2022 RPAY – Dan Becraft, Morgan Stanley


Business at a Glance as of 12/31/21

  • Plan assets under advisement: $450 million
  • Median plan size (in assets): $35,000 to $40,000
  • Plans under administration: 20
  • Total participants served: 3,000

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

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Becraft: My financial career catalyzed at age 12 when I won my junior high stock picking competition. That began my fascination with finance, the market, and the effect money has on the world and the people around me.

 

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

Becraft: My team structure is unique in our horizontal style of leadership. Every member of my team is welcome and encouraged to share their opinion across all topics and decisions. From interns to FAs, it is important to me that we uphold a culture of empowerment for each teammate and that they feel supported and integral to the team.

As our team evolves over the next five years my primary goal is to champion each member toward achieving their own goals. I will continue to tirelessly support my members, creating an atmosphere where we can all grow, learn, and pursue the best version of ourselves.

 

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

Becraft: I take the most pride in my phenomenal team and the positive impact we have on our clients. I am proud that every member of my team is confident and kind. Hailing from different backgrounds we each bring a unique perspective to our work. This diversity allows us to serve and care for our clients as best we can.

 

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

Becraft: I think the biggest challenge this industry faces is the homogeny of our work force. The range of clients we serve is diverse and growing, with constantly evolving wants and needs. The demographics of our industry are not keeping pace. This is one reason why efforts in DE&I are so important. Employing plan managers with different life experiences, backgrounds, beliefs etc, is necessary to best serve our clients. We need diversity of thought and perspectives to create the best solutions, and to move our industry forwards.

 

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? 

Becraft: A key obstacle to achieving better DEI is the disconnect between entry level positions/hiring practices, and promotion/leadership demographics. Much of my efforts in DEI are dedicated to changing the composition of management, promotions, and upper-level positions.

I take a three-step approach to move from words to ideas when addressing this lack of diversity. First, I believe empowerment is necessary. Individuals must feel confident in their abilities and know that I am also confident in what they can achieve. This empowerment is ingrained in my teams’ culture, demonstrated in the respect and kindness I show others, and upheld by the celebration of achievements.

The second step is delegation. I delegate work to my team members befitting their skills and goals. I want to provide my team members with positive challenges and opportunities to learn and grow across the field. I do not believe in micromanaging or assigning busy work. Rather, I believe in delegating work that will provide my team members with concrete examples of their skills and achievements.

The third step is championing. Each of my team members is invaluable in the work they do and what they bring to the team. If an individual wants to pursue career advancement, professional goals, new opportunities, etc., it is my responsibility to champion them as best I can. I do so proudly. Whatever connections I can make, recommendations I can provide, or advice and direction I can give, I am determined to provide the resources and encouragement necessary to champion others toward their goals.

By following these steps, I am both consistently surrounded by wonderful team members, and proud to have had many team members move forwards and up in their careers. I take great pride knowing I do everything within my power to create a strong foundation.

 

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

Becraft: The benefits an equitable and inclusive culture bring to a firm, and its people, are incomparable. There are endless statistics demonstrating the positive effects inclusive culture brings to firms. From a personal, anecdotal view, there are standout benefits both internally and externally.

Internally, an equitable and inclusive culture is positively correlated with a strong sense of community and dedication to the firm. When, as a firm, we focus on these things we can learn from and connect with one another, this grows kindness and empathy. These characteristics benefit everything, from daily conversations, to conflict resolution, to overall workplace satisfaction. Employees are happier in a space where they feel, safe, wanted, and respected.

These emotions and practices grown within the firm translate to outward facing business as well. If internal company culture is equitable and inclusive, treatment, relationships, and communication with clients will trend in that direction. Additionally, if staff are feeling the benefits of inclusive and equitable culture, the kindness and empathy mentioned in the internal benefits will be seen externally in employees treatment and understanding of clients. Employees will be more likely to know how to communicate effectively with clients, and better understand their wants and needs.

In my opinion, an equitable and inclusive culture is not just a benefit, but a need for firms.

2022 RPAY – Deena Rini, Oswald Financial, Inc.


Business at a Glance as of 12/31/21

  • Plan assets under advisement: $3.7 billion
  • Median plan size (in assets): $12 million
  • Plans under administration: 305
  • Total participants served: 160,000

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

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Deena Rini: Our practice was founded in 1999 by David Kulchar. After many years of being an industry leader with Principal Financial Group, Dave was highly sought after by Oswald Companies to start a new division, Retirement Plan Services. Oswald Financial, Inc. is a team of fully licensed professionals with over 200 years of combined experience in the retirement plan industry, having achieved reputable designations such as Accredited Investment Fiduciary, Chartered Retirement Plan Specialist, Certified Public Accountant and Master of Business Administration.

Our team has three verticals of focus: retirement plans, wealth management, and participant education. We believe in a comprehensive approach to retirement for our clients, their participants, and the individuals we work with. We strive to simplify the financial industry and make it more accessible to all individuals. The more plans and companies we work with, the more individuals we can interact with on a one-on-one basis. The more individuals we reach, the more families we can help gain strong financial footing and positively impact their communities.

