would have been:Basically it was close to 20 years ago now where God was just trying to get my attention. And I could tell he wanted me to do something different and I wasn't sure what that looked like. As it turned out, I had my CFP, I had just gotten my CKA and this would have been 15 plus years ago. And I saw this connection between the two. It's amazing how close CFP and CKA are.
Kurt D Cornfield (:because the CFP kind of teaches you how to do things and what a financial planning is, but CKA teaches you the why. You're like, why do we do this? Because if we love the Lord and we want to love on people, what does the Bible say about money and finances? And so it was just playing on me. And I realized after I went to my first kingdom advisor conference, so that was 15 years ago. I remember it would have been February of 2009 during the financial mess.
I went to my first conference, we used to be in Atlanta back then, I don't know if you attended when it was in Atlanta. And I had this serious come to Jesus moment where it was like, ooh, he really got my attention in terms of like, I've got to take this and do something with it. And I had already had an interest in maybe teaching someday. And so that's when I really put out some feelers with a couple of universities like, hey, could I come teach at your university?
And by the way, Jeff, you might not know this, but like I said, back then I looked at the CFP website and they have all the schools listed there that offer CFP programs. There was about 90. And guess how many were CKA programs, or CFP programs? They were Christian universities, zero. So there was 90 schools offering CFP, not one was a Christian university. And that was like, whoa, we gotta have Christian universities teaching this subject.
Jeff Talarico (:Wow.
Kurt D Cornfield (:from a biblical perspective. And so I pitched the idea to one school, it didn't work out, and the next school was Liberty university. Literally one conversation with the head of the finance department then, his name was Professor Bob Matier, he has since passed away, but his wife is still a dear friend of my wife and I's. And he basically peppered me with questions for about an hour and a half, because I was like, hey, Christian schools gotta do this, does Liberty wanna do this? And...
And he bought it and literally the next day he sent me a follow up email with about five or six follow up questions, but pretty much the bottom paragraph was how soon can you start? It was one conversation. And a year later I was at Liberty university starting the first CFP program out of Christian university. So here I am, we're starting our 14th year here in two weeks. So it's been an amazing time these last 13 years.
Because eight of those years, I was still working for Merrill Lynch. So I was still transitioning out of my Merrill Lynch career. And then only these last five years, I've been retired. So I could spend full time, you know, with students.
Jeff Talarico (:So let me ask you this, you were the pioneer in doing this. How many Christian universities have it now?
Kurt D Cornfield (:Well, I was on the Faith and Finance, the podcast, well, it was the radio program that also gets made into a podcast and I had to do my homework for this. So I know the answer to the question. What's interesting is if you go back, I said there was about 90 schools, so there was zero, right? Now there's actually, I just looked at it the other day, there's 144 residential undergrad programs. So it's grown, but about, not about, exactly 15 are now Christian.
So out of 144, 15 of them are Christian universities. So that means we've gone from 0% Christian universities to over 10% Christian universities in these 13 years. That feels good, because I know God has blessed the work we've done here, but even better, there's other universities kind of catching the fever and starting these programs. I literally was just on a call a few, an hour or so ago with another university thinking about starting. You know, a CFP program that would include CKAA. So the momentum is there, you know, and it's fun to just have been, like you said, a pioneer on the front end of this. And so I'm just grateful for the opportunity God gave me.
Jeff Talarico (:That it's an amazing story, Kurt. And it's really cool to hear that other universities are really picking this up and riding this wave because I do think that we are every day getting closer and closer to the end time. So we do need to make the harvest ripe for not only saving the loss, but teaching people what to do with God's money because you're in agreement, all belongs to him anyway, right?
Kurt D Cornfield (:Well, and part of that process 15 plus years ago was that when I went to my first kingdom advisor conference, it was so encouraging to see these other advisors. I was with Merrill Lynch. And so I met probably that conference, 25 other Merrill advisors, and it was like, oh, there's other Christians in this business. This is so cool. And also I just realized that Christians, now maybe we have a bias, Jeff, but I think Christians make better advisors. Period. I think we have the Holy Spirit ingrained in us. I know you don't. And obviously, again, we have a certain bias, but I think we make better advisors because we naturally know right and wrong. And literally, I think that basically what was going on in my mind was, hey, we just need more young people to come into this business. But here's what I didn't wanna have happen because I had been in the business.
Jeff Talarico (:I don't disagree.
