Finspire, LLC (Charles Williams pictured)

Business at a Glance as of 12/31/22

• Plan assets under advisement: $1.25 Billion
• Median plan size (in assets): $11 Million
• Plans under administration: 59
• Total participants served: 33,000

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

Finspire: Finspire is an independent, corporate retirement plan consulting firm focused on providing an exceptional level of service to retirement plan sponsors and participants. We strive to maintain a progressive business model and build a diverse team of like-minded, trusted professionals dedicated to enhancing the client experience.

The founder of Finspire, Chuck Williams, first started in the financial services industry as a personal wealth adviser, whereby he assisted individuals and families by managing their personal assets. After getting his Certified Financial Planning (CFP) designation, Chuck felt he could positively impact more individuals by meeting them at their offices and helping them understand and maximize the impact of their greatest tool for achieving their long-term financial goals: their company-sponsored retirement plan.

After working with a commercial bank to help develop a retirement plan consulting business for bank clients, Chuck joined an upstart independent retirement plan consulting firm in 2008 that grew dramatically over his 10-year tenure there. In 2018, Chuck, along with co-founders Chris Karam and James Jaramillo, founded Finspire with the objective of restoring the high level of retirement plan expertise and service quality that had been eroding due to mass consolidation throughout the industry.

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

Finspire: Our culture is at the heart of our organization. We make sure all our efforts reflect our commitment to:

• Our clients—providing innovative solutions combined with an exceptional level of service;
• Our employees—creating an environment in which inclusion, diversity and equity are valued and respected; and
• Our community—recognizing the impact we can have goes far beyond the services we provide our clients.

Each member of the team came into the retirement plan industry through different paths, but the commonality of all is a passion to serve and empower others to set and reach their financial goals to have more fulfilling lives.

We have evolved from the traditional retirement plan advisory model in which a lead adviser is at the top of the service pyramid, is the primary focal point for the client and generally is the only one who receives a percentage of revenue from the practice. Our service model is truly team-based, because all members of our group are intimately involved in enhancing the experience for our clients and benefit financially and professionally from the success of the firm. This model resembles those you would find in high-performing RIAs, in which multiple disciplines and specialties within a firm are regularly tapped to serve clients and help achieve their objectives.

This multidisciplinary approach is well-suited to serve private equity firms by providing them with retirement plan merger-and-acquisition guidance during their pre-acquisition due diligence phase. We have produced 23 due diligence reports over the last two calendar years [2021 and 2022].

In five years, we intend to be a multi-faceted retirement and corporate consulting firm assisting clients with effectively managing their overall employee wealth benefits offerings and helping achieve other financial objectives of the organization.

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

Finspire: As a firm, we take the most pride in the feedback we receive from clients, peers and retirement plan industry partners. Clients will often thank us for going that “extra mile” to provide assistance that goes beyond what is outlined in our service agreement and beyond what they may have expected. We also take great pride in the reaction we get when we tell our story to peers or retirement industry partners, as they appreciate our passion, integrity and commitment to improve the lives of those we interact with in our business.

We take a proactive and prescriptive approach to our client engagements. While our clients want to be informed about past performance, the forward-looking nature of our plan design benchmarking, retirement income selection process and collaborative annual service provider reviews collectively make us an indispensable financial partner.

We also take great pride in the growth of our employees. We challenge everyone on the team to stretch beyond what they may have felt comfortable taking on in the past and to challenge the ‘status quo’ of how retirement plan advisory practices have been built in the past. The result has been some truly amazing individual accomplishments by each team member, which has benefited them individually and, in turn, powered the success of our firm.

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

Finspire: We have grown our business primarily organically since our inception in December 2018 through referrals from clients, recordkeepers and various centers of influence in our industry. Until recently, the referrals were primarily for 401(k) plan advisory services. In the past couple of years, we’ve broadened our offering to provide advisory services for other corporate retirement plan types (defined benefit, NQ plans, 403(b), etc.) as well as providing pre-acquisition corporate retirement plan due diligence reporting for companies involved in M&A, as well as investment consulting for endowments and foundations.

In 2019, we successfully integrated a wealth advisory practice to further diversify our revenue beyond corporate services and into personal services, including financial planning, tax analysis and both asset and liability management. These have broadened our scope and allowed us to add more value for our clients.

We have been educating clients over the last two years about emerging developments in retirement income solutions within corporate retirement plans. This will continue over the next several years as we firmly believe the appropriate retirement income solutions can have widespread benefit for employees and plan sponsors.

Our multidisciplinary advisory and consulting platform is designed to scale further organic growth and is well-situated to support future inorganic growth by adding new advisers and consultants. We will be adding professionals to the team in 2023 and 2024 and cross-training them in the areas of retirement plan advisory and personal wealth management.

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

Finspire: We believe one of the greatest challenges facing the retirement industry is attracting younger people and those who, historically, have been underrepresented in our field. On the positive side, we have seen recent cracks in the barriers to entry as the result of a variety of factors, including efforts by financial organizations, educational institutions and philanthropic organizations to raise awareness and remove impediments.

Our role at Finspire is initially to lead by example by looking for team members that match our vision. The result has been a team today that is still relatively small but well-diversified in terms of age, gender, ethnicity and work experience. We believe all team members believe they are valued and celebrated for their unique skills and personal attributes. While we cannot provide the large financial support larger organizations can (and often do!), we can still be very impactful by increasing our awareness and finding opportunities to make an impact.

PLANADVISER: Please tell us about an important experience you have had as either a mentor or mentee.

Finspire: Below are a few examples of our mentorship and education efforts:

• 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 per 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. Chuck also volunteers with Advisers Giving Back, a not-for-profit organization providing financial guidance for underserved individuals and families in Chicago.
• Our CIO, Chris Karam, has mentored two investment professionals in his capacity as a supervisor and as an outsourced investment consultant. The mentorship opportunities included guiding an intern and a professional engineer through the pension and investment field, helping determine their respective career paths and supporting their work/life balance during their pursuit of becoming CFA charter holders. Both achieved their coveted CFA charter holder status. One is in a hybrid investment sales/service role with an emphasis in retirement income, and the other is a senior investment analyst with a large industry aggregator.
• Calla Gorman is a founding member of the formerly named Women in Pensions Network’s Chicago Chapter, which actively engages institutions to promote the advancement of women in the corporate retirement plan industry. Calla was also named to the DCIIA’s List of DEI Rising Stars for 2021 and 2022.

PLANADVISER: What advice can you give to your industry peers about developing successful experiences for both mentors and mentees?

Finspire: We ask all employees to strive to be both a mentor and a mentee to someone either within Finspire or outside the organization. We believe we all have something to learn from someone else, and we all have knowledge and skills that we can be of benefit to others. I’d recommend our industry peers look to do the same, as being both a mentor and a mentee can ensure that you’re growing professionally and are paving the way for the next group of industry leaders.