Thank You for a Rewarding 2019!

By Richard Todd, CEO, Principal and Co-founder

Innovest was named a “Best Place to Work” by Pensions & Investments in 2019! This is the fifth time six years we have been ranked.

Innovest was blessed by another good year in 2019! Thank you to our clients, employees and friends for their continued loyalty. We are honored to work with and for so many wonderful people. It was another record year as we extended our string of growing revenue. Our historical client retention rate is 97% and we welcomed 26 new clients. The promise that we make to our clients is that they will benefit from our growth, and we are confident that with each new hire we are getting better and better.

Hiring

We have tremendous employees and our employee retention is 90%. To effectively serve our existing and new clients, our professional talent continues to deepen each year. We expect ongoing growth and hiring and we strive to hire our “first round draft picks”. In 2019, we added 13 new professionals: Cos Braswell, John Brock, Joanne Cinalli, Michael Corbett, Claire DeLine, Stephanie Dufano, Kelly James, Troy Jensen, Brett Minnick, Josh Shapiro, Claire Smith, Jean-Marie Willis and Marleen Zakovich.

Promotions

Our business model is oriented to promoting from within and encouraging employees to create a “vocation” over a “career.” The best way to get promoted at Innovest is to “pull up” those beneath so that there is another professional ready to immediately handle current responsibilities. We are proud of the professionals promoted in 2019: TJ Berge, Zach Heath, Christine Hudek (twice!), Kathy Lalone, Joe Lemming, Caitlin Markel, Jordan Rice, Kenny Senour (twice!), Kyli Hanson Soto (twice!), Abigail Thomas, Brooks Urich and Cheryl Wilks.
We were also pleased to add two new partners in 2019. Congratulations to Sloan Smith and Jared Martin who became our 12th and 13th partners! We are proud of them and look forward to their leadership into the future.

Innovest Family Office

Together with Karen Winkelman and her team, we formed Innovest Family Office (IFO) in 2019! True to the historical character of our firm, Innovest Family Office is independent, conflict-free and fully aligned with clients’ best interests. IFO supports our clients in their accounting and lifestyle needs to reduce the administrative burden of managing their wealth. We are extremely excited about the future of Innovest Family Office as well as working with Karen, who has tremendous experience and an impeccable reputation.

Client Survey

Each year, we survey our clients to guage their satisfaction with our services. In 2019, our average score for overall satisfaction was 4.8 on a 5.0 scale, which is the best score that we have ever achieved. Our customer service ranked 4.7 on a 5.0 scale. In the survey, our clients also help us with ways that we can improve and a large majority are interested in Innovest becoming more digitally oriented. More to come.

We also measure the Net Promoter Score (NPS), a tool used to gauge the loyalty of clients: “How likely is it that you would recommend Innovest to a friend or colleague?” The NPS has been widely adopted, over two-thirds of Fortune 1000 companies use this measure. We are proud to report that Innovest’s NPS for 2019 is 9.6 on a scale of zero (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely). An NPS score of 5 is deemed excellent, and anything over 7 is exceptional. Our score of 9.6 says that 96% of Innovest clients are interested in promoting Innovest. Wow! We are humbled by this response!

Thought Leadership

Speaking and writing for the industry is an important part of our culture and we were busy in 2019. Our professionals spoke at almost 20 conferences ranging from the Rocky Mountain Nonprofit Conference to National Association of Government Defined Contribution Association. In addition, we had eight articles published in journals and periodicals, from Family Office Magazine to PlanAdviser. We were also fortunate to have been selected as one of the best places in the country to work in financial services for the fourth time in five years by Pension & Investments, a premier industry periodical. The award was based in part on a very extensive employee survey, which has not only given us great information on how we can improve as a firm, but also compares our scores against hundreds of financial services firms throughout the country. Being a great place to work not only creates an environment that makes it hard to leave, but also attracts the “first rounders” that are important to our future success.

Philanthropy

Stewardship is our mission at Innovest. We are not just an investment firm. We are stewards to our clients, our professionals and their families and to the community. We take our community action very seriously, allocating 1.5% of Innovest revenue to charities. Our partnership with Arrupe Jesuit High School is a key program for us. Innovest employs four Arrupe Students, each working an average of 10 hours per week to help offset their cost to attend their college prep school. All the students are below the poverty line, and last year 100% of Arrupe graduates were accepted into college. It is a wonderful story. Furthermore, Kathy Lalone leads our charitable volunteering opportunities and a monthly event is organized and attended by many of our people. Our activities ranged from painting a house for an elderly veteran through Brothers Redevelopment to simply offering some dignity to the homeless through Christ in the City.

2019 Awards

Each year, Innovest provides awards to our top employees. Our top recognition, the Founders Award, was given to Kathy Lalone for exemplifying Innovest’s Core Values of honesty and integrity, hard work and dedication to the client. The Bill Fender Mentorship Award was given to Elizabeth Stemper for demonstrating exceptional contributions as a mentor to employees, family, and the community at large. The 212 Degree Service Award went to Christine Hudek for demonstrating exceptional client service by giving an extra “one” degree of effort. The Service to Others Award went to Claire DeLine, who demonstrated service throughout the year to her teammates.

We are excited for 2020 and beyond. We have been spending considerable time creating a 10-year vision, including the goals and objectives, as well as milestones we foresee along the way. We have had a very successful history, but what especially excites our younger professionals is the future and their important part in our ongoing success.

Innovest is blessed by so many incredible clients and friends that deserve tremendous credit for creating our success. The financial markets can be lumpy and our primary motive is to provide guidance with a steady hand and unquestionable character. We are honored to serve you!