Overview
Fulcrum Partners LLC is an independent, senior Executive Benefits consultancy that helps corporations enhance their Compensation Strategy by leveraging Fulcrum Partners' intellectual capital and experience. We work to accomplish this objective by utilizing best-in-class strategic alliances to fulfill the specific needs of our clients.
We seek to balance the interests of Boards, Executive Leadership, Shareholders, and all other Stakeholders to ensure that a Corporation's Total Reward Strategy is delivered creatively, effectively, and with cost efficiencies. To create this balance, Fulcrum Partners takes a unique, cross disciplinary, coordinating position between the various aspects of compensation and benefit strategy, which includes:
- Compensation Consulting
- Benefit Consulting
- Benefit Financing Consulting
- Executive Wealth Management
- Investment Advisory
Philosophy
Within today's corporate governance and regulatory environment, there is a vastly under served need to tie together the traditionally separate disciplines of Executive Compensation, Benefits, and Financing. We believe that within any corporation, there exists an optimum balance between Incentive, Reward, Retention,and Cost, and that the balance is unique within every organization. It is our objective to help corporations strike that equilibrium.
Balancing Compensation and Benefits
In today's marketplace, Compensation Strategy which includes cash, short term incentive, long term incentive, and equity plans are often not balanced, coordinated or integrated with benefits strategy. By working with the corporation's compensation strategist or consulting firm, Fulcrum Partners helps to significantly enhance Compensation Strategy by designing benefits that extend balance, tax efficiency, retention and performance incentives, and long term wealth creation. The result is a more refined, and more attractive, and more efficient Total Reward suite, with no interruption of the compensation consulting relationship.
Likewise, many companies sponsor stand alone Executive Benefit programs, such as deferred compensation plans, without regard to how they work within an overall Compensation Strategy. The Plan may represent a cost with no enhancing value beyond simple tax deferral. In this case, Fulcrum Partners will introduce highly experienced Executive Compensation Consultants who will assist corporations in the development of strategies that are designed to leverage the benefit plans, and enhance the human capital and business strategies of the corporation. Additionally, our objective will be to enhance the financial utility of compensation plans for all participants.
Balancing Benefit Costs and Financing
Today there are many financing strategies for Executive Benefits. Since nonqualified deferral plans originally grew out of the qualified pension and 401k industry, many organizations still utilize mutual fund portfolios as financing tools. Corporate Owned Life Insurance (COLI) has grown to be a very common tool as well, particularly since COLI Best Practices legislation (IRS Code Section 101j) passed in 2006.
With the maturing of the nonqualified platform and ever increasing plan liabilities, financing benefits has become far more creative. From managed portfolios through independent Investment Advisory, to liability hedging strategies, to alternative investments (within or without COLI), Fulcrum Partners helps Chief Financial Officers discover alternatives to balance and finance corporate benefit liabilities in highly creative and efficient ways resulting in significant efficiencies both short and long term. Greater financial efficiencies result in higher return to stakeholders, and ultimately helps balance Governance priorities and Executive interests.
Balancing Benefit Costs with Executive Wealth Creation
When corporations include the opportunity for Wealth Creation within its Total Rewards Strategy, we often find that the opportunity is under utilized, often misunderstood, and rarely optimized from a personal financial planning standpoint. When this is the case, companies are not realizing value relative to the cost. In order to reverse the situation, Fulcrum Partners, along with our planning alliances, develops personalized communication and financial education programs that help to ensure executives' assets are properly allocated, and that their individual distribution strategies are best coordinated as a part of their total wealth management plan. The result is to help dramatically increase the value of the plan to the executive, which in turn increases loyalty, participation, and retention.
