2022 RPAY – Lisa Garcia, SageView Advisory Group

  • How many plan assets do you have under advisement? $3 billion
  • What is your median plan size (in assets)? $36 million
  • How many plans do you have under administration? 83
  • How many participants in total do you serve? 61,000

PLANADVISER: How is your team/process/structure unique? How has it evolved? Where will you be in five years?

Garcia: Our team consists of 5 individuals all with very specific expertise and contribution to the service model but also all have well-rounded knowledge of the industry to service our clients in every capacity allowing us to better work as team.  Our culture regionally as team as well as nationally is inequivalently what makes us a better team. SageView has a culture of collaborative service, which leverages expertise across our firm to strengthen how we serve our clients both geographically and technically. Doing what is right for our clients, providing a transparent and above average level of service is found throughout the entire organization at SageView. We collectively work together, share ideas, best practices, lessons learned, etc. to leverage the experience of our entire firm and better serve our clients.  My goal is to continue on the path that I’m on for the next 5+ years contributing to the growth of the organization, expanding the team as necessary and continuing to get involved in various ways to make a positive impact to our industry and help others starting in this career.

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PLANADVISER: As a retirement plan adviser, what do you take the most pride in?

Garcia: Developing a relationship with clients where I’ve become their trusted advisor and partner. This relationship also applies to the participants we serve and helping individuals feel more confident and comfortable about their finances gives me a lot of pride as well as that is the main objective of we do as retirement plan advisors.

 

PLANADVISER: How do you grow your business? What changes to your practice or service model are you planning for 2022 or 2023?  

Garcia: There are various channels I maintain in order to grow my business. This includes developing valuable relationships with centers of influence (i.e. health and welfare brokers, CPA), RFP’s, as well as sponsoring HR and Finance conferences where we host prospecting events.  In addition to continuing to add clients, our team is focused on fine tuning our participant financial wellness efforts in 2022 – 2023.

 

PLANADVISER: How do you go about moving from words and ideas to action when it comes to addressing the lack of diversity in the financial advisory industry? 

Garcia: Looking for ways to get involved with different organizations within the industry and in the community to continue to bring awareness not only on the lack of diversity in the industry but most importantly to me personally is the lack of financial literacy in underrepresented communities. Collaborating with colleagues in the industry that share the common goal to make an impact in the area of DE&I.

 

PLANADVISER: What are some of the benefits that an equitable and inclusive culture bring to a firm and its people? 

Garcia: An equitable and inclusive culture provides individuals with a sense of belonging and respect, which turns into joy at work. To enjoy the work one does, alongside with a team and organization that values you as an individual makes an impactful difference.  This results in many benefits to an organization from business perspective, in the form of employee engagement, job satisfaction, connection to the overall mission of the organization and ultimately a positive impact to the bottom line. This culture of inclusivity also helps firms better connect with the plan sponsors and especially the employees we serve.

2022 RPAY – Sean Bjork, Bjork Asset Management, Inc.


Business at a Glance as of 12/31/21:

–             Plan assets under advisement: $412 million  

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–             Median plan size (in assets): $5.4 million

–             Plans under administration: 34

–             Total participants served: 4,529


PLANADVISER: Tell us about your practice and how you got into advising retirement plans.

Bjork: My practice was historically plan only with participant advice and guidance delivered within the context of the workplace retirement savings plan. Over the last handful of years, we have seen not only a convergence of health and wealth conversations but a broadening of the conversations we’re having with both sponsors and participants regarding their financial lives beyond the retirement plan. Today, we are building out comprehensive financial planning and wealth management capabilities to serve participants more holistically and support their broader financial decisions.

My background as a workplace benefits generalist provided the experiences that I feel shape how we serve our clients today. Fresh out of college I worked as a wholesaler for Great-West Life in Boston (covering the New England territory). Many in our industry got their start in a similar role and I’m thankful for the experience of working with all sizes and types of employers, decision makers and employees, and types of benefits, eventually migrating to the role of a DC plan specialist (during the run up of the tech bubble!).

