May 1, 2023

2023 RPAY – Derek Fiorenza, Summit Group Retirement Planners, Inc.

Reported by

Business at a Glance as of 12/31/22

  • Plan assets under advisement: $164 million
  • Median plan size (in assets): Around $2 million to $2.5 million
  • Plans under administration: 63
  • Total participants served: Between 4,000 and 5,000

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

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Fiorenza: Advising on retirement plans is much more than a job. It’s a calling—a vocation. I am driven by a strong desire to make the world better through humble and focused service. I noticed early on working in my family investment advisory business with my father, Anthony Fiorenza, that providing support and guidance to employees of companies enabled me to accommodate a wide swath of individuals. This enables me to educate and interact with participants of all income levels and assets.

At our firm, we believe every American deserves an opportunity to retire debt-free and with dignity. To that end, my personal mission is to empower every participant I have the opportunity to work with so that they are able to acquire the knowledge and understanding not just of the importance of saving for retirement, but of monitoring and managing their overall financial health.

As we have grown our family practice, we have maintained a disposition committed to a prudently documented process built on striving to address the needs of the individuals with whom we consult and their families. I am honored to be a retirement plan specialist, and I truly live this passion each day I go to work.


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

Fiorenza: We have grown as a family business with my father and myself. In terms of the future, I have several very important goals. I want to continue growing organically and maintain ownership of our company as a family business. I also want to build the business to a point where we can add other advisers and relationship managers to our team to maintain our high level of participant communication and education.

Beyond the business growth that I am targeting, I also want to create profits from our company that I can direct to help support the nonprofit organization I founded in 2011, Fiorenza’s Food For Friends (F4).

I still serve as the president of F4. It is an unpaid, volunteer role. The goal of the organization is to create a world without hunger by connecting sources of food to recipients in need. In totality, we have helped to distribute more than 6.5 million pounds of food across 34 states. We do not apply for or accept government funds, and we also do not charge program fees to the donors or food banks and shelters we assist. www.f4service.org


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

Fiorenza: I try to always maintain a disposition of humility, but I would say I feel most fulfilled when I am able to impart knowledge that brings hope to the participants I work with. I love knowing that I am helping support employees and their families and that, hopefully, a result of our collaborations and meetings are better future outcomes. Seeing others realize their potential and grow brings me great joy, and it inspires me to want to work even harder to take our services to a higher level, professionally and emotionally. I want all of our clients to not just have a path forward that makes sense objectively, but also ensure that they are comfortable in the sense that it aligns with their value system.


PLANADVISER: How do you grow your business? What changes to your practice or service model are you planning for 2023 or 2024?

Fiorenza: I strive to grow our business organically. I have created two professional networking mastermind groups with other working professionals that provide services to companies (for example, payroll, worker’s compensation, auditing services, legal services, banking, etc). We review business successes and failures monthly when we convene, and we also review educational topics we believe can be beneficial to our respective clients.

I also try to help professionals network and grow their businesses or even make introductions to help them obtain employment and a new job if they are looking for new opportunities.

Lastly, I try to communicate with plan sponsors and HR directors that I have worked with in the past when they move on to a new employer.


PLANADVISER: Please tell us about an important experience you have had while getting involved in your local, regional or global community.

Fiorenza: I strive to live a life dedicated to service. Philanthropically, I am working hard to expand the efforts of our charity. My lifelong goal is to provide 1 billion pounds of food to those that are suffering and hungry around the world.

From a financial wellness and literacy standpoint, I am a member of the Retirement Advisor Council. One of my roles as part of the RAC is to serve as the organization’s secretary for the Financial Literacy Committee. I take notes at all meetings and two of the subcommittee meetings. Our goal is to build awareness around the importance of financial literacy, starting in grade school, high school, college and beyond, across all 50 states.

Lastly, I also play guitar and serve as a lector at my church, and I cherish my worship community


PLANADVISER: What advice can you give to your industry peers about developing a successful philanthropic or charitable vision for a firm?

Fiorenza: My advice would simply be to evaluate why you do what you do? Why are you a retirement plan specialist? Why are you a financial adviser? Why do you run your own business?

Once you can clearly establish why you are in this field, my next question would be, ‘Are you fulfilled?’ If yes, great, what about your job do you find fulfilling? If no, do you know what you would find fulfilling? If not, what can you do to explore that further?

Lastly, consider your life and your legacy. What do you want to be known for? For me, it’s simple: I want to bring hope to others, and I want every person I work with to feel appreciated, respected, valued and be in a better position after I speak with them. That’s my goal, and that’s the paradigm I operate from when I make decisions.


Disclosure

Summit Group Retirement Planners, Inc. is a member of Center for Fiduciary Excellence.

Derek Fiorenza is a member of the National Association of Plan Advisors (NAPA) and Retirement Partners Group (RPG). RPG is a network associated with LPL Financial. NAPA Top DC Advisor Firms selected based solely on defined contribution (DC) plan assets under advisement as reported directly by nominees. Summit Group Retirement Planners, Inc has been recognized in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.

Securities offered through LPL Financial. Member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advice offered through Summit Group Retirement Planners, Inc., a Registered Investment Advisor. Summit Group Retirement Planners, Inc. and Summit Group Associates are separate entities from LPL Financial.

The information contained in this email message is being transmitted to and is intended for the use of only the individual(s) to whom it is addressed. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby advised that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please immediately delete.

