A Two-Way Retirement Transition Plan

Another characteristic that sets Allgen apart is the principals' religious bent. While they are multidenominational and do not consider themselves a faith-based firm, they do pray for wisdom in managing assets and attempt to follow Biblical principles on helping clients to keep debt manageable and be charitable toward others.

"We have actually just recruited a recruiter, if you will, that will just focus on recruiting for us," Zimbardi says. During this period, Allgen is also taking advantage of the advisor transition team provided by its custodian, Schwab Institutional.

Allgen is looking to go nationwide eventually, and in the next year hopes to add four new offices and 24 new advisors in Tampa and South Florida, moving up the east coast to Maine and New Jersey.

Allgen likes to cover its bases with investment tools but does shy away from annuities because it wants to stay strictly fee-based, but will help clients with pre-existing annuities.

Allgen employs Jason Martin as a portfolio manager and investment strategy guru. He is one of only about 600 people in the world who is both a CFP and a chartered market technician (CMT,) a designation given by the Market Technician Association. That allows him to understand the dynamics of entire sectors, which can lead to decisions to over- or underweight a specific sector. But he also uses fundamental analysis, which helps when investing back into a sector, because the best bank fundamentally, for instance, will rise faster and further than its competitors, Martin explains.

Allgen also employs hedge fund techniques in its portfolios, shorting areas of the market that it expects to decline, for example. It also uses risk parameters for investing, so not more than 10% is lost in any one play, and for each play, Martin says, there is a clear and disciplined exit strategy to overcome the emotions–fear and greed–that are always part of the investment equity, he explains.

"I don't believe in the 'hope and hold' strategy. Otherwise, one would have to sometimes come back 120% from a down position, which is very difficult," he notes. If an account goes down 50%, you have to double it in positive returns just to get back where you started, he adds. "Everyone is going to be wrong sometimes, but our strategy is to be wrong small," Martin says.

Elizabeth D. Festa is a freelance business writer based in Washington, D.C. She can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].