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Is your firm's compensation program tied to your underlying business strategy? It should be, say the experts. To learn how it's done, we talked to Christiane S. Delessert, Ph.D., CFP, president of Delessert Financial Services Inc. in Newton, Massachusetts; Jim Marlow, CFP, president and CEO of RegentAtlantic Capital LLC in Chatham, New Jersey; Douglas D.Vander Weide, CFP, senior financial advisor of Vander Weide, Pratt, Busick, Marshall & Kimberley, a financial advisory branch of American Express Financial Advisors in Clive, Iowa; and Mark C.Tibergien, principal, Moss Adams LLP in Seattle, Washington.
JFP: Briefly describe your firm for our readers.
Mark Tibergien: Moss Adams is the 12th largest CPA firm in the country. Our management consulting group specializes in the financial services industry. We've consulted with more than 400 firms on issues related to compensation, organization, practice management, valuation and succession planning.
Christiane Delessert: We are a fee-only, independent financial planning and investment advisory firm. We have eight employees, plus a part-time bookkeeper.
Doug Vander Weide: We are an independently owned franchise of American Express Financial Advisors, specializing in comprehensive financial planning, investment management and qualified retirement plans. We have 14 on staff-5 equity planners, an advisor who is not an owner, 7 full-time employees and 1 part-time employee.
Jim Marlow: RegentAtlantic Capital provides fee-only, comprehensive wealth-- management services, primarily to individuals, but also to businesses, trusts and foundations. We currently have 19 employees, 6 of whom are partners.
JFP: What is the compensation strategy of your firm and how does it tie into your business strategy?
Marlow: Our firm underwent a complete strategy shift about a year and a half ago. It's a strategy of growing, institutionalizing and building value in the firm, as opposed to having a bunch of people with their own separate practices sharing overhead. Because we are growing rapidly, both internally and through mergers and acquisitions, we recently engaged Moss Adams to help us develop a more comprehensive compensation strategy to meet our future needs. We are trying to get a template for base salary or draw, incentive compensation, profit sharing, goal setting and measurement, and equity sharing-how you acquire it, value it and add to it.
Vander Weide: We pay competitively by benchmarking the local labor market and national trends...