Multidisciplinary team brings skills to financial services

Tom Grossjung knows his limits. But, he also knew when it was time to shop for one administrator to provide his company with financial, taxation, insurance and benefits services.

Grossjung launched Promed Clinical Services LLC in 1991 to provide electronic medical records systems and reporting data to hospital emergency departments. He and his wife, Pam, successfully grew the business, adding employees and hospital clients along the way.

Yet, in 1998, the couple realized their shared skill was growing and running the business – not managing its scaling needs for employee group insurance and benefit plans. As the business matured, so did its needs for a greater scope of financial services. That’s when Grossjung started shopping for help.

“We were growing. There was more regulation, more reporting. I got out of my element. We had gotten past the point where Pam and I could manage the more sophisticated details,” said Grossjung, the Plantation-based company’s president and CEO. “We wanted to find an administrator for the benefits plan and new offerings to attract more employees.”

Grossjung’s accountant recommended FDR Financial Group. The Hollywood firm, a subsidiary of National Financial Partners Corp., offers multidisciplinary skills across the financial services spectrum for business and personal needs. Services include brokerage; planning for asset allocation and protection; business succession; employee benefits; insurance and retirement programs and enrollment; estate and gift taxes; and various insurances programs.

It was the 1980s when Jeff Solodkin, a CPA, paired up with Les Zuckerman, an attorney with a Master of Taxation. Zuckerman had arrived from San Francisco and was national director with Prudential Bache. Solodkin was speaking on taxation and asset protection, wealth accumulation and wealth preservation. Together, they met with business executives and physicians about financial programs, corporate benefits and retirement planning.

Group collaboration

Currently, company executives collaborate to probe client needs, design creative solutions, coordinate planning resources with a client’s other advisers, secure financial instruments and manage performance results for clients, Solodkin said.

FDR has 500 corporate clients, many of whose executives comprise the firm’s 1,000 individual clients, said Jeremy A. Schinder, a financial adviser with the firm. It has $300 million in assets under management, and $1 billion in life insurance death benefits in effect.

Their client engagements often span individual needs and ages. Some clients are in their 30s and 40s, and growing in their professions and wealth accumulation stage. Solodkin spoke of a recent phone call from the widow of a longtime FDR client. She feared she was destitute. Unbeknownst to the woman, FDR handled the couple’s asset management and life insurance, their kids’ college plans, and also had knowledge of the husband’s estate planning. They talked her down, recalled Eric Mathes, a shareholder and non-practicing CPA. Shareholder Jeffrey Blaze, a certified financial planner, called it an example of the firm being the client’s “financial quarterback.”

“All she did was sign the tax return each year,” Solodkin said. “We educated her on how to pay bills, worked with her CPA to set up proper planning and how to take IRA distributions. Our brokerage office manages her financial affairs and gives her monthly distributions.”

FDR combines wide-ranging skills with a variety of product offerings like few other financial service providers, said Raymond Eissa, senior regional VP for Florida and Puerto Rico with AXA Distributors LLC, the wholesale division of AXA Equitable. Over the past decade, he’s watched as FDR executives have consulted with clients to determine needs and products.

“They offer from the simple to the sophisticated,” Eissa said. “Some financial planners are one guy and a sales assistant. They have a lot of intellectual capital at FDR. Instead of being product oriented, they’re more solution based. They take the client’s temperature and determine the allocation. Then, the client determines the road they’ll go.”

In time, Grossjung moved much of his personal business over to FDR. His investments, annuities and other holdings were shifted under FDR, especially as Promed grew and the Grossjungs had more discretionary dollars in search of asset protection and wealth management, he said. Zuckerman helped advise on estate planning for Grossjung, 64, and the firm helped set up a charitable foundation as part of his estate.

“The advice and counsel they provide are a great benefit,” he said. “It all comes together in a nice package. Through the years, they’ve come to know my business strategies, growth and needs, and that blended nicely with the personal side.”

From South Florida Business Journal

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National Financial Partners (NFP), a New York Stock Exchange publicly traded company (NFP:NYSE), is a provider of executive retirement plans in the United States. NFP has created a national platform that specifically serves Federally Qualified Health Centers.

Hebets & Maguire, LLC, a member Partner of National Financial Partners (NFP) is the lead partner facilitating this strategic national approach to Federally Qualified Health Centers. Our firm, FDR Financial Group, Inc. supports NFP’s FQHC platform on a regional basis, providing compensation and benefits consulting services for FQHCs throughout Florida.

Click on this link to learn more about the valuable services that NFP brings to the nation’s Federally Qualified Health Centers.