How Thrivent is staying relevant in a changing marketplace

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Beyond the Challenge is a podcast where executives in the insurance and financial services industry share their insights and experiences. Hosts Kevin and Sandy Dougherty talk with today’s top business leaders about what keeps them up at night and the biggest opportunity organizations can capitalize on today. We encourage you to listen, share, and subscribe to our program.

Kevin and Sandy Dougherty each have over 20 years of experience in insurance and financial services, corporate leadership, and executive search. They’re the owners of Global Corporate Solutions and Global Corporate Leaders. Global Corporate Solutions partners with organizations to gain efficiencies and contain costs. Global Corporate Leaders partners with organizations to enhance and evaluate talent.

Beyond the Challenge podcast is sponsored by Exactuals, perfecting payments and the data driving them; Techficient, transforming the protection journey with intelligent data and machine learning to drive better outcomes; and JourneyGuide, improving your clients’ retirement outcomes through interactive planning software.

Welcome to Beyond the Challenge. Here are your hosts, Kevin and Sandy.

(interview)

Kevin: Today we’re talking with Nick Cecere, Senior Vice President, Chief Distribution Officer at Thrivent, and about the trends, challenges, and opportunities he sees for the retirement and insurance industry. Nick is responsible for all financial advisors and the center of excellence that provides support to those advisors. Nick, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the industry?

Sandy: Well, thanks, Kevin. Thanks for having me here. I started in this career right out of college. I graduated from college with a degree in economics. I was a four-year varsity athlete in college and decided to get into the financial services business and I joined John Hancock in 1986 as a financial advisor and worked with John Hancock for 10 years from ’86 to ’96 as an advisor as well as a sales and management leader and general agent. I joined Principal in 1996 and worked in their corporate office for 25 years and retired as a senior vice president and head of global firm relations for distribution. Since then, I have joined Thrivent in a role as senior vice president and chief distribution officer at Thrivent and I did this for a number of reasons. One is because of the company that Thrivent is in terms of what they do for generosity and charity and service as well as giving back to the communities in terms of providing financial advice to help those Christians in our country with financial advice as well as charity and generosity. So those two things merged together was a reason, main reason I came out of retirement to join a great company like Thrivent.

Sandy: Awesome. Nick, all sectors face challenges, but for the insurance industry, this list seems especially long. Many carriers seem to be struggling to stay relevant while others are embracing new technology, reimagining distribution channels, and developing strategic partnerships. So how is Thrivent helping Americans reduce their anxiety about retirement?

Nick: That’s a great question, Sandy, and I appreciate all that goes into helping people deal with retirement, particularly anxiety, and if you think about today, we’re focusing on all of our clients through personalized actionable financial strategies based upon their goals. In other words, advice. So we’re committed to offering the resources that really enable everyone to create a financial strategy that aligns with their unique needs and priorities and we do this through our team of financial advisors, whether they’re in our virtual team, they’re in our Thrivent Advisor Group, or whether they’re in our Thrivent Advisor Network. We use things like Money Canvas to help people, coaching them through the retirement and the anxiety that deals with that and there’s lots of things that our advisors are doing today in terms of helping our clients become ready for retirement, particularly today with the markets the way they are and the high interest rates and incomes being down or expenses being up, people are anxious about retirement and, sometimes, the first thing they do is they tend not to invest in their 401(k) plan or they tend not to invest for the long term. So we work with them through our financial planning, our financial advice programs, whether it’s virtual, again, through our advisors, to help them with that. We know that 40 percent of Americans believe very much or somewhat they’ve been able to achieve retirement planning goals. However, that remaining 60 percent of the folks don’t feel very comfortable today and we’re there to help them through that process and handhold them through. It’s not just investing in your 401(k) plan today just isn’t enough anymore, you have to save externally and we help our clients to do so.

Kevin: Nick, what do you see as the future of distribution for the industry?