Kurt D Cornfield (:25 years before I attended my first KA conference. And it was like, I really hadn't learned to integrate my faith into my practice until I went through the CKA training. And so it was that come to Jesus time where it's like, Lord, I'm sorry. It wasn't like I was a bad advisor. It wasn't like I was a bad Christian. I just hadn't integrated my faith. So on the first day of classes, I've been doing this now 13 years at Liberty, on the first day of class, that's what I'm gonna share with kids here in about two weeks.
I'm gonna tell them that I don't want them to make the same mistake I made for 25 years. I was a Christian who just happened to be an advisor, but I wasn't a Christian financial planner. And so I'd say to them, listen, I want you to get well-versed, well-indoctrinated what the Bible says about money and finance before you even go into this career so that when you go out and serve, whether you serve in a secular firm or a Christian firm, wherever God places you,
I want you to know what the Bible says about money and finances. I want you to integrate it into your life and into the lives of the people you get to influence. And so it's kind of, you know, my, you know, speech to them on the first day of class just to get them excited about the opportunity in front of them.
Jeff Talarico (:That's pretty awesome. So looking at our show, this show that we're doing today, I have a tagline and our tagline is wisdom over worth, principles over profit, morals over money, and integrity over it all. What do you think of that?
Kurt D Cornfield (:Yeah. Well, you know, we were talking before you started recording and, you know, like I worked for Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch and I love my experience there. I love my friends that are still there. But those firms don't really provide a platform that allows you to fully integrate. I know you're very involved in the biblically responsible investing movement and some people call it faith based investing.
Um, and I always felt like I came up short personally in that area because the platform at those types of firms don't give you the full choice of faith-based investments. And it's one of the things since I've been here at Liberty, of course, I have more freedom, wanted to talk about that, but I also have more freedom to like, let's work on projects where if our students go to work for firms, I want to make sure they're working preferably for firms that have faith-based offerings, because I want them to not only integrate their faith into the counsel they're giving, but literally their faith into the way they're investing. You know, and it's, I know you, you know, the tagline for Eventide investing that makes the world rejoice. But the reality is I want them to, I don't want them to feel like the investments that they're helping people make are hurting people. You know, I want them to feel like those investments are helping. So we talk a lot about faith-based investing here.
Jeff Talarico (:Absolutely.
Kurt D Cornfield (:We try to put them in places where they can actually implement that. You know, it's not perfect because some of the firms they go to have limited offerings in that space. But we're working on that. I've got a plan for that. And we're literally trying to develop some products that are going to make it easier for our students to invest directly into faith-based investing as well.
Jeff Talarico (:So it sounds to me that living out your faith at work was something that was new to you. You weren't able to do it the way you wanted to, and now you get to do it every day.
Kurt D Cornfield (:For sure. Yeah, I get to do it every day because I'm at a Christian university. But I want to challenge though, these students who aren't all going to go to, they're certainly not going to be working for Christian universities. They're going to be working for sometimes secular investment firms and secular financial planning firms. Although about 60 to 70% of our students do go to work for kingdom advisors. So that helps a lot because the conversation in those places is going to align more with what we talk about here when they're in the classroom.
And so, yeah, I don't know if I answered your question, but we want them to be able to integrate their faith and I get to do it every day, 100%. And even when I was at Merrill, after I took the CKA training, I certainly was much more intentional, that's the key. I was intentional about integrating my faith every day. I literally would go to the office and it's like, Lord, what's the opportunity you're gonna present to me today? And when I changed my attitude about the, those opportunities, it changed my practice. And so the last eight years when I was still practicing, it was a different practice than it was those first 25 years. And I'm grateful that I got to actually implement some of those changes into my practice because it makes it easier for me to actually teach students to do that too.
Jeff Talarico (:So that's a great point. So let me ask you this then, if there are some advisors listening to this today that are still working for these firms that don't have all the offerings, but they have some, what kind of struggles did you have with your clients making those moves? Kind of give them some confidence that when you feel that conviction, how do the clients feel?
Kurt D Cornfield (:Yeah, now keep in mind, because I worked at a secular firm, only about 20, maybe 25% of my students, my clients were Christian. So I had 75%-ish of my clients that would be, you know, non-Christian or non-believers. So it is a little different there. I think if you work in a place where most of your clients are Christian, that might change the conversation. But I would certainly present the opportunity to invest in faith-based funds to my clients, but I did have a limited offering. When you're trying to build a diversified portfolio, you know that's hard. It's one of the reasons why I respect folks like you who have maybe breaking away from some of those places where you have handcuffs on. You're handcuffed in some of those places, and so you have to put yourself in a place where you have the freedom, or you just have to work within the confines of the firm that you're with. And it's a challenge and the pendulum is moving in the right direction, but we have a long way to go because the first faith-based funds are only 30 some years old and there's maybe 150 faith-based funds on the marketplace. And I think it's going to keep growing and those, those they're going to become more prevalent, but it's still a limited choices that people have.