 

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

Rini: Our team takes a comprehensive approach to retirement advising with our clients. Our efforts don’t stop with at the plan sponsor level. Over the years, we evolved into a business model that supports our clients and their participants before, during and after retirement. Recognizing the need for more participant level education and engagement, almost seven years ago we started our participant education program. Although we provided education support previously, we did not have a structured business model around this initiative.

Today, we have a team of five individuals this strictly focus on participant education. We refer to these individuals as “Money Coaches”. Our Money Coaches provide comprehensive financial wellness services in both a group and one-on-one setting. The ability to provide comprehensive financial support to all employees of our clients is unique from most of our competitors. We leverage our recordkeeping partners to complement the comprehensive support we provide our plan participants.

In the next five years, our team will continue to evolve with the needs of our clients and participants. As the industry continues to experience leakage from plans, our education team plans to either prevent that leakage or continue to capture these opportunities outside of the plan, perpetuating and diversifying our business model.

 

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

Rini: We take the most pride in changing people’s relationship with retirement. Our goal has always been to educate and encourage change in saving for retirement so that individuals can retire securely and on time. While most of our competitors focus tends to be with the C-Suite, we take the most pride in helping those that don’t have the same access to elite professionals and sophisticated planning tools, or don’t have the required minimum funds required to invest. We feel we can have a much larger impact on the lives of this segment of the population by providing them the tools and education that is often reserved for more wealthy participants

 

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

Rini: We are highly focused on organic business development, as a team. All team members participate and support new business efforts as we strongly believe that it helps us serve more individuals.

We grow our business by continuously diversifying our revenue streams by types of plans served in both defined contribution and defined benefit space, as well as wealth management. Last year we launched our Pooled Employer Plan, Unison Risk Advisors Pooled Employer Plan. We also have strategic partnerships with Private Equity firms to support their portfolio companies’ retirement plan needs.

Our parent company, Oswald Companies, is actively seeking acquisitions which in turn may lead to growth through the acquisition of an existing retirement plan practice or open a market to cross sell services in a new market to our Property & Casualty and Group Benefits clients.

 

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

Rini: Our industry is an aging, white, male dominated workforce. We need to encourage more diversity by educating college students and recent graduates about our industry, the challenges, and the great opportunity it presents for them to make a difference.

The industry continues to face the issue of prioritizing retirement savings. With many different budgeting and debt management needs, retirement savings can get pushed aside so often. Our goal as advisors is to help individuals manage each, while still designating money towards their retirement.

Our industry continues to face consolidation of recordkeepers. Our role as an advisor is to consult with our clients to ensure their recordkeepers are providing the expected level of service for reasonable costs. Through our benchmarking efforts and prudent processes, we establish with our clients, we can continue to help them navigate these issues.

Lack of Access to Retirement Plans – Over 40% of Americans still don’t have access to retirement plan benefits. As advisors, it is our job to leverage legislation such as the Secure Act 1.0 and 2.0, to reach these organizations that have yet to offer these benefits to their employees.

The industry has been primarily focused on participants’ saving for retirement or the “accumulation phase” and not been focused on the spending down of retirement assets or the “decumulation phase”. Recently, service providers are introducing retirement income products to help participants spend down their retirement savings, however, these products are often complicated and difficult for participants to understand. Our role is to understand these income products and to educate both plan sponsors and plan participants on the options available and to assist them in making well informed decisions.

 

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?

Rini: Our organization began with including DE&I in our strategic planning, ensuring that areas of focus had executive and senior leadership buy-in from the beginning (words). Oswald established a DE&I Alliance (Advisory Committee) that would be the entity of accountability and a think tank of strategic and measurable goals for the organization. Our goals are generated directly from Oswald employees aligning with the areas of focus given by our strategic plan. Our goals aim to make inclusive and equitable impact throughout the organization (ideas).

These words-turned-ideas have transformed into action by our Alliance (made up of 21 diverse perspectives of employee-owners of various backgrounds, identities, tenures, and departments) posturing and supporting our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to lead the charge in actionable steps, while leverage leadership, internal passion, and external resources for support. Our goal is to be transparent, outcomes and impact-oriented and sustainable with our actions as we embed DE&I in everything Oswald does.

As stated above, our industry is an aging, white, male dominated workforce. Through education of students and transparency of career pathing, we believe we can start shifting this industry’s workforce demographics. We believe our new virtually supported workspace opens the door for a wider pool of candidates, providing more diversity and exposure to the opportunities in our industry outside of our region.

 

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

Rini: Some of the benefits to a firm and its people by creating an equitable and inclusive culture includes a sense of belonging in the workplace. Employees can feel safe, seen, heard, and valued which drives engagement and loyalty to an organization. Equitability and inclusivity impact retention—people want to stay in spaces where they are given equal opportunity, development, and recognition. Innovation increases too—when the seats at the table of ideas are filled with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives and those ideas are heard, valued, and included in a shared vision, positivity, and productivity result.

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