2025 Top Retirement Plan Adviser: William Brian Drake

This year, PLANADVISER followed up with advisers on the 2025 Top Retirement Plan Advisers listing to get to know them better. These are the responses from William Brian Drake of Summit Financial Group in Greenwood, Indiana.

PLANADVISER: Has the focus or character of your practice shifted meaningfully over time to respond to evolving client demands, market pressures or the emergence of new technologies?

Drake: Technology for participants is an area in which we have invested a lot of time and resources in the last couple of years. In a world of instant information, no longer do a majority of participants want to take the time to call in to the adviser or recordkeeper to get basic questions answers. Our goal has been to create online locations for them to get answers to not only their retirement questions, but those related to overall financial wellness as well.

PLANADVISER: What are some of the most important growth strategies that have generated success for your firm? Where do you source new clients most effectively?

Drake: Being affiliated with Northwestern Mutual has really opened the door for joint work opportunities. Our joint adviser partners know their strengths and where their time is best spent to maximize using their skill sets with clients. The value that we add is that we can setup, design and manage a retirement plan for their best clients, and they can stay focused on the personal planning that they know best.

PLANADVISER: How do you balance the desire to grow with the need to keep clients happy?

Drake: Scaling our practice has been vitally important to our growth and retention. The only way our team of nine has been able to add over 120 clients in the last three years is by creating efficiencies, allowing team members to take ownership of relationships, and by constant communication inside the team. We are now serving well over 300 retirement plans, and because of the culture that team has created, we have plenty of room for growth.

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