Mission - Stearns Financial

Focus on communityleadership continuityfinancial stability

Your organization serves an important role in your community, our job is to understand that role, and help you achieve your mission now and through future executive teams and boards. Our client organizations use our expertise to design, implement, and administer supplemental executive retirement & retention plans that focus on financial and tax efficiency. The result is increased focus on community, leadership continuity, financial stability, and commitment to mission.

Stearns Financial is comprised of originators in non-profit SERP who have been innovating plans and leading compliance since 1991. We have remained focused and everything we do revolves around the talent retention, incentives, and financial needs of our clients.

With 28 years specializing in supplemental executive retention and retirement plans for credit unions, healthcare institutions, higher education, and high-performance non-profits, Stearns Financial has the expertise to design, implement, and administer every type of executive benefit program.

Leverage our expertise to drive yield, supplement retirement, and optimize retention and succession.

A foot wide and a mile deep

Our Process

Vision, Goals, & Intent

Our consultative process begins with your organization’s mission, vision, values, goals, and intent to best understand how to align a benefit into your overall compensation structure and financial stewardship model.

Plan Design

We then educate boards and executives on all relevant topics including peer analysis, compensation studies, compliance, due diligence, tax and accounting, and plan designs.

Analysis

Next, we design plans based on our findings and present them for consideration. We assist with analysis of the impact of each design on financials, retention, and benefits and modify repeatedly to get the right solution for your organization.

Product

With a decision made we drive all aspects of the implantation process as a collaborative project between plan sponsor, plan participant including financial, legal, compliance, and administration to establish the plan.

Adjust

Finally, with a plan in place we begin our continuing service and support with regular reporting and updates on due diligence, compliance, tax or accounting changes, and other impactful.

Our plans are mission-drivenfiscally aligned

MISSION-DRIVEN

Our plans are different because we use process as the driver to achieve effective design making each plan unique to your organization. Because each plan is driven by your organization’s mission, vision, goals, and intent the plan aligns strategically and reputationally. When disclosed in a 990 or published in a report your plan should make your community, stakeholders, members, alumni, or constituents feel confident in your organization’s leadership. The resulting plan that is implemented fits into your core values as an organization and fosters financial stewardship.

FISCALLY ALIGNED

We are also unique in that we can often accomplish this with no accounting cost to the organization, favorable reporting and 990 impact, and produce tax-free retirement withdrawals. This allows an organization to retain, recruit, and incent talented leaders with a benefit that has maximum impact and simultaneously has minimum investment for every dollar of benefit provided. By turning expenses into assets, a plan becomes “financially efficient” and is the best use of your organization’s resources devoted to benefits.