Nick: You know, Kevin, that’s a great question as well and we look at our financial advisors, the role of the financial advisor is really shifting. If you go back 20 years ago, the role of the financial advisor was much different. They provided much more in terms of risk products and not as much in the investment business. And, today, through advice and through financial planning, an advisor has to run the spectrum of that person’s risk and investment needs. And not only the investment needs, but also the accumulation needs during pre-retirement, whether it’s for a special cash goal, whether it’s to put their kids through college, whether it’s to save additional for retirement, and, at the same time, have to protect against a premature death or disability or, in some cases, long-term care. So those are the things that are on the minds and the role of the advisor has shifted now to being more of a quarterback and a counselor for that client versus a salesperson and that shift has really helped us at Thrivent become really good at providing financial advice and helping our clients through different stages of their life, whether they’re saving for retirement or, when they do retire, how to stretch that income out over their lifetime, because there is a fear by many that you can run out of money if not done right. So, that’s the role that’s shifted. It’s much less around being the insurance salesperson but really that financial partner and that financial adviser to the client from when they start saving money and they’re starting out in life all the way ’til they’re retired, they need help and we provide that.

Kevin: How does Thrivent find their competitive advantage and keep it going?

Nick: Well, Thrivent is in a wonderful space. We’re basically a Fortune 500 company, okay? We’re ranked number 351 in 2022. But we’re also a fraternal, and being a fraternal, the number one aspect of our fraternal is to take care of its members, which is our policyholders. And we get to enjoy some favored tech status as a fraternal that allows us to continue to treat our policyholders, our members like they should be treated as well as being able to do things through our growth and generosity efforts, through our charitable efforts in our communities, our Action Dollars, all sorts of things that we do to help our communities in terms of things outside of financial advice. And that’s what really separates Thrivent from the rest and it’s really unique because we have this uniqueness of being a faith-based organization grounded in financial advice but at the same time being able to build out programs in our communities so that we can help the communities that we serve financially through generosity, through service, through charity. And that’s really how we separate ourselves from the competition and, also, we have great products and services that we provide for our clients and members and we do great in the community. So those two things together, serving Christians around the United States, really separate us from our competitors, whether it’s a wirehouse, a broker dealer, a mutual insurance company, or stock company, and they’re all great companies, we just have this niche in terms of being a Fortune 500 company but still being able to do so many good things for people. And that’s what drives a lot of our advisors to us and that’s why they stay with us. Our retention for financial advisors is double what our industry cohorts see and that’s because of the reason why they join us and we’re really proud of that fact that we’re able to have advisors who believe in the company and also believe in the charitable and service commitments that we make to our communities.

Sandy: Awesome. Nick, other than your culture, which is absolutely amazing what you just kind of talked about there, what is Thrivent doing to stay relevant within the marketplace itself?

Nick: Well, first of all, it’s about transforming how we work and how we’re staying relevant is we’re building out our distribution teams in our company to be, number one, be more technologically savvy. Number two, meeting the client where they want to be met in the member so we’re building our virtual advice team that was started out as a service center that’s being built out to service clients and to provide financial advice virtually where some clients may prefer to do business that way, continuing to invest in our local sales offices and our local advisors and as well as continuing to invest in our wealth management platforms and our advanced solutions, and one of the areas that we see as an opportunity for us is to continue to work with not only our existing clients but also work with small to medium business owners as they grow their business and they deal with the issues that they have to deal with every day with retaining employees, it’s very competitive, as you well know, out there for employees. It’s how do you retain those employees? How do you help them save additionally for retirement beyond their 401(k) plan? How do you provide financial advice to employees of companies? So, we are looking at that as an opportunity to continue to grow and stay relevant. And we are growing in many places where we haven’t had a traditional presence. Thrivent has had a very strong presence because of its history from the AAL and Lutheran Brotherhood in the Upper Midwest from Michigan all the way through across to North and South Dakota and Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. We’re starting to really build out our capabilities and markets where there’s a large Christian base of what we call purposeful providers and those are people who are in the demographics don’t say whether their age group or income group, it’s an attitudinal perspective that we’re working with people who want to do good for others who have faith in some way, shape, or form, and who would align with the core values of Thrivent. So we’ve identified markets in the West Coast in California, in Texas, in Florida, in Georgia, North and South Carolina, and into the northeast as well as in the mid part of our country in Chicago and Indianapolis where we traditionally haven’t had a large following. So, it’s exciting to know that we’re investing in growth and we’re investing in people and advisors and leaders to help us grow in those territories.

