By Matthew Sivertsen, CFP®, CeFT®
2020 was quite a year for us all at The Planning Center. We have grown stronger as a Company and as individuals during this pandemic. More than ever before, we are focused on and committed to our vision – to serve families like yours across multiple generations. As we cross into 2021 and enter our 23rd year, we stand united as a nation-wide firm built to serve YOU, our clients.
We ended 2020 by wishing our founding partner Marty Kurtz the best in his well-earned retirement. The TPC of 2021 and beyond continues to be a talented and mission led group of people, who’s daily goal is to create and nurture a safe place for families to talk about money and navigate the transitions in their lives. Your TPC team is made up of several groups that work together seamlessly to support you in all of your life and money conversations. Though you may have had the opportunity to interact with some of our team members, we would like to highlight our team to familiarize you with those you may not have had the joy to have met yet:
We have 12 experienced CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® Practitioners (CFP®s) on the financial planning team across our six locations, who bring a diverse set of strengths to TPC. They are truly a multi-generational group and use those perspectives and skills to respond to individual client needs.
To help understand the ever-changing tax world, we have agile tax and internal finance teams. The tax team is made up of a mix of CPAs and support staff who provide integrated tax planning services to many of our clients, and our accounting team ensures we are financially stable and healthy as a Company.
Our operations team, led by Matt Mercer, has experienced the most growth recently. You will likely become very familiar with this group – they are truly on the front lines of our business and excel at client communication and service. From resetting logins, to taking distributions from accounts, to helping advisors with behind the scenes tasks, this team is here to help with it all! For that, we are grateful for them, as they are an integral part of our firm’s mission to serve clients and their families. The team members that you may be working with are:
- Anina De Tommaso
- Amanda Deeb
- Christina Lee
- Kelsi Vos
- Lena Parrish
- Marissa Feehan
- Nancy Caldie
With every challenge comes an equal opportunity, and our current working situation has shown us we can build the essential infrastructure needed to service our clients across multiple locations. We no longer function with operations support that is only located in the same physical location as the financial planner that you are working with. Instead, we have operations support specialties across our six office locations to allow for excellent service to all clients around the country. Regardless of office location, you can still expect the same personal touch that you have experienced from your local team members in the past.
In addition to the growth of our internal infrastructure, we also continue to build our technology platform to better serve you. We have been using Zoom for virtual meetings for quite a while now but have increased our use of this platform to be able to continue important “face-to-face” communication and financial planning reviews during the pandemic when it has not been wise to meet in person. We also expanded our relationship with Zoom this year, introducing a new Zoom phone system, so we could move to one consistent phone platform across all office locations. In order to safely transact business functions each day, DocuSign has become essential to send you documents to electronically sign, and our ShareFile secure email links and folders have become a great way to send/receive documents safely with sensitive personal information.
We are so appreciative of your willingness to adapt and change with us during this time. In future blogs, we will spotlight some of these new technologies as well as other processes including the ability to link your investment accounts to your bank account to allow you to electronically move money in and out in a safe, secure, fast way that avoids checks being in the overwhelmed mail system.
Looking to 2021, we are excited for you to get to know the entire Planning Center team and work together to provide exceptional service for you and your families.
Matthew Sivertsen, CFP®, CeFT®, is a Partner/Sr. Financial Planner in the Quad Cities office of The Planning Center, a fee-only financial planning and wealth management firm. Email him at matt@theplanningcenter.com.
