Tom Noble - Plan Sponsor Magazine Retirement Advisor of the Year Finalist

PLANSPONSOR Magazine

Originally Printed: 12 / 2006

Two years ago, PLANSPONSOR announced its inaugural Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year award, an award designed to recognize “the contributions of the nation’s best financial advisers in helping make retirement security a reality for workers across the nation.” Once again, this year, the award seeks to acknowledge a demonstrated excellence and commitment to the retirement plan business, as evidenced by increased participation rates, enhanced rates of participant deferrals, improved asset allocations, reduced fees, or expanded service levels.

There were nearly 300 nominations for this year’s award, culminating in the collection of 182 advisers, 110 of whom were eligible to compete for the award. Once again, the group of advisers was diverse, collectively serving more than 7,000 retirement plans. In the past year, this group has added 1,128 plans to their collective businesses, 10 times the number they have lost. Moreover, their average client tenure is a little more than seven years. Nearly three-quarters have been serving retirement plans for more than a decade, and 15% have been in the business for more than 20 years.

Although one of our most successful listings considers assets under advisement as a criterion, the majority of advisers are not targeting huge plans, and many are building significant books of business out of mid-size plans. In fact, most continue to specialize in plans between $2 million and $50 million; a little more than half (51.8%) of those completing the nomination process focus on the $2 million to $10 million market, and another 28.2% target plans in the $10 million to $50 million space.

As in previous years, in addition to recognizing the Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year finalists, we also present a list of our “most successful” advisers: those with the most assets under advisement. However, this year, we also acknowledge success in terms of the most plan clients.

Tom Noble

Noble Retirement Group—Sugar Land, Texas

Tom Noble founded the Noble Retirement Group and has grown it to six people, although he intends for that number to get larger in the future. Noble decided that, to offer a full-service operation to his sponsor clients, he needed to offer retail management. In that vein, he hired Jeff Hill to lead the retail business more than a year ago, and that aspect of the business will grow, Noble suspects.

These days, the Noble Retirement Group includes two Nobles: Tom and his younger brother Mark, a more recent recruit, who aids in enrollment and ongoing education. Although he does work with family, the most loyal of employees might be Noble’s assistant, Veronica Brooks, who has been with Noble for 12 years and handles 401(k) clients. Another assistant, Michelle Hotchkiss, handles the overflow from the 401(k) clients as well as the developing retail business. Rounding out the firm is Anne Marie Willenborg, a retirement plan consultant and CPA, who joined the group early in 2006.

Noble works at growing the company, not only in advisers, but in plans under advisement. To that end, the Noble Retirement Group delivers three seminars each month: two aimed at retail clients and one to prospect for 401(k) clients. To garner interest in these seminars, Noble still relies on direct mailings; he sends out between 1,500 and 2,000 invitations every month and, from that, gets about 25 to 30 attendees at each event, he says.