Rachel Songer, Jean Keener, Kelli Hinton
I am delighted to share that I am no longer the sole owner of Keener Financial Planning. Rachel Songer and Kelli Hinton are now Co-Owners of the firm as of January 1, 2021.
Rachel joined Keener in 2013 with a degree in Financial Planning from Texas Tech. Along with helping hundreds of clients meet their financial goals, Rachel has improved our processes, trained and developed new planners, and now oversees our newsletter. She’s a Certified Financial Planner™ professional and has been a lead planner since 2016.
Kelli joined the firm in 2019 as our Director of Operations. In the short time she’s been with us, she’s improved our technology, spearheaded our office building project and move, and helped us become a stronger team. She’s also an Financial Paraplanner Qualified Professional (FPQP™).
For more on each of their bios, please visit the Meet our Team page.
Why Expand Ownership
As we help clients develop their financial plans, we know that it’s not a one-time project. Your lives change over the years, and your financial plan needs to be updated. Your portfolio needs to be rebalanced because the market moves or your goals change. You get ready to retire and need to start distributing funds from your accounts instead of contributing. Being here for our clients for the long-term is a big deal to us. So, we’ve been planning for a while now how we could ensure the longevity of the firm beyond any one of our professional careers. Extending ownership beyond me as the Founder is a key part of this plan.
Another reason we really wanted to add more owners is our values. Our entire team shares our core values of:
- Best interest of the client
- Respect
- Competence
- Professionalism
- Accessibility
- Work-life balance
Several of these values are fairly unusual in the industry. In particular, always being committed to the best interest of the client is a value we want to preserve as we grow. We also want to ensure that we remain accessible to people from as many walks of life as possible. By extending ownership to individuals who demonstrate and are committed to these values, we help develop them for the future.
What’s Next
We expect this to not be the last ownership expansion announcement. As we attract and retain the best talent who shares our values, we hope the opportunity to be an owner in the firm will make Keener Financial Planning an even more compelling place to develop a career.