About SCS
Southern Capital Services, Inc. was founded in 1982 by Terry Nager, Certified Financial Planner (CFP). Throughout the 1980’s Terry designed comprehensive financial plans for his clients that included estate planning, tax shelters, and investment advice with a fee offset for clients who purchased securities through him. However following the 1987 market crash, he was not pleased with how his clients were positioned by various brokers. It was then that Terry started to develop a different approach to money management that would remove as many client objections as possible. Chief among these was paying high fees and/or commissions.
By 1990, Terry realized that most of his clients wanted portfolio management as a stand-alone service, so at that time Terry gave up his brokerage licenses and went to a fee-only structure, which was well ahead of the financial services industry move in this direction. Southern Capital’s annual management fee is only 1%, earned every quarter, as opposed to mutual fund commissions in the 3-5% range that are paid up front, or portfolio management fees in the 1-3% range. Thus Southern Capital’s philosophy is to grow the account on behalf of the client instead of selling the client a product or charging high fees that make growth of the account more difficult.
At this same time, Terry took on David Lindsey, CFP, as a business partner to manage the daily operations. He also hired Elroy “Dutch” Coppejans and Sam Bugg as Investment Advisor Representatives to help grow the business. In the early 1990’s the Ciba Geigy plant in Mobile, Alabama, was offering early retirement packages to many of their executives, including Mr. Bugg, and Southern Capital was able to help several of them roll over their
retirement plans into IRA accounts and manage them. Later in the decade, Southern Capital added various investment objective “baskets” in order to attract clients in the 401(k) market. In 1995 the firm moved from Mobile to
its present location in Daphne.
By 2000, Dutch was preparing to wind down his service so Terry hired his brother, Eric Nager, to transition into that role. Southern Capital employed some innovative techniques to weather the severe bear market of 2000-2002, and afterward introduced a program to help charitable organizations raise and manage assets for their long-term needs. In 2007 the firm celebrated 25 years in business with a client appreciation event, and then hired Terry’s son, Mark, as a new college graduate to learn the business.
Today Southern Capital stands as a leading Investment Advisory firm in the Mobile area, with clients around the country. The firm looks forward to many more years of growth and prosperity through helping clients meet their investment objectives.