Sandy: Well, Nick, I’m in Indianapolis, as you know, and I’m telling you, I see Thrivent shirts, t-shirts everywhere so you have a presence here in Indianapolis.

Nick: Well, thanks. That’s great. And it’s funny you say about the t-shirts, there’s millions of those t-shirts out there. I probably have five of them and they’re a commodity, the t-shirts. We do a lot of work through Habitat for Humanity and also lots of local charities throughout the country and those t-shirts are a way for us to engage as well as people wear them and they keep asking, “Hey, when are you coming out with the new t-shirt? I wanna see the new one.” We’re constantly coming out with new ones to continue to build upon our brand of charity and generosity. So thank you for noticing that, Sandy. That’s nice to know.

Sandy: You’re welcome, Nick. Nick, you touched on this a little bit earlier in the interview here when we talked about distribution but how is Thrivent working to bring life insurance, health insurance, and wealth decisions all together into retirement planning for your policyholders?

Nick: Well, we’re doing that simply through advice, by bringing advice to the table and sitting down with that client and talking to them. Whether they’re an existing client or not, we’re going to go through and we’re going to build the discovery process, again with going through and asking questions and helping them understand where they are today in their financial planning journey and where they want to go and how we can help them get there. And we’re revisiting that with not only our existing clients but also with our new clients as we build a trusting relationship, taking them through that process. Because, in many cases, what happens is a financial advisor today, when they’re talking about retirement plan, may only jump to the retirement issue, whether it’s an IRA rollover or it’s a SEP IRA that they’re working with or they’re investing those money for retirement and almost skip over the discussion about risk, whether it’s life insurance, whether it’s disability insurance, or whether it’s long-term care. And we have seen this with our own advisors where there’s a tendency to move toward the wealth management side of the business and not go back and touch upon the risk side. So by bringing advice to the table and walking through this process, we’re making sure that we’re hitting on all those things that are really important for us because we know that our client base is no different than the rest of the country. The country is significantly underinsured when it comes to life insurance, when it comes to disability insurance, and certainly when it comes to long-term care, and we do think that part of the nobility of this profession, that not just to, I’ll call it, my words, chase the dollars and chase the investments, but do a complete financial plan with that client to make sure that we’re at least addressing those needs so we can point out to where there are needs, we have solutions based upon their priorities, and help them also continue to save money. So it’s a balancing act in the end of the day, and we’re helping our advisors through our centers of excellence and all the research we’re putting to help them build balanced practices as opposed to being just a wealth management practice or just a risk practice but balanced practices across the board so we know that we’re helping our clients.

Kevin: Nick, what do you see as the next big thing coming to the retirement and insurance marketplace?

Nick: Well, we’ve seen a lot of change, Kevin, over the years, right? We’ve seen a lot of regulatory change, we’ve seen product change, and we’re going to continue to see change and I guess that’s the best way I can put this with regard to 401(k) savings plans and Social Security that seems to be always on the table in terms of that and people aren’t staying at their jobs like they used to, okay? People aren’t retiring from jobs after their 35 or 40 years someplace and receiving their gold watch and a retirement party and they go off and they’re sitting in Adirondack chairs someplace. That isn’t real life. People are changing jobs a lot and it’s incumbent upon us as — the next big thing for us is to continue to help our clients save for retirement. Many, many companies out there, the majority of them don’t have retirement plans anymore, meaning they don’t have a cash balance plan or defined benefit plan or anything like that, they have a 401(k), and in some cases, in many cases, there’s not even a match on those 401(k) plans, so when people think they invest in their 401(k) at 6 or 7 or 8 percent a year, that gives them this false sense of security that they’re going to be ready to retire and they’re going to wake up, unfortunately, at 65 and say, “Oh, my goodness, I don’t have enough money.” They didn’t save enough. So it’s incumbent upon us to really help our advisors help their clients with a myriad of products, whether it’s using life insurance as a cash accumulation vehicle, whether you use fixed or variable annuities to help in terms of tax-deferred growth as well as income out, how do we use our managed accounts and mutual fund accounts to help accumulate and then distribute money. So it’s going to be very different than it was a number of years ago when my parents retired and my mom retired from her job, and she has a pension and she has social security and has a few bucks saved. It’s different today because today’s world, my kids, they don’t have a retirement plan, they have a 401(k) plan that they’re putting money in, they have to save more money. And that’s our job and that’s incumbent upon us as financial advisors to do that.

