The Financial Safety Net for Healthcare Leaders [PODCAST]

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The Financial Safety Net for Healthcare Leaders

In this episode, David Beahm, President and CEO of Blanchard and Company, Inc., discusses the financial safety net for healthcare leaders.

Highlights of this episode include:

• What the structural gap is that most healthcare CFOs and executives aren’t accounting for in their portfolios
• What diversification means in practice for a chief medical officer or a hospital executive
• The most common blind spots for high-income healthcare professionals
• ETFS and paperback gold vs. physical ownership
• What you need to know so that your wealth is both protected and accessible
• Industrial demand from AI infrastructure and green energy initiatives

Kelly Wisness: Hi, this is Kelly Wisness. Welcome back to the award-winning Hospital Finance Podcast. We’re pleased to welcome David Beahm. David serves as the president and CEO of Blanchard and Company, Inc., the largest and oldest retail investment firm specializing in precious metals and rare coins in the United States. With over a decade of executive leadership at the firm, David stewards a legacy that began in 1975, shortly after his predecessor helped spearhead the grassroots movement to re-legalize gold ownership for private American citizens. Under his leadership, Blanchard has surpassed 800,000 clients and $1.3 billion in recent sales, maintaining a premier partnership with legendary numismatist John Albanese. David is known for his “Advisory-First” philosophy, moving the industry away from high-pressure sales toward sophisticated long-term wealth preservation and portfolio diversification.

In this episode, we’re discussing the financial safety net for healthcare leaders. Welcome, and thank you for joining us, David.

David Beahm: Thanks, Kelly. Thanks for having me.

Kelly: Yeah, well, let’s go ahead and jump in. So, hospital endowments and executive compensation packages are heavily tied to equities and bonds. And when markets correct, healthcare institutions feel it hard and fast. From your perspective, what’s the structural gap that most healthcare CFOs and executives aren’t accounting for in their portfolios?

David: So, I think the gap leads to risk in what most healthcare CFOs and the executives that work with the endowments, they underestimate the concentration of risk, and they kind of disguise it a little bit with what they call diversification. But really, on paper, if they own equities and bonds, when the day’s over with, that’s still tied to the same system. So, when you see liquidity tighten or confidence break, like we saw in 2008 and then again in 2020, that correlation that just is one. So those assets individually basically are tied to one another, and they move with one another. So, the gap right there is really the absence of a counterweight, such as gold. And because some of these portfolios lack assets that sit outside of that stock and bond financial system, what physical gold can do is actually provide them with a little bit of insurance to make sure that when those traditional types of portfolios come under pressure, it’s not as critical when you own something like gold in there. So as long as you are truly diversified and have exposure to something outside of the stocks embalmed realm, you can bridge that gap.

Kelly: Right. I know diversification is really key there. The word non-correlated gets used a lot in finance, but what does it actually mean in practice for a chief medical officer or a hospital executive sitting on a $50 million endowment committee?

David: So, when you start looking at non-correlated assets, you start thinking about a theory, and it’s really the behavior of certain assets under stress. And so, when you see an endowment or really just stocks in general drop 20% or so in a short window, some of these assets, they just move together because people are forced to sell, people are forced to raise money for margin calls, or they need liquidity. And so, everything is fair game. So, when you look at that type of movement and gold does behave that way, gold is a source of liquidity, but it’s a little bit different because it’s not dependent on earnings or credit markets such as stocks and bonds. So, for a hospital executive managing a $50 million endowment, non-correlating assets mean owning something that will hold value or even appreciate while some of the other assets are declining. So, gold’s not going to outperform assets every single year, but it provides that insurance policy and it’s there when you need it.

Kelly: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you. So, healthcare leaders are often incredibly sophisticated when it comes to clinical risk management, but personal wealth planning is a different discipline entirely. What are the most common blind spots you see when high-income healthcare professionals come to Blanchard for the first time?

David: I think the blind spot that we see is, just in general, just the retail investor, is the overconfidence in that system we were talking about a little while ago. You spend your entire college in the finance world learning about stocks and bonds. And then, the last day you learn about gold. So, nobody really knows about it in the United States. It’s not all over the world, but in the United States, it’s not owned by as many as it should. So, healthcare leaders, because they’re trained to manage risk, they need to make sure that they have an asset that will perform or at least provide insurance. So, we consistently see a few things. One is people being overexposed to paper assets that, again, are all tied to that economic system we were talking about. And then almost more importantly is liquidity– the misunderstanding that gold is not liquid, and it is liquid, especially in a time of crisis. And then the third is, what do you really own? A lot of retail investors, a lot of managers, fund managers– that’s not really clear on what they own and what exposure it is through any sort of financial asset that they may have. So the ownership, clarity, the misunderstanding of liquidity, and then again, going back to being exposed to stocks and bonds, their traditional assets, those are the blind spots that we see.

