April 21, 2022

2022 RPAY – Christopher Jamail, TCG – Trusted Capital Group

Reported by

Business at a Glance as of 12/31/21

  • Plan assets under advisement: $4.25 billion
  • Median plan size (in assets): $5 million
  • Plans under administration: 1,000
  • Total participants served: 800,000

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

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Jamail: The firm actually was established as a consulting firm with a prominence in governmental and non-profit plans. The founders spent the first several years working with organizations to help them design their plans, issue RFPs to select vendors, and general oversight. It was at this time it was recognized just how high cost and bad the responses were, so the company shifted away from one time consulting arrangements to ongoing advisory relationships. It was there that TCG could really continue to expose bad actors and impact change for its clients.

 

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

Jamail: We designed our unique team structure around having someone to support the boardroom and the breakroom. We have an advisor or consultant assigned to work with the plan sponsor investment committee, whose skill set is focused on plan level issues such as plan design, fiduciary responsibilities and investment oversight. We then have a specialist whose responsibility, and training, is geared towards financial education and participant-level advice.

The model has evolved over the years from the generalist advisor that was responsible for all activities within the plan. It wasn’t that talented people weren’t in this role and couldn’t handle all aspects, but it was slower to scale and ultimately we want people to do what they are best at. The reality is some people are better at plan level activities, and others are better working with individuals.

In the next five years we will continue to see the further evolution of the team model. While I’m not exactly sure what that looks like, I don’t think we will go back to the single advisor for the entire plan.  Not only has the workforce and workplace changed during the recent pandemic for our clients, but it has also changed for advisors, and we need to adapt too. We certainly can continue to embrace technology, but there is a large part of the population, and employers themselves, that lives on the analog side of the digital divide.

 

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

Jamail: I take the most pride in improving outcomes, for both participants and plan sponsors. More specifically, when you see the individual realize the result of the hard work and investment they have made. For a plan sponsor and investment committee, sometimes we forget these are individuals that may not have an investment background, and they are there because they care about their employees and peers. It takes dedication and effort to not only put a plan together, but to consistently meet, discuss ongoing issues or new trends, and then to work the plan. It feels impactful when all of these come together. Everything we do is a process, not a product.

 

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

Jamail: Like many others we embrace technology to support growth and scale, but we support it with a human element. I think in 2022 and into 2023 and beyond, we will continue to see the advancement of technology specifically to our infrastructure and the integration for the improvement of the client experience. As we grow, we may look to continue to evolve our service model to create more specialists. Many years back the Advisor was responsible for every aspect of the plan from boardroom to breakroom. Then we added participant specialists who more effectively spend their time with that work so the Advisor can focus on plan level responsibilities. In 2020 we then added financial coaches to even more specifically focus on all employees, not just plan participants, as financial empowerment is a significant focus for our firm.

Additionally, a few years back we launched TeleWealth, a platform that allows our plan participants to more easily schedule appointments and connect with our financial advisors across the country. We have seen tremendous growth in usage whether this results in a video or traditional phone call to help meet the needs of the employee.

 

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

Jamail: At the end of the day financial conversations are personal and emotional – whether you are talking to a plan sponsor or plan participant. They both have fears, worries and concerns about whether they are doing it right. Fintech is making a difference, and as new technology continues to emerge and develop, we must remember the emotional component of our business. When you look at the industry through the lens of education, advice and solutions you see that we have decades of experience and have become pretty efficient with general participant education. With fintech having another blockbuster year with fundraising, there will continue to be an abundance of solutions coming to the marketplace. What we can’t forget about is the middle, and what most plan sponsors and participants need most, and that’s advice and conversation.

We also must become more inclusive in our financial conversations. Overall plan health success is when you focus on the entire range of employees and helping those from surviving to thriving. We have made tremendous strides with financial wellness initiatives, but I still see too many advisors and employers wanting this to be a retirement plan participant benefit only without access to tools and coaches for everyone.

