JP Financial helps individuals, families, and businesses with addressing their retirement plans and investment strategies through a close relationship with their clients and continuous reviews of goals and changes in their lives and businesses.
Jason Peplinski is owner and president of JP Financial and the branch manager is Robert FitzSimmons. They also employ three investment advisor representatives, three administrative assistants and have an affiliation with a CPA to complete their team.
What do you think makes you different from other companies similar to yours?
Being independent gives us the ability to use a more diverse and broad scope of investment services in working toward our clients goals. We differentiate from our peers by providing exceptional service to our clients.
What do you like about doing business in Lincoln?
Lincoln is a wonderful place to conduct business. It is a thriving city with great citizens and friendly people to work with. Even with a good concentration of investment advisors in the vicinity, there is plenty of business and demand for all of us to provide guidance to which allows for continued growth of our practice.
What kind of community organizations/groups are you involved with?
I am the current president of our chapter of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors, which is our professional association which provides for its members with tools, education, networking, and advocacy. I have participated in or contributed to Big Brothers Big Sisters events, Lincoln Food Bank, Walk for Juvenile Diabetes, and United Way/CHAD. I have plans to become a TEAMMATE as well once my schedule allows for the full commitment.
What changes have you seen in the industry and your company in the past few years?
Within the financial services industry we’ve seen the evolution of products and investment services that can make the investor feel less worrisome about the sharp swings in the markets. Mutual fund managers, annuity companies, and direct participation investment instruments have brought different management styles to the market place. Some of the new strategies are very innovative and that gives the end user, the investor more strategies to choose from.
What do you see happening with the business in the next five years?
Although I am not an analyst, as electronic trading and other strategies as described previously continue to grow in popularity I personally think the sharp ups and downs in the markets will become a part of the norm. With changes in the geo political world and as we become more of a global economy than we already are, I think we will see a different way of evaluating the health of companies as well as the health of nations. So the landscape of investment services, the instruments or vehicles available to use, and how we evaluate investments will continue to change but the base principles of why and how to invest should for the most part stay the same.
What is one of the biggest challenges that your company has faced?
We continue to look at ways of improving our service to our clients through the use of technology. However, regulation and acceptance of newer technology takes time. This is understood and tolerable because it is for the safety and privacy of our clients and their personal information. Yet when comparing why we can’t do the same things as other kinds of companies, this is because of the cautious nature of what we do and the information we handle. So certainly growing in the way of using technology to keep up and compete is an ongoing challenge for us.
What has been your most important achievement as a business?
I would say that when we acquired another practice in 2007 for an advisor that wanted to retire we felt like we had crossed a major milestone. That combination of their clients and ours made us a bigger and more stable practice which gave us the ability to expand more rapidly into more states nationwide, and even some internationally. We now have clients in Japan even!
What is one goal for your business that you have yet to accomplish?
We would like to have more advisors join us to be a larger group working together to serve a larger client base. As we grow in clientele and to be a stronger stable based company, having more advisors associated with us and our broker/dealer is certainly a future goal of ours.
Additional information about JP Financial Services can be found on their website at www.jpfinancialservices.net.