[ ABOVE: Rob Victor, All Photos by Will Crooks]
Paul Foster and Rob Victor spent years as wealth management advisors for Greenville’s Northwestern Mutual. But the two knew they’d one day start a business together. And they did. The duo opened Foster Victor Wealth Advisors.
Financial planners Paul Foster and Rob Victor had a decision to make. Either they could stay at Northwestern Mutual, where they had spent years establishing their own businesses, or they could be their own bosses – together.
In May, the duo resigned and opened Foster Victor Wealth Advisors on South Academy Street in downtown. Since then, the firm has provided a more holistic approach to financial planning. But the firm started with friendship.
Victor, who was a junior soccer standout and accounting major at Furman University at the time, visited Greenville’s Performance QSA in 2008 for summer conditioning and met Foster, who was in his fifth year as a financial advisor at Northwestern Mutual.
The two became friends, bonding over a shared passion for Furman sports. Foster had graduated from Furman in 2002 and was on the basketball team. It wasn’t long before Victor pursued an internship at Northwestern, where Foster became his mentor.
After a year as an intern for Northwestern Mutual, Victor had to choose a career path. Foster persuaded him to pursue financial planning. After graduation in May, Victor accepted a position as a wealth management advisor for Northwestern Mutual.
“My dad, my little sister and my uncle are accountants,” said Victor. “So everyone stayed that route. But I do want to say my family was very supportive of my decision. But at the time, my dad didn’t think it was the smartest decision – to take a commission-based job instead of a base salary. But having Paul there as a mentor eased his mind a little.”
Foster continued to mentor Victor through his second year at Northwestern Mutual. And throughout the years, the two remained friends but operated their own wealth management businesses under the Northwestern umbrella.
Then Foster and Victor started casually discussing their own financial planning firm in 2014. But the duo tabled the idea for two years until they began discussing it again in May. That’s when the former student and mentor decided to become partners.
“We had both built separate businesses for years. But we both wanted a partner,” said Victor. “Since he was my mentor, a lot my business ideas and financial planning approaches were similar. So we decided to build something together.”
Both Foster and Victor introduced the idea to their teams of financial advisors. “It wasn’t a recruiting process. This was a consensus thing for the teams. If they weren’t in, then we weren’t going to do it. So we were all in. We’re the principals. But they really run the show on a daily basis,” said Foster. “We couldn’t do this without them.”
Victor also recruited Kylie Felker, a Furman graduate and one of Greenville’s “Best and Brightest” in 2014, as the chief operating officer as well as Rand Baughman, a Winthrop graduate, as chief investment officer.
Turning to technology
Foster Victor Wealth Advisors, through a team of 10 planners, creates custom financial plans for clients. The process includes a discovery meeting, which the firm uses to learn the financial goals and priorities of clients. It also allows the firm to find out where clients currently stand in terms of investments, insurance and more.
The firm then proposes solutions and closes planning gaps as well as creates a comprehensive plan for clients.
“We charge a fee up front. So if a client wants to disengage at the end of the process they can. But they can hire us to implement our recommendations. Many planners just hand clients recommendations and let them go without ensuring they understand it. We go through our recommendations before a client leaves,” Foster said.
Foster and Victor are using technology to ensure that clients understand their plans. The duo recently hired a technology firm to create a password-protected website and mobile application that allows clients to store, access and monitor financial information.
Both the application and site, called the “client vault” collectively, provide clients with a digital copy of their plan. Clients can then use their plan to help with financial purchases, including insurance plans and investments. But the vault also helps advisors implement the plan wisely should a client hire the firm for consultation services.
“There are three sectors in the financial world. There’s the insurance company, investor and financial planner,” said Victor. “We continue helping a client after their plan is made to ensure their plan is implemented wisely. So we had the three sectors integrated on this app. And it allows our advisors to see the full picture.”
Foster Victor Wealth Advisors also offers business services, which includes succession planning, executive benefits, key person planning, qualified and nonqualified benefits and client referral services. In addition, the firm offers estate planning, which includes trust services, coordination of tax attorneys and asset distribution services.
Also, the firm offers education planning as well as retirement planning, which includes helping clients develop a distribution strategy for funds. That process includes portfolio reviews that can help clients gauge investments against their risk tolerance and distribution timeframe. The app helps with that process as well.
“We’re leveraging it, because people can see everything live. Without the app, if a client has a 401(k) at a firm or retirement account and let’s say something like Brexit happens again, we won’t know what their balance is and how it’s invested. But now, we can evaluate that balance and ask them if their investments make sense,” Victor said.
Foster Victor Wealth Advisors can then suggest investment strategies and products that suit the long-term and short-term goals clients. The firm also offers various insurance products and services that include long-term care, life, disability, annuities and risk management planning.
So far, the firm has garnered more than 200 clients between individuals and businesses.
“Our client base is pretty vast. And I think it has to do with the fact that both Paul and I built individual businesses at Northwestern over the years,” said Victor. “A lot of our clients left with us because we had formed solid relationships with them.”
Planning their future
Despite being a new business, the two principals agree that their experience has limited their struggles. “We’re young but not green. This is the same business we’ve both been doing for years. This is our passion. We built our team strategically, and we knew we could do this,” said Foster. “It’s all on rails now, so that’s a good thing.”
Foster Victor Wealth Advisors has continued to grow, garnering an increasing number of clients through its business succession planning services, said Foster. He added that most of their clients are physicians as “they are in high tax brackets and have to worry about being sued.”
While Foster and Victor help the community plan their financial futures, the duo is also planning theirs. Inspired by the “client vault,” which was introduced by Felker recently, they plan to implement more technology in the near future.
“It really comes back to innovation,” said Victor. “Technology will always outpace itself. So I think the innovative piece of it all is how you implement it. It’s not so much the tech itself. But as new stuff comes out, we’ll have our fingertips on it.”
Victor added that the firm is considering various communication approaches, including a function similar to Skype as well as push updates from the “client vault” and podcast that can replace the firm’s monthly newsletter.
The firm also plans to hold annual round table discussions with clients that would also include their accounting firm and attorneys. “The most productive meeting will happen when an Elliott Davis and Nelson Mullins is sitting down at the table with us so that we can look at the financials with the client from different angles,” Foster said.
For more information, visit fostervictorwa.com.