 

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

Jamail: Many years ago I was giving a retirement presentation to a group of cafeteria staff at an urban school district. It was a smaller group and included older and younger employees. At one point we are talking about the minimum amount someone can afford to save when one of the older ladies told the group they need to start early even if it is the minimum. She continued with how she had put away $25 a paycheck and now had a couple thousand dollars. Another lady commented how she had been at the district for years and no one had ever come down to speak with them. 

It was this comment that people had been ignored, and at the same time they cared very much about their families that I remember. This is why I try to stay away from the phrase financial literacy, as I believe it ultimately labels people as illiterate.  If you actually have a conversation with someone, you will realize most are very literate in the financial world to which they have been exposed. Our financial gap is 100% limited by our exposure.

 

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

Jamail: If you are looking to set a philanthropic or charitable vision for your firm, as a leader you should help point everyone in the direction of the north star, but ultimately it is the team that accomplishes it. Set the meeting and then listen to what’s important to your team. A few years back we created an internal committee made up of employees at all levels of the organization, and their goal was to make sure as a company we took care of employees and their needs. In addition to purely internal activities, it was encouraged to consider fundraising and volunteer opportunities. From there it was no longer a top down initiative, but everyone brought ideas to the table that they cared about. Our employees have been very generous in creating back to school supply drives, raising money for other charities, food drives, fun-runs and more.

Another piece of advice is it takes dedicated action to make the vision realized, and you can’t fake passion for long. When our partners decided to financially support the startup of a non-profit focused on financial empowerment, it wasn’t anything any of us had done before. Donating to a charity, and creating a charity are definitely different activities. As a team, we’ve spent countless hours researching legal aspects, creating awareness and fundraising, learning how to create non-profit budgets (which trust me are very different), grant writing, establishing advisory boards, and the list continues. If it wasn’t for the dedication by everyone, and the belief that we are making a difference, then it would still be only a vision.

April 21, 2022

2022 RPAY – Kathleen Kelly, Compass Financial Partners, a Marsh McLennan Agency LLC Company

Reported by

Business at a Glance as of 12/31/21

  • Plan assets under advisement: $14.1 billion
  • Median plan size (in assets): $39 million
  • Plans under administration: 92
  • Total participants served: 178,194

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

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Kelly: Like most of you I imagine, I did not set out to become a retirement plan consultant, or industry specialist! I was always good at math and science, and majored in economics at Wake Forest, but realized from a career perspective, I wanted to interact with people, and have a greater control of my destiny, as opposed to analyzing numbers. After graduation, I took a job as a financial planner with an insurance company broker/dealer. I will never forget my career counselor at Wake advising me not to take the job—it was sales—and I had no natural market—I would surely fail—but boy was I going to prove him wrong!

I recognized early on that one thing my career counselor was right about, was that I had no natural market, that I would have to do things differently, and partnering and collaborating with other colleagues was going to be integral to my longevity in the business. I had an immediate chemistry with one of my new colleagues, and we began building a practice focused on estate planning. We ultimately found that many of our clients were also business owners—and inevitably had a retirement plan that they needed help with—and so began a focus in retirement plan advising.

Through relationships we had built in our community, my business partner George Hoyle (who I subsequently married) and I teamed-up with an insurance agency, and a CPA firm, and launched Compass Financial Partners with just a part-time assistant in 2002.

 

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

Kelly: Very simply. We love what we do. WE PAVE A PATH TO THE FUTURE. A nationally recognized firm, Compass Financial Partners combines a talented, experienced team, scale and leverage with our partners and unmatched passion for retirement plan consulting. We know we’re not the only team offering retirement plan consulting to plan sponsors across the U.S. But while other firms may offer a similar list of services, we believe that who we are and how we operate sets us apart. As highly credentialed professionals with a seasoned history in helping plan sponsors maximize their retirement plan benefit, we have earned the trust and respect of our clients, and have established ourselves as recognized thought leaders nationally in the retirement plan industry.