Kevin: What do you see as the biggest opportunity for the retirement and insurance industry over the next three to five years and how do you lead your team to continue to innovate and overcome challenges to make the most of this opportunity?

Nick: One of the things that’s very unique about Thrivent is the Thrivent folks, the people who work there, and I mean both the advisors and field leaders and those in the field as well as the home office, are a different cut. When you talk to somebody of why they joined Thrivent, whether it’s in a home office or a field role, it’s all about their mission and why they do this. It’s about working for a company that they can share their faith, that they can help people solve for financial goals and opportunities as well as give something back to their communities. And I think that’s the uniqueness. So, when you talk about how do we lead and continue to innovate and overcome challenges, we lead by example. So if you look at any of our senior leaders, we’re all involved in charitable practices, not because we have to but because we want to. Our advisors actually turn down trips, instead of trips to Europe and to wonderful places, to go on Habitat for Humanity retreats where they go into a community and live amongst that group and help build homes for people. And they do that of their own ilk. In fact, we have to turn people away. We just turned away 20 spots and we had 40 people wanting to do this, giving up a trip to London to do this, and that’s what the uniqueness of this because they’re able to fulfill their goals in life and their objectives in life by being part of Thrivent, by being part of a company that gives back, by being a company of faith, by being a company that helps people. So it’s very unique. Thrivent, we’re a company that when people come here, they don’t want to leave. They don’t want to leave because of the way we work together and the common bond that we have across the company. So it’s really, really exciting to hear when I ask financial advisors why did you get into the business and they say, “It’s my calling. It’s my mission.” Lots of our advisors are former pastors, youth ministers, people who have worked in their churches, and not just Lutheran. It’s all Christians. And when we’re recruiting advisors to join us, they’re asking us how do we show up locally in their church or their community. That’s a big part of who we are. Again, we have competitive plans and competitive products and competitive compensation for folks but that’s not why they’re coming. They’re coming to Thrivent and they’re staying at Thrivent because of who we are as a company. And I couldn’t be more proud to represent a firm like this in terms of what we’re doing to change the world to make it a better place, not only here in United States but globally as well.

Sandy: Nick, what is the best decision you made that had a positive impact on your career? From your decisions in college through coming out of retirement to going into Thrivent, what had the biggest impact?

Nick: The biggest decision I ever made, Sandy, I got the advice from someone early on in my career that said you need to be a student of this business, number one. Be educated, be credentialed, and to always continue to strive to get better to help others. And the other advice I got was the first day I joined John Hancock as a 22-year-old kid, new to New York, my general agent said to me, he said if you get into this business helping people first, you’ll make more money than you could ever count, but if you get into this business with the idea of making money first, you’ll be out like the rest of everyone who’s failed in our business. I’ve always stated that and kept that close to my heart and I say that all the time to our advisors and I know our advisors got into this business for the right reasons. So, when I look back at those two things, staying educated and staying on top of my game in terms of understanding our clients, our advisors, our business, and our competitors as well as always recognizing that we’re in the business to help people first, and that’s guided me through 36 years in this business and I’ve never done anything else and, in the end of the day, my goal at Thrivent is to leave it better than I found it.

Sandy: So what advice would you give to someone looking to get into the financial services or the insurance industry?

Nick: I would say a couple of things. One, get into this business if you want to help people. When you get into this business, study and become an expert in what you do. And, number three, give back to the community that you serve. If you’re a student of the game and you understand your business, you’re in this to help people and you’re willing to give back, there’s no way you can’t succeed in our business. It’s not about how much money you make or how much AUM you have and all those other things, in the end of the day, you come into this planning to help people first, everything else will take care of itself. Helping people first, being charitable in your efforts as well as being a student of the game and I can say that with a fair amount of authority because we have a 32-year-old son who’s in our business as a financial advisor and that’s the exact advice I gave him.

Kevin: Nick, thank you for your time today. It’s been great to hear your insights and how Thrivent is staying relevant in this changing economy.

Nick: Thanks, Kevin. Thanks, Sandy. Thank you for the opportunity to share our thoughts with you and thank you for allowing me this opportunity. Thanks.

(outro)

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