Jeff Talarico (:Yeah, I wouldn't disagree with you there. There's a handful of firms and there are some more ETFs coming out that are actually looking at the way they do things and they're following a biblical principle, if you will, or they're screening. There's some, in fact, I'm gonna have a guest in a couple weeks with Faith Investor Services that actually took one of their holdings and made sure that it's passing the screens that they want it to pass. It's just, I think it's a consciousness level with money managers now.
Kurt D Cornfield (:Nice.
Jeff Talarico (:that are understanding what this movement truly is. And I think this movement's here to stay. So with your students.
Kurt D Cornfield (:No, there's no doubt about that. Yeah.
Jeff Talarico (:Yeah, with your with your students. So that brings up another question. That's okay. It just brings up another question that you've got these young minds coming into the industry that are going to some as you said, are going to go to work for secular firms, some are going to go to work for kingdom advisor firms or people that are members of the National Association of Christian financial consultants or the likes, and they're going to be basically thrown out to the wolves.
Kurt D Cornfield (:Go ahead, I'm sorry.
Jeff Talarico (:Because they're going to see all these different things that have great performance numbers. And then there's some of the ours that might not have the track record, but the performance is there. Are you teaching anything to these kids to really start and look at the funds and say, okay, but let's break it down. What do you own?
Kurt D Cornfield (:Yeah, yeah. The program that I teach out of has seven courses. One of them is an investment course that they have to take. And until last spring, this past spring, I was teaching that investment course because our program's grown so far, so much. We've had to bring in a couple adjuncts to help me. So I actually have an adjunct who's a CFP and a CFA teaching that course now. And he's doing a great job. And he was at Kingdom Advisors with us. So, so we're, we're trying to do more of that, but the truth is, all the textbooks are still secular textbooks. The textbook we use is a secular textbook for investments. So it's not like they're gonna talk about faith-based investing in that textbook. So we have to go out of our way to add that. And when I taught the course I did, and I know the adjunct professor that we have, he and I were just together today, and he's been to Eventide, so he's well aware, and the firm that he works for has faith-based investing.
So he talks to the students a lot about it as well, but it's still something, even in a Christian university, we have to be intentional about. We have to really make sure that the students understand the difference between looking at an investment with a secular lens and looking at an investment with a faith-based lens. And so we're trying to put them around the people that do that. That's why we bring, you know, we brought 60 students to the Kingdom Advisor Conference last February who are planning to bring 75 this next February. But I want them to meet the people that are there that are doing this stuff so they can hear directly from the folks that are in the trenches because at this point, exposing them to those people is a big part of what we do.
Jeff Talarico (:That's awesome.
Jeff Talarico (:I'll tell you it was a really beautiful thing the night you were awarded that Larry Burkett award and watching your students Just rally around you as they did so what you're doing Kurt is definitely working I can see the impact in our youth and it's an amazing thing there. So thanks for doing that With that said what do you think this industry is gonna look like in the next five ten years with the faith-based movement that we're in.
Kurt D Cornfield (:Yeah.
Kurt D Cornfield (:Well, it's interesting that there's the bulk of my career. I worked with people that had a decent amount of money. We had minimums and so most of my clients had half a million, a million dollars or more. So I always said, you know, basically I was helping rich people get richer. When I started hanging around college students, the reality of it is most college students either, they're in one of two situations, either they have a financial mess because they got too much school debt, or they don't have, I find more of them do not have financial messes, but they don't have any assets. So if they pick up the phone and call Jeff Talarico you might say, hey, you don't have enough money for me. I don't know if you have a minimum or not, but some advisors have minimums. And so there's this group that falls through the cracks, the ones that are doing the right things, but they just don't have enough money to pick up the phone and get the attention of you know, even CKAs because so many of us have minimums now. And so my heart is in that space right now. It's like, what can we do to help them? And so I've been having conversations, it's way too early to get too excited about it, but we literally, I know of an individual, he's actually a former student that's trying to develop, basically I'm gonna call it a Christian robo advisor, you know, because kids today, whether we like it or not, Jeff, because we're in a different generation, whether we like it or not, kids today, the students I call them, they don't often wanna pick up the phone and call us. They wanna go to their little cell phone and get the answer there, right? So if we don't meet them where they are, we're not gonna meet them at all. And so what this former student is, I know he's working on a project and it's, like I said, I don't wanna get too many details, but he's literally trying to create what I would call a Christian robo advisor.
