The Fateful Date – InsuranceNewsNet

For younger Stephen Kagawa, the date meant an opportunity to have a pleasant dinner with a woman and who is aware of the place issues would possibly lead?

That the night modified his life is just not the stunning half. That it matched him to a lifelong love for all times insurance coverage and monetary planning is.

Stephen was attending the College of Southern California on the time however coming no nearer to picking his life’s work — that’s when his father, Siegfried Kagawa, lastly stepped in.

Referred to as “Sig,” he set Stephen up with a paid internship with Transamerica’s residence workplace in Los Angeles. His life-changing shopper invited Stephen to her residence for dinner. The date didn’t pan out romantically, but it surely gave Stephen a brand new perspective on the facility of life insurance coverage.

She informed him about her late husband, a cussed man who refused to pay an extortion demand for “safety” of their garment district enterprise, and likewise refused to get life insurance coverage for his household. The lady finally satisfied her husband to get a household coverage, and he was later shot and killed.

“She stated, ‘Stephen, my life insurance coverage saved my life and people very people who got here to push the sale on us are actually the heroes in my life,’” Kagawa stated. “I ran out and bought my license straight away. As a result of all I might take into consideration is what would occur if she died?”

That was greater than 35 years in the past. Right now, Stephen Kagawa sits atop a thriving monetary and charitable community that begins along with his Pacific Bridge Firms. He was just lately named the 2020 Range Champion by the Nationwide Affiliation of Insurance coverage and Monetary Advisors.

“Along with serving the wants of his first-generation immigrant shoppers, Stephen mentors a various group of youthful professionals and advises a number of insurance coverage firms looking for to enhance their attain into ethnic markets,” stated Cammie Scott, NAIFA president.

Homeroom With Obama

By his personal admission, Kagawa was a “spoiled child” who grew up in Hawaii in a well-to-do household. The supply of the household’s luck got here from the life insurance coverage enterprise.

His father nourished a flourishing Transamerica satellite tv for pc life insurance coverage enterprise on the island. His grandfather, Lawrence Kagawa, started the enterprise however was compelled into an internment camp throughout World Struggle II.

Younger Stephen was unaware of this household historical past till he was a younger grownup.

“Really, I learn that my household was within the insurance coverage enterprise within the papers. I used to be astonished that we had been promoting life insurance coverage,” he recalled. “All the pieces I had heard about life insurance coverage was not good. And I vowed to myself that I’d by no means get in that enterprise.”

Hawaiian tradition stresses sturdy household bonds and a rugged individualism. The Kagawa elders gave Stephen loads of area to search out his personal method, and his journey included an essential cease on the famed personal Punahou College in Honolulu. His time there in the course of the late 1970s coincided with the long run 44th president, Barack Obama.

“He was an excellent good man,” Kagawa stated. “He was like a delicate big.”

As Kagawa matured, he realized his household’s Japanese heritage was not all the time welcomed on Hawaiian shores. Following the assault on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World Struggle II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made the controversial determination to order the internment of Japanese Individuals.

Lawrence Kagawa, who began Occidental Underwriters of Hawaii in 1933, and his household had been among the many 800 Japanese Individuals from Hawaii who had been despatched to camps. Most misplaced every little thing they owned, however Transamerica stood by Kagawa and he returned to the enterprise following the battle.

Stephen Kagawa was out of faculty earlier than he heard the total story of his grandparents’ wartime detention. Sig and Stephen would turn out to be dogged supporters of Japanese American historical past preservation. Within the mid-1980s, Sig was instrumental in securing funding for the Japanese American Nationwide Museum in Los Angeles.

“If I don’t even know what occurred to the very group that I come from, my circle of relatives, how on this planet would different folks know?” Stephen stated. “And if we don’t know, what if we did it once more to ourselves? I imply we seemed upon our personal fellow residents as enemy aliens, calling them ‘non-citizens.’”

Stepping Out

As soon as he embraced life insurance coverage and the way it will help defend households, Kagawa was on his method. After graduating from USC, he returned to Hawaii and labored for 5 years on the household enterprise, Occidental Underwriters.

