Business at a Glance as of 12/31/23
- Location: Schaumburg, Illinois
- How many plan assets do you have under advisement? $1.33B
- What is your median plan size (in assets)? $27M
- How many plans do you have under administration? 68
- How many participants in total do you serve? 35,000
- Parent firm: N/A
PLANADVISER: Tell us about your practice and how you got into advising retirement plans.
Williams: We are a boutique-style corporate retirement plan advisory firm with unique expertise in nonqualified deferred compensation plans and working with companies involved in M&A. We have a results-based practice whereby we help our clients assess the strengths & weaknesses of their overall retirement plan offering and establish clear, quantifiable goals and an action plan to reach them. We challenge our clients to think beyond traditional norms and be open to implementing new strategies and solutions for their employees. We believe an institution’s retirement plan offering should be viewed as an investment in the overall success of the organization as opposed to being viewed strictly as an expense to be managed.
I started my career as a personal wealth consultant working primarily with blue collar employees in the Chicago area. After getting my CFP designation, I was able to work more with small business owners and loved playing a small part in their success. Gravitating to retirement plan consulting was a natural next step as it combined my enjoyment of providing education for rank-and-file employees with my newfound enthusiasm for helping business owners maximize the impact that a well-designed and managed corporate retirement plan can provide for the owner, the company, and its employees. In 2018, after 12+ years of dedicated corporate retirement plan consulting, I partnered with two exceptional colleagues to form Finspire, based on our shared belief that there was a natural erosion of the level of retirement plan consulting and servicing as a result of the mass aggregation in our industry.
PLANADVISER: How is your team unique/competitive in the marketplace?
Williams: Below are the three key characteristics of our organization that distinguish us in the retirement plan marketplace:
- Deep Expertise & Experience: Our team is led by the three partners of the firm who have a combined 50+ years of retirement plan consulting experience. We have advised on plans ranging from start-ups to multi-billion-dollar plans; corporate, not-for-profit and government plans. We completed over 50 retirement plan due diligence reports for clients and private equity firms.
- Exceptional Customer Service: We have a very thorough and thoughtful customer service model that maximizes the efficacy and efficiency of our consulting services.
- Built for Growth: We have built an infrastructure of highly skilled personnel combined with technology platforms that allows us to take on additional clients without sacrificing the elevated level of advice and service our clients expect from us.
PLANADVISER: What challenges do you think the retirement plan industry faces, and what role do you have in addressing and confronting those challenges?
Williams: Recent changes in our industry are providing both challenges and opportunities. Here are what we believe are the most prominent ones:
Mass Consolidation
- Challenges: As a record number of retirement consulting firms, plan recordkeepers and TPAs have sold their businesses, plan sponsors are seeing an erosion in the level of service and expertise they are getting from their providers. We often hear complaints about high turnover rates for those servicing the retirement plans.
- Opportunities: We have built a firm designed to be independent whereby our clients have benefitted from a stable service team that provides an exceptional and consistent level of service. We are able to focus solely on the needs of our clients without having to be concerned with cross-selling products of a parent company.
Changing Legislative and Regulatory Environment
- Challenges: Clients and plan providers are struggling to understand and adapt to the recent significant changes caused by legislative and regulatory changes.
- Opportunities: We put considerable time and resources into understanding these changes before they were even finalized. This allows us to help clients prepare for the changes and to understand the opportunities that can help improve their plans.
Blurring of Lines Between Providers’ Roles
- Challenges: The distinction between the services provided by an adviser vs a recordkeeper have blurred in recent years, which can make it more difficult for plan sponsors to determine what is needed for their plan and who (adviser/recordkeeper) is best to provide those services.
- Opportunities: We have built extraordinarily strong relationships with our recordkeeping partners whereby we fully understand how we can best work together with the sole intention of maximizing the impact for the plan sponsor and its employees. We stick to what we do very well, which is plan consulting and help clients fully take advantage of the services available through their recordkeepers.
PLANADVISER: How does your firm incorporate mentorship into its practice to advance the next generation of plan advisers?
Williams: Mentorship at Finspire is imbedded in our culture as we believe it is vital to the success of our firm and the retirement plan industry at large. We actively pursue opportunities to mentor, educate and empower within our organization as well as externally.
Finspire Internal Mentorship Efforts
- Mentorship Initiative – We ask all employees to seek a mentor to learn from as well as be a mentor to someone who could benefit from their knowledge and experience. We have found this to be particularly impactful as it enforces the concept of humility whereby, we all have something to learn as well as something to give.
- Internships – Our internship program focuses on hiring students after their sophomore year in college or junior college students. The objective of the internship program is to provide students with an introduction to the financial services industry and help them attain an internship in the industry for the following summer.
- Budgeted training – We provide every employee with an annual training account and strongly encourage them to utilize it to take courses to improve their skills and knowledge.
External Efforts
- Industry Leadership – Members of our team are on multiple industry boards, and we often speak at industry conferences where we freely share our ideas with the goal of helping fellow advisers and improving our industry.
- Teaching – Our CEO, Chuck Williams, has been teaching the Retirement Planning and Employee Benefits course at Northwestern University’s School of Continuing Studies since 2005. He typically teaches (two) 10-week courses a year for students studying to become Certified Financial Planners. Chuck sponsors a student to take his course each semester. The sponsored students have generally been from underrepresented groups who are looking to enter or advance in the financial services industry. A recent recipient of this sponsorship successfully completed the course and earned a significant position with a large financial services company.
- Volunteering – We have both internal and external volunteering initiatives. Below are some of the external volunteering we do specific to mentorship.
- Advisers Give Back – Chuck also volunteers with Advisers Giving Back, which is a not-for-profit organization providing financial guidance for underserved individuals & families in Chicago.
- IFP Mentor Program – Chuck is a founding member and instructor for the Independent Financial Partners Mentor Program, which provides an 8-week course for advisers who are relatively new to the industry.
PLANADVISER: What advice can you give to industry peers about developing successful experiences for both mentors and mentees?
Williams: My advice for anyone in a leadership position in our industry (or any industry) is to try to be the leader you would want your children or loved ones to have when they started their careers. As part of this, I think one of the keys to developing successful experiences for mentors and mentees is to practice humility, which I have heard described as “not thinking less of yourself but thinking less often about yourself.” I have been blessed to have been the benefactor of countless mentors throughout my career who gave selflessly of their time and knowledge. I feel it is our obligation to “pay it forward” for the benefit of others and the retirement industry at large.