Fast forward 4-5 years, I moved back to Chicago to work for a family-owned benefits shop which involved starting from scratch and living in my parents’ basement for much longer than I would like to admit. Following a similar path, I again went from being a benefits generalist to focusing exclusively on DC plans and founded my own company in 2007/2008 (great timing!) and focused on finding the right clients who wanted to make a positive impact in their employee’s lives.

 

PLANADVISER: As a retirement plan adviser, what do you take the most pride in?

Bjork: I know it sounds cliché but moving the needle for participants is one of the things that truly gets me up in the morning. I really mean it when I say I’m not only willing but truly grateful for the opportunity to get to know participants, understand their needs, and how to best support their retirement journeys. I know a lot of advisors who run and hide under their desks from participant phone calls (I used to be one of them!) but it gives me great pride to help drive positive outcomes for people the financial services industry might otherwise overlook.

An example I’m particularly proud of is when I made the trip to a turkey boning plant in Arkansas to do a 3rd shift meeting rolling out auto-enroll and auto-increase many years ago and before it became the de-facto norm in our practice. I brought in breakfast for the night shift and simply spent the time to learn from participants firsthand and help educate them on their retirement savings journey. This is exactly why I started my own business, to have the ability to make a difference for participants, including those that our industry has historically underserved.

 

PLANADVISER: How do you grow your business? What changes to your practice or service model are you planning for 2022 or 2023?

Bjork: Historically our growth has come from traditional channels: COI, Referrals, etc. We are currently in the final phases of building out in-house financial planning and wealth management capabilities which is where we expect significant growth to come from in 2022 and 2023. We’ve seen the need with our clients and have been asked to provide these services by both plan sponsors and participants.

What drove this direction was speaking (virtually) with participants during early 2020 and seeing how much need there was for coaching and guidance beyond the workplace retirement savings plan. We’ve had plan sponsors express concerns about potential conflicts with plan providers monetizing proprietary or 3rd party solutions. To mitigate these concerns while bringing more value to ALL participants (even those who may not be ready for financial planning and wealth management services), we are integrating a conflict-free financial wellness benefit as the glue in our service model to bring all of these conversations together.

 

PLANADVISER: What challenges do you think the retirement plan industry faces and what role do you have in addressing and confronting those challenges?

Bjork: As retirement plan advisors, we need to move away from only investing our time into wealthy individuals who have already amassed some arbitrary threshold of investable assets, $500k+ for example. As an industry and as advisers, we need to shift our focus to helping ALL people (plan participants and beyond) become financially well. With a stable financial foundation, we can then help people move forward, grow their wealth, and achieve their financial goals for retirement and beyond. The retirement plan industry has an opportunity to reinvent itself as participant-first. We need to offer high value, transparent, and scalable ways to help the average American worker achieve their financial goals.

 

PLANADVISER: Why do you feel it is important to work individually with plan participants?

Bjork: There is a tremendous amount of amazing research and data which all support that the current model isn’t moving the needle for the American worker. By way of example, look at the adoption rates on the “advice and guidance” section of any plan provider’s website which will likely be less than 2%. Further, this data only tells half the story. Working with individuals keeps me close to the everyday needs of participants beyond the numbers.

I don’t want to guess what people are feeling and experiencing, I want to know, and for this reason, I will always make the effort to spend time with participants. By way of example, even those who “no show” for our 1-1’s get a personalized action plan sent to them based on their questionnaire responses because what we do is intimidating to most Americans and the ones who don’t show up for the 1-1 (or those who don’t ask for help) may end up being those who need our help the most.

 

PLANADVISER: What are the biggest challenges that plan participants face today and how are you helping to address them? 

Bjork: If the pandemic taught us anything, it was the importance of financial resilience, or the ability to bounce back from an unforeseen financial challenge. A lot of people suffered unduly over the past couple of years because they were underinformed and/or underprepared financially.

Today, I’m working hard to address this by integrating financial wellness solutions into my practice as a baseline to broaden the scope of our conversation with participants and begin the conversations that can potentially change the trajectory of not only their retirement savings, but their lives. Access to trusted financial wellness and coaching has been an absolute game-changer for our clients and we’re seeing it build a solid foundation for participants financial success.

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