Financial Literacy’s Connection to Growing the Adviser Industry

Lenox Advisors leaders say cultivating new talent for the financial sector starts with getting young people engaged with finances in their own lives.

Interesting young people in a career as a financial adviser starts with making them aware of the importance of financial planning, including using their own life experiences, according to experts from Lenox Advisors Inc., a subsidiary of NFP, which is an Aon company.

Lenox leadership believes exposing young people to financial planning and tools early in life will better lead them to careers in finance. To further that end, they educate young people on financial planning and how to make a career in the field through partnerships and programs with the higher education community, says Frank Anzalone, Lenox’s managing director and national head of sales and distribution.

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“We took the firm from 97 advisers pre-COVID to 117 now, plus another 14 in training,” says Anzalone. “So that’s a pretty good growth trajectory, and we want to do it the right way.”

Lenox Advisers also participates in careers fairs, mentorship opportunities and encourages recent graduates to find new opportunities through alumni working at Lenox.

Bringing in younger advisers has been a focus of companies in both financial advising and retirement planning in recent years, due in part to an aging industry. But there has also been some focus on boosting financial literacy, generally, among young people; as one example, the Retirement Advisor Council launched a program late last year called FinLitFuture$ to provide volunteer opportunities and resources for plan advisers to work with students in their local communities.

Life Experience

Matt Sendach, a managing director at Lenox Advisors, says he was inspired to become a financial adviser while he was in college and his father became ill. He learned the importance of financial planning when it came to dealing with the unexpected life event.

“My dad had something called Guillain-Barré syndrome,” he says. “It was a one in a million disease that completely paralyzed him from his waist down.”

For two years, Sendach’s father could not work. Moreover, he owned his own business and did not have any of the proper protection in place. The illness created a “financial disaster scenario,” says Sendach, in which his father had to dip into equity in his house and prematurely tap his retirement accounts.

“I became interested in how things could have been different and figuring out different ways to put protection in place for families,” Sendach says. “That’s what motivated me early on and continues to motivate me. That way people are in a better position when things don’t go as planned.”

Sendach’s father is now doing well, but he still must work longer than his peers due to the two years he was sick. The lack of protection for his father points to inadequate financial literacy education, Sendach states.

“There still is not a lot of great education anywhere regarding different plans that you need to put in place,” he says. “Now, unfortunately, I know too many people like that.”

Getting Ahead of the Curve

Anzalone says he is shocked by the lack of important financial literacy education offered to young people. He states that vital education comes too late in people’s lives.

“I see, nationally, kids very talented, graduating high school and going on to higher education and not understanding just the basics,” he says. “What is the financial plan? What is an investment account? What is protection? Why is it needed?”

When Lenox Advisors brings in new advisers, Sendach says more seasoned colleagues can then help their young counterparts find clients. Similar to how he identified that his father was not serviced properly, Sendach now helps new advisers find clients who need better financial guidance.

“I’ve been at Lenox for 15 years,” he says. “Many of the [people] who have been here longer than me gave me opportunities, saying ‘Hey, I have old clients that aren’t in service because I’m busy meeting with my clients. Can you call them and just see what’s going on and help them?’”

Sendach says now he gets to pay it forward, helping young advisers find new opportunities.

Osaic Enhances Retirement Income Tool for Financial Advisers

The wealth management platform augments its income planner for financial advisers currently managing more than $4 billion per year.

Osaic Inc., a wealth management platform provider, has increased its retirement income offerings by enhancing a tool for its financial adviser clients.

The firm announced Monday it had beefed up its NextPhase retirement income planner for the roughly 600 financial advisers currently using the original version on more than $4 billion in clients’ retirement assets.

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The focus comes as Osaic seeks to meet financial advisers’ growing need for retirement planning and strategies for their clients. The April summary of a survey from the Alliance for Lifetime Income reported that two-thirds of Baby Boomers turning 65 between 2024 and 2030 will not be financially prepared to maintain their pre-retirement lifestyles, with the nonprofit backed by insurance and financial firms calling for more retirement income focus by the financial industry.

Osaic is a portfolio company of Reverence Capital Partners, which was part of a recent agreement to take wealth technology provider Envestnet private through a $4.5 billion purchase.

NextPhase Plus and NextPhase Pro are the names of two newly enhanced offerings, which provides advisers with automatic retirement income plan calculations, Social Security “optimization” strategies and alerts when de-risking may be necessary to protect a portfolio.

NextPhase Pro will also have access to Roth post-tax conversion modeling, requirement minimum distribution projections, tax overlay considerations and personalized health care cost projections, including income-related monthly adjustments for Medicare premiums, according to the announcement.

“The expanded NextPhase offering is reflective of Osaic’s commitment to providing innovative wealth solutions to our network of financial professionals, allowing them to help clients better understand the longevity of their retirement income,” said Kristen Kimmell, Osaic’s executive vice president of business development in a statement.

Osaic has received requests from many financial professionals asking for tax features and Roth conversion analysis, according to a spokesperson, and spent a year and a half searching for “retirement income planning platforms that accommodated the time-segmentation strategy and also had the features that our advisers wanted.”

The offering will be available on a tiered subscription basis costing from $50 to $150 a month. Meanwhile, it offers a retirement income consulting team to support financial advisers with questions and strategy.

Osaic’s network of advisers totals about 11,600.

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