Michael Ready

Partner and Retirement Plan Specialist, Summit Financial Group

Business at a Glance

PLANADVISER: How has your retirement plan practice evolved over the past three to five years? What strategic decisions most changed your growth trajectory or client impact?

Ready: In 2022, we made the deliberate decision to rebuild from the ground up—how we attract new clients, how we serve existing ones and how we deliver value throughout the year. We upgraded our participant resources, restructured our client review process and sharpened how both prospects and long-term clients experience working with us. The impact was meaningful: stronger plan outcomes, better meeting engagement and a clearer picture of where the practice was headed.

That same year, we began planning a leadership transition—a structured 5- to 7-year succession from Founder Brian Drake to myself and the broader advisory team. In 2024, we added Adviser Laura Mongon to deepen our capacity and accelerate the process. When Brian retired in 2025—sooner than any of us anticipated due to unforeseen circumstances—we were operationally ready, even if it was emotionally difficult. We executed the full transition in less than six months, with no disruption to clients and strong retention throughout.

That outcome wasn’t luck. It was the direct result of the intentional work we had done in the years prior—building systems, developing talent and investing in the client experience before we needed to. The discipline we applied in 2022 and beyond created resilience to handle something none of us fully planned for.

PLANADVISER: What does “success” look like for your firm beyond asset growth? How do you balance business performance, client results, and team development?

Ready: Success is a firm where culture, values and client experience don’t depend on any single person. For Summit, that means building around four core beliefs:

Trust compounds. Relationships built on consistent delivery and transparent counsel create value that can’t be replicated through clever marketing or aggressive pricing.

Process is a differentiator. In a commoditizing market, how we do our work matters as much as what we deliver. Disciplined processes create confidence and reduces risk—for clients and for our team.

Consistency beats customization at scale. Every client should feel like they’re getting a tailored experience, but that experience must be grounded in repeatable systems. Customization should enhance consistency, not undermine it.

The firm outlives any one adviser. We’re building an institution, not a practice. That means designing an experience that doesn’t hinge on individual relationships or personal heroics.

That said, none of it matters if we’re not growing. Acquiring new clients isn’t a bonus—it’s the baseline. Attrition is constant, and a firm that isn’t building is gradually shrinking.

Our ultimate measure of success: a scalable, teachable client experience that the next adviser can deliver just as well as the last—because the methodology is documented, embedded and owned by the firm, not the individual.

PLANADVISER: What is the most complex or persistent challenge your 403(b) clients face today? How have you helped address it?

Ready: 403(b) clients navigate a distinct set of pressures. The most common we see: fiduciary exposure that grows with plan size; regulatory and funding changes that can reshape benefit offerings; and M&A activity—particularly in health care—that forces rapid integration of cultures and benefit structures.

But the two challenges we encounter most consistently are also the most human: helping employees engage with their financial lives and relieving the impossible workload of HR teams trying to manage it all.

Many of our 403(b) clients serve employees whose entire professional identity is built around caring for others—health care workers, educators, nonprofit staff. These are people who are often emotionally drained by their work and have little bandwidth left to think about their finances. COVID made this viscerally clear. When stress is chronic and time is scarce, financial wellness programs fail if they’re not delivered in ways that meet people where they are.

Layered on top of that, HR teams at these organizations are stretched thin—managing onboarding, compliance, benefits administration and strategy with shrinking capacity.

Our response has been to function as an extension of the HR team, not just the retirement plan. By getting to know employees beyond their account balances—and showing up when life changes—we’ve taken a real burden off HR, while ensuring employees have access to the guidance they actually need.

PLANADVISER: How did you build expertise in the 403(b) market, and what advice would you give advisers considering this specialization?

Ready: My foundation came from my time at Transamerica as a client executive from 2015 to 2018. About one-third of my book was 403(b) plans, and Transamerica had a substantial nonprofit block. I was constantly learning from colleagues and clients who lived in that world. Those three years shaped how I approach this market more than anything else in my career.

The single best thing I did was surround myself with people who knew more than I did. That sounds obvious, but advisers underestimate how much faster you grow when you stop trying to figure everything out independently. The people I worked alongside at Transamerica—and the advisers I connected with during that stretch—still influence how I work with clients today.

My advice to anyone considering this specialization: Don’t treat it as a separate discipline. 403(b)s differ from 401(k)s in meaningful ways—plan governance, funding vehicles, participant demographics—but the core work is identical. You’re helping people make better decisions, whether they’re the plan sponsor or the participant. The advisory framework doesn’t change because the plan type does.

Master the fundamentals, learn the nuances and find people already doing this well. The specialization is worth pursuing—the nonprofit and health care markets are underserved and deeply loyal when you earn their trust.

Members of Summit Financial Group use Summit Financial Group as a marketing name for doing business as representatives of Northwestern Mutual. Northwestern Mutual Private Client Group is a select group of NM advisors and representatives. Summit Financial Group and Northwestern Mutual Private Client Group are not a registered investment adviser, broker-dealer, insurance agency, federal savings bank or other legal entity. To view detailed disclosures regarding individual representatives, view their information at summit.nm.com.

Northwestern Mutual is the marketing name for The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company (NM) and its subsidiaries including Northwestern Long Term Care Insurance Company (NLTC), Northwestern Mutual Investment Services, LLC (NMIS) (Investment Brokerage Services), a registered investment adviser, broker-dealer, and member of FINRA and SIPC, and Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company® (NMWMC) (Investment Advisory Services), a federal savings bank.