So an SEC attorney and a Congressman walk into a bank...

If that sounds like the start of a comedy routine, then your name isn't Roderick Day.

Day, 37, is a financial advisor with Securities America who works out of the U.S. Senate Federal Credit Union on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

He has been a financial advisor for 16 years, the past seven of which he's been working the Capitol Hill market. Before his current job at the Senate credit union, which includes other federal agencies in addition to the Upper House, Day worked at the Congressional Federal Credit Union, which serves House members and their staffs.

Day has seen his share of government workers—some of whom are on financial services committees and others who actually write financial laws. But he notes that their lack of financial literacy, on a personal level, is astounding.

"I've had career members of Congress come to me in a panic saying they had bills to pay or a child's college tuition coming up, and they needed to know how to manage their budget or to raise more cash."

And that SEC attorney wasn't just the set up for a joke. Day recalls when said SEC staff attorney came in to his office looking for a financial advisor. He remembers that talking with her was an "almost surreal experience." She admitted—though quite sheepishly—that she had never actually viewed a prospectus. She subsequently became a client, and is one of Day's three current clients from the Commission. None of them, however, "were at all knowledgeable about their personal investments," he says.

Another SEC client who needed to do an IRA rollover, came to Day as a referral. A client brought a friend to "hear what I had to say." As he explained the rollover process, the friend listened quietly. "Then she spoke up, saying, 'I wasn't going to say this, but I'm an analyst at the SEC, and I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I know nothing about this. I've always been afraid to go to a financial advisor, but now I'd like to do the same thing with my retirement funds,'" Day says. "It was amazing to me; she didn't know step one. When she first announced that she was from the SEC, my first thought was, 'Uh-oh! Is this how they audit people, like the mystery shopper kind of thing?'"

But now she's a client. "It turns out everyone needs guidance—at some point—with their personal finances, even those who make policy decisions or who provide the oversight," he says.

Day was first lured to the Congressional FCU by a headhunter who had contacted him when he worked as an advisor with Northwestern Mutual Financial Network. "This guy told me about how credit unions have this real customer loyalty, but that because financial advisors tend to move around a lot, they don't get to take advantage of that. I basically took a leap of faith and moved."

Still, Day describes his first few years as "torture." He says that he didn't do well at all. "There was no book to take over, and the credit union wasn't referring people. There was a total lack of trust by the CU staff in financial advisors because of their short tenure." He worked hard to change that, he says, partly by taking on the 401(k) and group benefits program for the CU staff. He worked out of eight credit unions that were affiliated through CUSO Financial Services in the capital. "But it was the Congressional and Senate FCUs where I got the most traction."

CUSO's idea was to have a pool of advisors serving the capital's credit unions. When Day started, he was one of five, but four quickly dropped out, and for 18 months he was alone on the job. "I circulated, went to sporadic referrals and spoke at meetings," he recalls. "After a couple of years of this, I knew what was working for me and realized that the Congressional and Senate FCUs were it, so I gravitated to them."

Day eventually narrowed his focus even further—to the Senate FCU, and subsequently hired someone to handle advising at the Congressional FCU.

Over time, he managed to build up a relationship with the Senate FCU staff and the referrals started rolling in. "I began by explaining my business to the employees of the credit union, and explained how my success would depend on their referrals, he says. "Now 60% of my referrals come from the credit union and 40% are word of mouth from my clients." Business has really taken off over the last two years, with his production growing from $250,000 in 2009 to $350,000 last year.