Kelly: Yeah, I appreciate you sharing those blind spots with us. ETFs and paperback gold products are easy to buy inside a brokerage account. Many executives already hold them and think they’re covered. Why isn’t that the same thing as physical ownership? And why does that distinction matter, especially during systemic financial stress?

David: The gold market loves ETFs. When they came into the marketplace, they added a lot of demand that wasn’t there. And partly because of what you just explained, it’s easy to get in, it’s easy to get out. What our investors do is they’re looking for a long-term hold, and really the true proxy to owning gold or being exposed to gold is actually owning physical gold. So, ETF serves a great purpose, but you do have some expenses that you don’t have with owning gold. You have management fees. You have marketing fees. You have storage insurance, which you do have with owning physical gold. But those funds that are needed to actually run the ETF or taken off of the asset. So, in our mind, physical gold is really the only way to truly have a gold position. And again, you also have mining shares out there as well, exposed to the price of gold, but not– you have to worry about management, mining collapse, geopolitical risk in that area. We just feel that physical gold that we actually send to clients or arrange for storage for them is the true way of being exposed to gold.

Kelly: Very interesting take on that. So, there’s a liquidity question that comes up with physical assets. How quickly can I actually get out if I need to? How do you answer that for a healthcare executive who needs to know their wealth is both protected and accessible?

David: That’s one of the biggest things misunderstood about the physical gold market is liquidity. And physical gold and silver, for that matter, are really liquid assets. As a matter of fact, just a side note, our pilots carry gold with them when they’re overseas flying combat missions, because if they go down and they need to get from one place to another, they use gold to do it. So, for a healthcare executive, the key is structure. Really, if the metals are properly allocated, which we can help with, they’re properly stored, which we can help with and documented, they could be converted to cash fairly quickly. I mean, within a few business days, depending on where the assets are. So, what I would just emphasize is not just liquidity, but it’s the certainty of liquidity. And in a stressed market, the ability to access your gold or your capital without relying on market stability is certainly a significant advantage.

Kelly: Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. So silver is having a moment driven by industrial demand from AI infrastructure and green energy initiatives. How does that factor into the broader portfolio strategy?

David: Yeah, so silver has been on a tear because it’s uniquely positioned right now because it’s kind of in that intersection of the investment world, but also in the industrial complex. So, it’s more of an industrial commodity than gold is. The demand for the infrastructure for the AI and energy and all the electronics. We’re having emerging technologies seemingly every few months and silver is going to play a real big role with all of that. So, from a portfolio or investment standpoint, silver has just a little bit more dimension than gold, but we view silver as a complement to gold. And what we advise is to have both in your portfolio. You can say, well, why would I do that? You’re just talking about diversification. Well, that’s truly within the precious metals complex being diversified is having some exposure to gold and silver. While they do typically run together, there are certain times where one outperforms the other. So, it adds a– silver has an element of growth potential that’s really tied to real world demand. And having the right allocation of both of those working together strengthens your overall portfolio.

Kelly: Definitely. Well, thank you so much, David, for sharing your insights with us on the financial safety net for healthcare leaders. And if a listener wants to learn more or contact you to discuss this topic further, how best can they do that?

David: So first, our website, blanchardgold.com. And then also we have portfolio managers that help advise. So, we don’t just sell this product, we form relationships with people and we’ve been around for 50 years. So, we love talking to people on the phone to get a feel for what their goals are, what their drifters are, and that way we can put them into the right asset class. So, I would encourage anybody to call our 1-800 number. It’s 800-880-GOLD, 4653. So, it’s 800-880-4653. And we can help with any questions and hopefully help some of your listeners get involved in an asset that maybe they were a little unclear about before.

Kelly: Wonderful. Thank you for providing that. And thank you all for joining us for this episode of The Hospital Finance Podcast. Until next time…

[music] This concludes today’s episode of The Hospital Finance Podcast. For show notes and additional resources to help you protect and enhance revenue at your hospital, visit besler.holdings/podcasts. The Hospital Finance Podcast is a production of Besler Holdings.

If you have a topic that you’d like us to discuss on The Hospital Finance Podcast or if you’d like to be a guest, drop us a line at contact@besler.holdings.

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