Deep client relationships drive culture at Advus

Mark Lamoriello, CEO of Advus Financial Partners.

Mark Lamoriello, CEO of Advus Financial Partners, explains why client relationships not AUM drives his firm.

At Advus Financial Partners, they take retirement planning seriously. CEO Mark Lamoriello says that it’s the relationship-building side of wealth management that he likes the most – especially when it comes to retirement.

“Being able to take a problem, understand it, and then translate it into a solution, you have a much more permanent relationship and much more permanent influence on someone’s life,” he says. “Earlier in my career, I was focused on investment research, and, as time evolved, I became much more involved in the more holistic aspect of wealth management – I really found a calling and a career in what now is the wealth management space.”

There’s certainly a need for more connected conversations around retirement planning. According to research from RetireGuide, 57 percent of Americans expect to have to work after their retirement – with 28 percent of non-retired individuals currently having no retirement savings.

At Advus, Lamoriello says, the business balances between the wealth management for individuals and managing qualified retirement plans for corporations and institutions.

“With qualified retirement plans we have a big influence on a lot of individual participants and their success,” he says. “We spend a lot of time on education and communication.”

What really drives Lamoriello is this commitment to making sure each individual client is taken care of – regardless of whether it involves retirement planning, navigating career crossroads, or investment management.

“We don’t think about how many clients we have, or how big we are in terms of assets,” he says. “With us, it’s about how long we keep clients and what kind of relationships we have. How do we constantly do better at what we do, deliver better advice, or deliver advice in a better way? You’re never the best. It’s arrogant to say you are, but that constant drive to continually improve is the core of what makes our culture.”

Not surprisingly, a culture that is always striving to improve, that values authentic relationships with clients is also one that looks beyond the walls of the company.

“What I have found is that I have a passion for helping children either evolve, or helping children that maybe are not in the same situation that others are and helping them live a better life,” Lamoriello says.

To that end, Lamoriello has worked with Trinity Prep School, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Florida, and other children’s charities.

“Every one of the institutions I worked with was non-profit, and every one of those institutions was constantly in a mode of accumulating capital, and then managing the capital they had in a prudent manner,” he says. “That’s really where there was an alignment between what I do and what their needs were.”