And basically it would direct students, those ones that have very little money, $10 a month, kind of the Robinhood type of account, and direct it into these faith-based portfolios that people like you are doing, but make it really easy for them. And that way they would catch that individual who's falling through the cracks. I mean, that's all in my heart right now. It's something that I've been working on behind the scenes. It's a whole lot easier to talk about it than it is to make it happen.
Jeff Talarico (:Yeah, that's...
Kurt D Cornfield (:But it is something that I've talked to key people in the industry about, and it is something we're working on.
Jeff Talarico (:Good, and that's something that I definitely think is needed. And no, I don't have minimums for that very reason. I think everybody is due sound financial advice, especially since I've turned my practice basically all strictly kingdom advisor type stuff and biblically responsible investing. So it makes sense. And...
Kurt D Cornfield (:Well, and good for you, good for you that you don't have a minimum, but many advisors, you know, do have substantial minimums and it makes it hard for a person starting out to just get financial advice. Yeah.
Jeff Talarico (:See, I just heard something a long time ago that this generation that doesn't have much now are the ones that are gonna be inheriting all the other stuff. So if I build the relationships now.
Kurt D Cornfield (:Well, that's.
Kurt D Cornfield (:Right. And if you've been in the business long enough, and I suspect you have, when I look back, because I, 2018 is the year I retired, but I was kind of doing some reminiscing. And you look at your clients that are your quote, best clients, they all started out with very little money. They just did the right things over 35 years. And if you start out with a little bit of money and you follow biblical principles and just do it little by little, you will accumulate wealth. Now, hopefully, they're also accumulating all the other things, the generosity piece that comes along with that wealth. You know, so we're trying to train our students to be generous right from the beginning as they're building wealth. But ultimately, we don't wanna just build wealth for the sake of building wealth. There's gotta be a plan attached to that. And otherwise, we're just building bigger barns and we're just the rich fool. So we don't wanna be the rich fool, but we wanna build wealth with a purpose, invest with a purpose and little by little gets us there. But it's amazing how many people just don't see that principle and they just don't wanna bother to follow it, even Christians.
Jeff Talarico (:Yeah, there's a there's a beautiful, well, a couple different advisors that I know of that are actually affiliated with my firm. And they're also kingdom advisors that pride themselves on how much money can their clients give away. And I think that just recently, they have this big celebration with their clients that they've given away over $10 million. And that is a that's it's a great testament to what we're supposed to do.
Kurt D Cornfield (:Yeah, that's good.
Kurt D Cornfield (:No, I love that.
Jeff Talarico (:If it's not our money, we're supposed to be doing something with it.
Kurt D Cornfield (:And we bring, we have advisors, we'll have 20 different firms come to campus this semester. So we put those people in front of our students. And when they share stories like that, our students get excited. They're like, wow, I want to be a part of a place like that, that measures their success by how much their clients give, not by how much their clients make. So yeah, that's part of the conversation that we can have with students. And you know, it's interesting is so many students, their paradigm shifts.
Because they think, you know, when they first come into this career, I can make good money, all those things. But I think when they start to let the Holy Spirit speak to them about the opportunity in this field, they start to realize, OK, I can still make a good living. I can support my family the way God intended me to support my family. But I can do so much more, you know, with the generosity piece and just helping the kingdom. And if we can get kids started with that mentality on the front end of their careers, think about the ripple effect of that for the next 40 years or plus. And so that's what I get excited about every morning when I get up.
Jeff Talarico (:Yeah, it's a beautiful thing when you can look at God's economy and see how He multiplies what we give. And when we do it with the right heart, we give because it's the right thing. Not giving to get, you can't out give God. And it's an amazing thing. And tithing and stewardship, all of that play into this. And if they're learning this now as college students, they're going to be set up for the rest of their life following what God wants them to do and having the ability to do the
Kurt D Cornfield (:Yeah.
Jeff Talarico (:Provide kingdom economy basically.
Kurt D Cornfield (:No, absolutely. And it's just been fun to be in the middle of that.
