October 2, 2024

2024 Emerging Leaders — Sam Matheson

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PLANADVISER: Tell us about your role at your firm and how you contribute to its growth and progress.

Matheson: I consult with a couple dozen employer sponsor retirement plans ranging in size from a few employees to 2,500. I collaborate with intellicents colleagues from around the country to help our clients’ employees make their retirement dreams real and achieve their permanent vacation. We help our clients effectively manage their duties regarding funds, fees and fiduciary governance while empowering their employees to prepare for successful retirement outcomes through education and advice opportunities. My background as a Certified Financial Planner enables me to support participants manage today’s money so they can reach tomorrow’s financial and personal goals.

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PLANADVISER: What steps do you think will help improve the retirement industry and participant outcomes in the future (particularly ways in which your firm can help with that progress)?

Matheson: The typical worker in the United States has the majority of their financial needs taken care of at work by their employer’s compensation and benefits programs, including income, retirement plan, health and other insurances. These elections become financial planning decisions that can be complex and interrelated but are often treated in a vacuum. Intellicents is investing in financial planning as an employee benefit that helps employees get their current financial picture in order so they can reach their future goals. Intellicents has developed intellisteps “Foundational Financial Plans” to provide recommended guidelines regarding emergency savings, responsible spending, life insurance and more; interested employees can then take the next step to build a comprehensive financial plan with one of our financial planners. Many people think they need to have millions of dollars in assets to be a good candidate for financial planning; intellicents is working to make this journey more accessible.


PLANADVISER: What have you done that you are most proud of?

Matheson: I am proud to help educate retirement savers and enable them to achieve a successful retirement outcome of maintaining their standard of living in retirement. My favorite workdays are when I meet with participants, especially at an employer that is new to intellicents, who have never discussed their 401(k) account and never had the opportunity to ask important, lingering questions. These participants are often eager to start saving or increase their savings once they understand the importance and urgency of saving for their future. I speak Spanish and have had the pleasure of meeting with dozens of groups of Hispanic participants around the country, many of whom have never been formally introduced to the retirement savings system in the US. Intellicents’ mission is to “overserve the underserved.” This is a mission I am proud to be a part of daily.


October 2, 2024

2024 Emerging Leaders — Max Rosenthal

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PLANADVISER: Tell us about your role at your firm and how you contribute to its growth and progress.

Rosenthal: I am an adviser at Everhart Advisors and lead our workplace financial advising team. We serve more than 500 corporate retirement plans throughout the country, which includes more than 70,000 participants and almost $4 billion in assets. A key element to our service model is assigning a workplace financial advisor to each retirement plan we advise on. The WFA is often a Certified Financial Planner professional and is responsible for fielding participant questions and educating the participants on their 401(k) benefit. We also have a robust offering of personal finance-related education and make ourselves available for one-on-one consultations. The consultations can be as simple as helping someone enroll into their plan or as complex as running a fully fleshed out retirement plan. I pioneered a monthly virtual education series in 2020 that we call “Everhart Advisors University.” The program is offered to all our plan participants and has been well received. It covers a broad scope of personal finance topics such as: estate planning, Medicare and Social Security, budgeting and debt, tax education, investing and much more. I believe the work we do has helped thousands of participants get to a stronger position for their retirement.

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PLANADVISER: What steps do you think will help improve the retirement industry and participant outcomes in the future (particularly ways in which your firm can help with that progress)?

Rosenthal: Speaking from the perspective of someone who meets with hundreds of participants throughout the year, I think the most impactful endeavor the industry can pursue is quality education. It is well documented that participant outcomes are driven by participant behavior, and oftentimes it is a lack of education that leads someone to making poor behavioral choices with their 401(k). There is nothing more impactful than a face-to-face meeting, which we try to do as much as possible, but increasing technology has helped give participants easier access to quality education and I foresee that being a key contributor to better outcomes in the future. We have recently implemented a technology called Venrollment, which has curated educational videos that can be easily customized to the plan, as well as a slate of other resources, all on one webpage. One of the items we have utilized with Venrollment is including a Calendly link for our WFA team so participants can schedule a one-on-one meeting on demand with a CFP. Between our in-person presentations, Venrollment and our monthly webinar series, I believe we are leading the way for what it looks like to give quality financial education to participants.


PLANADVISER: What have you done that you are most proud of?

Rosenthal: As the lead for our WFA team, I feel a responsibility to ensure that all our advice, education content and processes meet a quality standard of excellence. To ensure that our advice, content and processes are staying up-to-date, our entire WFA team meets every Monday at 9 a.m. We share highlights and lessons learned from the previous week and brainstorm ideas for how to effectively communicate with participants. The compounding effect of this meeting has been tremendous. It has been a privilege to work with and lead a team of talented individuals who care deeply about the participants across our retirement plans. I am most proud of the work our entire team does and the positive impact we make to the more than 70,000 participants across our plans.


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