As the cornerstone of our service model, we feel our proactive approach and responsiveness to client needs is an area that sets us apart from other consultants. The goal is to do for our clients what we would love for someone to do for us: To anticipate their needs, to surprise them with our attention to detail … and our attention to them. And, ultimately to give them the confidence that they are fulfilling their role not only as fiduciaries, but as stewards, of their employee’s retirement savings. We recognize that we have an awesome responsibility, but an equally awesome opportunity to make a difference in the lives of employees that may never know we exist—and we take that very seriously.

In 2021, Compass Financial Partners joined Marsh & McLennan Agency LLC (MMA), a subsidiary of Marsh LLC and Marsh & McLennan Companies, the leading global professional services firm in the areas of risk, strategy and people. Our alignment with MMA allows us the unique opportunity to maintain our culture and our high-touch service model while providing access to resources that will take our firm, our clients, and our colleagues to the next level. As our clients have begun to experience, over the next five years we will continue to expand the offerings, services, and specialty expertise we deliver while augmenting our capabilities to address the growing convergence of health, wealth, retirement, and overall well-being.

 

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

Kelly: As we built our business, we knew we had to establish a differentiator, and for us, it was, and still is, our passion. We have a passion for what we do and a passion for results. We are very success oriented. In fact, we felt so strongly about it, that we trademarked our mantra. Process plus passion together will undoubtedly yield extraordinary results.

That passion is also a conviction in delivering an ROI to our clients. We’re not yes-people. We’re hired to help clients, to move the needle. We are honest. And, it is an engaged, collaborative process. We live and breathe social responsibility, it has always been woven into our DNA.

 

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

Kelly: One of the most exciting community outreach initiatives we began was our Compass Cares – Racing for a Reason initiative. In early 2020, as a result of wanting to encourage both healthy habits as well as community outreach, we designed a 5k walk/run charitable event series. Our commitment was to select and sponsor 5K races while paying the entry fees for any employee who wished to participate.

Additionally, there was an added benefit to selecting the Core (HSA) benefit offering, as for each 5k event Compass sponsored, and a team member participated in, Compass contributed $100 to their HAS account. A list of events was sent to everyone to vote on which charitable 5k’s Compass would sponsor.

Unfortunately, due to COVID, we were not able to complete some of the events as they were cancelled, but we did what we could virtually.

On an individual basis, my involvement at Winston-Salem State University (a leading HBCU) as the Board of Trustees Vice-Chair and Chairman of the GATE Committee has been very fulfilling over the past few years. My primary focus in this role is supporting the university and our chancellor in driving initiatives that ultimately seek to eliminate the black/brown wealth gap.

Finally, my role as Co-Chair of the Tocqueville Society of the United Way of Greater Greensboro (and Board of Directors role) has been quite meaningful. Through giving, advocating and volunteering time and talents I am able to address our community’s most pressing needs, with the end goal to end poverty. Just last week, we learned that in recognition of our leadership and dedication in chairing the Tocqueville Society, we have been selected to receive a United Way LIVE UNITED Centennial Volunteer Award!

 

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

Kelly: Most importantly, lead by example. From our inception, we made it clear that our purpose, and our why, included committing our time and treasure to our community. One of our five “brand promises” that we made to our clients and our colleagues included the following:

WE PROMISE TO FOCUS ON MORE THAN THE BOTTOM LINE. We are committed to our clients, our vendors, our community and our team. By doing what’s best for each them, we do what’s best for our company. It’s not always about dollars and cents. We believe in win-win solutions and long-term success. Finally, put it in writing. Then do it.

WE CARE. WE COMMIT. WE KEEP OUR COMMUNITY MOVING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION. Just as we are always striving to create a better path for our clients, Compass is also working to make our community a better place. Collectively and individually, our firm regularly commits our time, talents and financial support to many institutions and organizations in the communities we serve. By fostering the vitality of the places where we work and live, we promote the well-being of people in our communities and beyond.

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