Broker Finds Another Way to Reach Out to Customers : Investing: Merrill Lynch advisers serve 3,000 hearing-impaired or deaf customers. The portfolio totals $250 million.

Terrence Toppin can barely speak and he is deaf. For most of his professional life, he’s felt lost in a world designed for those who can hear.

*

But two years ago, everything changed when he was hired by Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. to work as an analyst in its financial services program for the deaf and hearing-impaired.

“It’s really the best thing that could have happened to me and for others in the deaf community,” said Toppin, who is based in Merrill’s Palm Beach, Fla., office, speaking through a sign-language translator. “This program has opened up so many doors that I never had at work.”

Five years ago, Merrill began the program, acting on a dream of one of its financial analysts who was hearing-impaired. Today it has grown to include 700 consultants, four of them deaf, who serve 3,000 clients in 41 states with $250 million under management.

“Until 1990, the deaf and people with hearing problems were virtually excluded from the advantages of financial planning and investments,” said Christopher Sullivan, Merrill vice president and founder of the program. “Now, we have a program that gives them direct access to the investment world.”

Merrill’s program is billed as a first on Wall Street. Other investment firms serve people with physical disabilities, but none sponsor programs exclusively geared toward the deaf and hearing-impaired.

There are an estimated 4 million deaf people in the United States and more than 24 million who suffer hearing problems.

Yet, few are willing to seek financial advice, instead relying on friends, family and local services, such as banks, for help. Many are unaware of services available to them. Others are nervous about entrusting their money to someone they don’t know or can’t easily communicate with, Sullivan said.

*

Through Merrill’s program, those with hearing disabilities have access to a number of services that make obtaining financial advice a lot easier.

Many of the Merrill consultants in the program are trained to use sign language or have access to an interpreter. In addition, the company provides an e-mail address to customer service representatives and 13 toll-free teletypewriter voice amplification lines, which allow deaf people to communicate via telephone through an operator.

“What’s most important about this program is that deaf people can directly get advice and never have to rely on a third person,” said Dr. Rebecca Clark, executive director of Deaf-REACH, a Washington-based education and advocacy group for the deaf and hearing-impaired. “This lets us do things on our own, like the rest of society always has had access to.”

Merrill has sought the deaf community’s advice for help in promoting the program, sending representatives out to groups around the country. The company also has the support of Heather Whitestone, the first deaf Miss America, who appeared at a recent Merrill-sponsored lunch.

John De Naples, a Merrill investor, is part of a deaf investment club near Trenton, N.J. Through that group, he has spread the word about his own success with the program and has encouraged a number of others to try it.

“When I signed up with Merrill three years ago in this program, I invested a four-figure sum, and that’s now a five-figure sum,” said the 36-year-old father of two. “I used to use a hearing broker, but he never gave me the attention I deserved, which I have gotten through this program.”

Merrill’s hearing-impaired analysts don’t work exclusively with hearing-impaired clients. Stephen Hopson, a 35-year-old financial analyst based in Merrill’s New York office, has an even ratio of both deaf and hearing clients.

Hopson, who can speak clearly, uses the telephone for much of his work, communicating with his clients through the special phone service. He speaks to them, and then an operator types in what the person on the other end is saying, which he can read on a monitor.

Chip Fears, a commercial banker at IBJ Schroder Bank & Trust Co. in New York, has used Hopson as his personal analyst since February.

“The fact that Stephen is deaf is incidental,” Fears said. “What’s most important is that he is a good investor and I’ve actually done quite well since I’ve been with him.”