Tony Smith entered the industry in 1986 when he founded Security Finance Associates (SFA), the predecessor firm to Security Funding Associates. A Southern California-based boutique investment banking and consulting firm, SFA conducts its business on a national basis. Its clients have ranged in size from small alarm companies considering a sale of their alarm contracts to public entities in need of industry-specific assistance with their business plans. Current clients include a major national communications company with plans to enter the security industry and a Midwest-based finance company that has created an innovative financing program for security alarm dealers.

SFA is believed to be the first company to develop the concept of a finance-based dealer program while working with the Alert Centre, a Denver-based investment firm, in 1989. From 1996 to 2000, the company managed a Master Dealer customer account creation program for a national public security concern. In the space of 18 months the firm had recruited almost 100 dealers who were selling their new accounts to SFA, which in turn sold the accounts to the national company which was based in Southern California. During that period the company directed the creation of over 75,000 new accounts with recurring monthly revenue exceeding $2M. Subsequently, the company worked with a number of companies in the dealer program genre.

SFA has participated in numerous merger and acquisition transactions, including three national monitoring companies. In addition, Tony Smith was a member of the Board of Directors of Sprint Monitoring Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sprint United Telephone Co.

In his early industry years Smith was CEO of Security First Protection Services, where he operated a traditional alarm company that aggregated security alarm contract portfolios from numerous companies. This acquisition activity included a central monitoring center which he managed for three years. The company eventually sold about 18,000 accounts to several large national companies.

Prior to entering the alarm industry, Smith was a Vice President with an international communications company. For his first five years with the company Smith served as West Coast Treasurer, where he provided advertising-related financial services to several of their larger clients. During the next five-year period Smith was Vice President and Deputy Director of the company’s cable programming arm, where he participated in sports programming for ESPN and business-related programming for the USA Network.

For seven years before that, Smith was CFO and, afterwards, Executive Vice President of the nation’s 25th largest Cable Television MSO with operations in three states. After graduation from college and service in the U.S. Army, he served as a senior audit manager with a regional CPA firm.