Jay Kready • Mount Joy, PA
Everence • ProEquities
I am a lifelong resident of Lancaster County in Pennsylvania and grew up in a traditional Anabaptist family that owned and operated a local farm. I embraced faith-based values at a pretty early age and am very pleased that my career gives me the opportunity to help people on a daily basis.
Our firm, Everence, encourages a philosophy of giving back to the church and a shared worldview of being focused on the needs of others. We incorporate this belief system throughout our financial and investment planning practice.
When I was first building my practice, I primarily prospected through our church relationships. I realized I thoroughly enjoyed working with people that have an “others mindset,” a service to others mentality. A lot of people in the traditional Anabaptist church have a culture of mission and volunteer service and want to serve others in their professions. A lot of my initial client relationships were with nurses, teachers, doctors, pastors, and so forth—people who were directly influencing the lives of others.
My practice has broadened out now beyond the church, but I still am very actively involved there. It is in the very nature of our practice that our personal involvement tends to mix with our practice to some degree. The bulk of my prospects and clients are hard-working, responsible people who tend to live within their means, but want to plan effectively for the future. That could mean charitable efforts and giving, legacy planning, or their own retirement income needs.
In our Everence system, we have a church-relations manager who meets with the pastor and the advocates in churches and shows how Everence can be of service to them. That may lead to some specific referrals for our group of advisors, but it goes far beyond that in scope.
The key thoughts we want to impart revolve around how we have been blessed and how we can be better stewards in all areas of our lives, including finances. We provide financial education materials that are available for individuals or churches and conduct a number of different workshops. Members of our firm may teach Sunday school classes or work on outreach programs with members of a church. We have a matching grant program that helps churches aid members who are struggling financially. There are many other concrete ways we help both church communities and people in need all over the world.
Disclosure: Advisory services offered through Investment Advisors, a division of ProEquities Inc., a Registered Investment Advisor. Securities offered through ProEquities Inc., a Registered Broker-Dealer, Member, FINRA & SIPC. Everence is independent of ProEquities Inc.
This article first published in Proactive Advisor Magazine on February 4, 2016, Volume 9, Issue 5.
Post-production note: In July 2021, ProEquities Inc. became Concourse Financial Group Securities Inc.
Photography by Jeremy Hess
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