Jeff Talarico (:So that's an incredible thing that you're doing with these students, Kurt. And again, I can't commend you enough for what you've implemented there and the excitement to see this going now to other campuses in some form or fashion. What's interesting is my assistant actually is studying for her CFP and her professor is at a secular school, but I met him at the Kingdom Advisors Conference. So whatever you're doing is catching.
Kurt D Cornfield (:Oh, that's cool.
Jeff Talarico (:The attention of some of these professors at secular campuses, trying to figure out how they too, because there's believers everywhere.
Kurt D Cornfield (:Yeah, we had students from two state colleges that have come to the conference these last two years. And so, yeah, it doesn't mean kids at these secular schools can't become CFPs and eventually CKAs. They just have to take one extra course. It's not that hard. And so, yeah, we're trying to spread that message beyond just these Christian universities. Absolutely.
Jeff Talarico (:Well, you're doing a great job with that. So let me ask you a couple of final questions here. If there was, and it's more about you, not so much what you're doing in the business, but if there was anybody that you could have a conversation with dead or alive, who would it be and why?
Kurt D Cornfield (:If anybody's ever asked me that question. It's funny. My wife and I took a nice trip recently. We were in Scotland. And so I don't know if you know that's where Adam Smith was born. And so the father of modern day economics. And I don't know exactly where he was spiritually. I think he had certainly some spiritual upbringing and training. Whether he was a believer or not, some people would debate that. But I'd love to have a conversation with, Adam Smith, the father of modern-day economics. Because if you think about the principles, he wrote about 200 plus years ago, they still work today. And it's like to have that vision was pretty cool. And so he's not necessarily in the spiritual realm, but certainly in the economic realm that I kind of live in as somebody that I think is pretty cool.
Jeff Talarico (:Okay, then last question, if there's anything that I haven't asked you today that is pressing on your mind that you want listeners to hear about what we do, why we do, how we do, what would it be?
Kurt D Cornfield (:Good question.
Kurt D Cornfield (:You know, that's a good, you know, you ask good questions. I was fortunate enough, like I said, I've been around this conversation, it'll be 40 years in January. And I've watched people in various ways with money, whether it be my clients, my, I have children now that are in their thirties. I have all these students that are, you know, when I met them, they were in their twenties and some of them are now in their thirties. And I watched people, make decisions about money. And obviously some of those people are believers, some of them weren't, but when they're believers, I've seen this connection. And it's part of why I wanna teach young people to just get it right on the front end of their lives. And this is even my students that aren't gonna be financial advisors, just cause I teach personal finance here. So I get to be in front of a lot of students, a lot of 150 kids in personal finance classes, in a couple of weeks.
And I want them to see that when, and I don't know which one comes first, but when they handle their money well according to biblical principles, it's like all, most aspects of their lives kind of fall into the place. And what I mean by that is, have you ever met somebody who has a financial mess and their spiritual life is awesome? It's like when you got a financial mess, your spiritual life's a mess too. They just...
I don't know which one comes first, you know what I mean? But it's like, usually if somebody's, you know, can't pay the bills and stuff, they're not thinking about getting up in the morning, you know, and fellowshiping with the Lord by reading their Bibles or praying and, you know, just meditating to the Lord. They're not doing that because they're worried about paying the bills, right? And so I see that connection. And so I wanna help people, whether they're my clients, whether they're my students, just people out there that are listening to your podcast, I want them to see that when you manage money, your money, and well, it's God's money, when you manage the resources of God and trust to you, the way the Bible directs us with just this basic transcendent planning principles, when you do that, it's like your whole life benefits from that. And all these things we've talked about, the giving falls into place appropriately. You learn how to build wealth, but you do it in a way that's aligned with God's purposes, not your purposes. But it all goes back to just managing our money well.
Kurt D Cornfield (:And if we can't do that, it's it rarely the other pieces just don't seem to fall into place. So I could be wrong about that correlation because I haven't seen the academic studies to back me up. Maybe someday somebody will do an academic study to back me up on that. But the reality of it, I think in this case, when you manage your money, well, your relationship with the Lord is going to be at a deeper level because you're not scrambling to pay the bills.
Jeff Talarico (:And that makes a huge difference. Kurt, thank you so much for your time today. I greatly appreciate it. I can't wait till next February. Hopefully I'll see you and maybe meet some of your students next time we get to Orlando for that conference. So thanks again for being with us today. This is Jeff Talarico, the Investing with Integrity podcast. And Kurt, we'll talk to you soon.
Kurt D Cornfield (:Thank you, Jeff.