In 1992, Kagawa moved to Los Angeles to assist develop his household’s enterprise on the West Coast. Later, he spun off and created what’s now referred to as The Pacific Bridge Firms. The wealth administration enterprise grew quickly with a singular worldwide attain into Asia. Because the years glided by, Kagawa constructed a mini-empire of monetary advisors and specialists in banking, insurance coverage, investments, tax and regulation. The Pacific Bridge umbrella encompasses a number of firms to offer full planning providers throughout the 2 continents.

Headquartered in Monrovia, Calif., Pacific Bridge has places of work in Honolulu, Tokyo and Hong Kong. The concept is to offer a complete monetary advisory framework for cross-nationals, and it’s an concept that Kagawa hit on on the proper time.

Migration from Asia to the USA rose dramatically with passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which eliminated national-origin quotas established in 1921 barring immigration from Asian and Arab international locations and sharply limiting arrivals from Africa and japanese and southern Europe.

The variety of Asian immigrants grew from 491,000 in 1960 to about 12.eight million in 2014, representing a 2,597% enhance. In 1960, Asians represented 5% of the U.S. foreign-born inhabitants; by 2014, their share grew to 30% of the nation’s 42.four million immigrants, in line with the Migration Coverage Institute.

Wanting ahead, Pew Analysis Heart tasks that Asian Individuals will turn out to be the most important immigrant group within the nation, surpassing Hispanics in 2055.

“One of many missions that we’ve been on for about 15, 20 years now’s how can we fill gaps,” Kagawa defined. “Are there issues from one nation that we might deliver into one other nation?

“On the identical time, we realized concerning the variations in all these rules and the alternatives that took place due to that. To ensure that us to navigate that, we realized we wanted a number of totally different firms, due to the totally different rules — due to the issues that we have to do to do it proper.”

A typical Pacific Bridge shopper is a excessive web price entrepreneur, or couple, who wish to divest property, switch wealth or arrange a philanthropic plan. Regular stuff, with a twist. Many have U.S. enterprise pursuits or American companions. Some are Asian residents aiming to retire in the USA, the place they’ve youngsters and grandchildren.

It could add as much as a fancy net of authorized, monetary and tax implications. Pacific Bridge will usually produce multilayered plans that make the most of life insurance coverage, trusts, buy-sell agreements and different instruments to attain the specified outcomes.

“We’re not offering options to issues,” stated Kagawa, who misplaced his spouse to most cancers 5 years in the past. “We’re offering various paths to get to life fulfilled, wherever you is perhaps world wide.”

Making Connections

After that early dinner date, Kagawa made a number of pitches to single moms. His ardour for the merchandise and the safety hardly appeared like promoting in any respect, he stated. The dimensions of his first fee test got here as a shock, Kagawa stated.

“I couldn’t consider it,” he recalled. “My thoughts was blown. I stated, ‘Wait a second. All I’ve bought to consider helps folks? And if I simply care about that and do the suitable factor, that I would receives a commission nicely?’”

It grew to become the suitable profession selection for the suitable particular person. A gregarious man with a straightforward snicker, Kagawa devotes a number of Pacific Bridge and private sources to the many individuals with modest means.

He serves because the chair of the Circle of Ambassadors with the Go For Broke Nationwide Training Heart, sharing tales throughout the USA and across the globe of World Struggle II American troopers of Japanese American descent. He’s a trustee of the Japanese American Nationwide Museum, in addition to a member of the inaugural board of administrators and present council chief for the U.S.-Japan Council, based in 2009 to strengthen U.S.-Japan relations by way of a spread of cultural and networking initiatives.

“All through the time I’ve recognized Stephen, I’ve developed a profound respect and admiration for his dedication to his group, his perception within the core principal that everybody ought to be handled equally, and his tireless ardour and dedication to innovation within the trade,” stated Michael J. Gordon, group chief working officer and U.S. chief government with Lombard Worldwide.

With greater than 35 years within the enterprise, Kagawa strikes into the ultimate chapter of his profession with agency targets. He gave up the president title in February 2017, however stays chairman of the board and CEO of Pacific Bridge Firms.

He has seen loads of change within the enterprise and hopes to see extra.

“I feel that we’ve a protracted strategy to go to rectify that salesman perspective and actually focus in on the opposite particular person and what’s essential to them, and their realities of their life,” Kagawa stated. “Generally the fact is they arrive from a special world. … They need assistance they usually want a special type of assist.”