NAPA “Young Guns” for 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019 and “ACES” award for 2020: nominated and voted on by industry peers and selected by a NAPA member committee based on business profile and future industry leadership potential.

Derek was selected as a member of the 2021 Class of Vista Millennial Superstars – “40 Chester County Superstars Under 40”

May 1, 2023

2023 RPAY – William Peragine, HUB International Retirement & Private Wealth

Reported by

Business at a Glance as of 12/31/22

  • Plan assets under advisement: $1.8 billion
  • Median plan size (in assets): $38 million
  • Plans under administration: 48
  • Total participants served: 26,000

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

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Peragine: Our team has been designing, implementing and managing retirement plans since 1993. I got involved in advising on retirement plans because, as a traditional wealth management adviser, I would have clients come to me and ask me how their company retirement plan worked or how to invest in their company plan. In doing so, I observed so many deficiencies in these plans that I decided to pursue that side of the business where I could advise companies on how to better their plan for their employees.


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

Peragine: Our team is unique in that the core people on the team have been together for more than 25 years, thus providing our clients with a sense of consistency and security. With that much experience, we offer a tremendous amount of industry insight, which betters our clients’ plans and ultimately makes for better participant outcomes. We have evolved as industry experts because for more than 25 years, we have gained knowledge and expertise that only comes with experience. You cannot teach or learn experience, and in five years, our team will still be together with even more experience. We will be of retirement age and able to share with our clients what it was like to go from just starting in a retirement plan to retirement.


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

Peragine: As a retirement adviser, I take the most pride in empowering employees to embrace their company’s retirement plan and also providing a meaningful impact on the financial outcomes of each and every participant. I also take a tremendous amount of pride in designing a retirement plan/benefit that fits the needs of a company’s specific culture while driving as much cost as possible out of the plan. And finally, I am so proud that I am able to use my experience and relationships in the industry to be an advocate for the plan sponsors and make each one of our plans the best it can be.


PLANADVISER: How do you grow your business? What changes to your practice or service model are you planning for 2023 or 2024?

Peragine: We grow our business in three ways. First, we have long and strong relationships with our clients, which has helped grow our business through client referrals, as well as when one of our clients’ key decisionmakers decides to work for another employer,–they inevitably contact us to manage the retirement plan at their new employer. Second, because of our more than 25 years of experience and solid reputation in the industry, we have gotten referrals from the various vendors, relationships in the industry and fund families. Third, since we have joined HUB International, we have received referrals from the benefit brokers at our firm.


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

Peragine: I believe the retirement industry continues to face the challenge of engaging and empowering participants to embrace the awesome task of saving for a comfortable retirement. There are some things that I have done and continue to do to assist in that mission. First: design a plan that fits every company and its demographics. Second: make sure I continue to be diligent in driving as much cost out of the plan so the participants have a larger balance at retirement. Third: make sure that there is a fund due diligence process in place to ensure the participants always have best-in-class funds available to them. Fourth: implement a consistent communications strategy to educate the employees that are in the plan and engage the employees that are not in the plan to start to save for retirement. Finally: monitor the results of all these items so we can strategize with the plan sponsor to do a better job every year.


PLANADVISER: Please tell us about an important experience you have had while getting involved in your local, regional or global community

Peragine: During my time servicing New York Cancer and Blood’s retirement plan, I learned about how special a place it truly was by offering unparalleled care for its patients. But when I went a step further, I learned about the New York Cancer Foundation and its commitment to helping patients diagnosed with cancer. Because of the doctors’ concern for their patients’ overall well-being, the New York Cancer Foundation was born with the doctors contributing a portion of their pay to start the foundation. The foundation provides financial assistance to those undergoing the stresses of being diagnosed with cancer and by being a place and resource that helps those who cannot help themselves. I initially volunteered to work on several fundraising events and have been, for more than four years, one of the only board members not employed by New York Cancer and Blood. This foundation is especially close to my heart because my dad was diagnosed with three different types of cancer in his lifetime, and although my dad had the resources and family support in place, it was obvious to me that he constantly worried about how his diagnosis impacted his family and whether they would be able to endure the financial stress of his diagnosis. This is why I could not help but get involved, volunteer my time and give back.

The New York Cancer Foundation’s mission statement is to help relieve the financial stresses experienced by patients who are under care for cancer. The foundation helps people with things like paying rent, paying for food, transportation or any basic need they cannot afford during their cancer treatment. The foundation has experienced tremendous growth in 2022, and our events have raised quite a bit money—more than we have raised in prior years! Through individual contributions and our events in 2022, we raised $1,929,000. This helped us help more families as well: We went from 142 grant recipients in 2021 to 427 in 2022! We have awarded $865 million in grants to cancer patients from Brooklyn all the way to Southampton and also helped grant recipients get to and from their cancer treatments with more than 2,200 UberHealth rides. https://www.nycancerfoundation.org/


PLANADVISER: What advice can you give to your industry peers about developing a successful philanthropic or charitable vision for a firm?

Peragine: My advice is to be grateful and understand how fortunate we are as financial advisers to have the resources that so many do not have to live a comfortable life. We spend a tremendous amount of time assisting people with retirement readiness, closing the income gap and having a positive retirement outcome. But we rarely think that there are many people undergoing financial stresses that prevent them from even thinking about retirement. I challenge everyone to look to your community or to a charity that is meaningful to you and participate. There are so many good causes that need people and their time. As a team, we encourage all of our team members to participate in the community, in a charity or for any cause that can help others.

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