ASC's 25th Anniversary User Meeting
Opening Remarks by ASC President Alan Gould
Bellagio Hotel, LAS VEGAS, NV – July 15, 2006 –
Thank you all for coming and welcome to our 2006 User Conference.
This is also the beginning of our 25th anniversary celebration. We are underscoring this milestone with a series of events that will conclude at the annual ASPPA conference in October; where we will also recognize ASC's Vice President, Sarah Simoneaux's term as ASPPA President.
Wow 25 Years! I started in this business at a national plan administration firm in 1978 and was convinced by Alan Cohen to join ASC in 1984. In addition to being partners, Alan and I remain great friends to this day.
Alan originally created ASC as an entity to further develop and maintain the systems that he had conceived and built for his own administration and consulting business in Los Angeles, which he ultimately sold several years ago.
Alan is the strength behind ASC from both a strategic development and financial perspective.
I must say that it's truly an honor and a privilege to be in the position to work with so many great people: Our clients and industry partners and most especially, the tremendous group of individuals that are ASC. I'll introduce them in a moment.
Our goal for this conference, in addition to introducing you to our latest features and what's under development, is to open a dialogue with you to fine tune our products and services to meet your needs.
We realize the importance of our systems and services to your organization's productivity and profitability. To achieve this goal we created the agenda by using the same approach that we take when meeting with a prospective client. That is we demo the features of the system which invariably leads to a discussion of what you need and how we are able to address it. Knowing that you're all current users of the system, we'll keep the demo part focused on higher level issues and areas that our support staff feel will be of the most interest.
That's what we're looking for here today. I know with a large group it's sometimes awkward to ask a question during a presentation but please feel free to interrupt. We'll do our best to keep things moving and on track.
I also want to thank Fred Lee who has graciously agreed to provide us with his insight and perspective on the 401(k) marketplace over dessert today. We all know what a great job Hancock, Nationwide and the other outsource vendors do, however in some markets there are some very compelling arguments to be made for having an in-house daily valuation capability. Even if you've said in the past "I'll never consider in-house daily valuation" I think you'll find Fred's presentation insightful.
I would also like to introduce Glen Martin and Steve Pauly. By day they are ASC and ASCi clients, they also have a firm IRA Plus that will solve all of the issues of the forced rollover. Their IRA platform will take any size rollover so I encourage you to take a look at their materials and consider their IRA services. They have also graciously agreed to sponsor our breaks today and we thank you Steve and Glen for defraying some of the expenses today.
You'll also have an opportunity to have further discussions and network during the breaks and lunch. Since we're doing this at the beginning of the conference, many of us will be here through Wednesday, please feel free to use our booth as a meeting place in the exhibit hall.
Introductions:
Our Staff. What can I say about the greatest group of people you'd ever want to work with? I get asked all the time about how is it that we're able to have this virtual company with everyone spread out all over the place. And the answer is- it's the people. Sure we have our challenges, but with a few systems and weekly scheduled teleconferences with agendas, we keep on track pretty well.
Diane Storm gets credit for the beginnings of this concept when back in 1989 she informed Alan and I that she and her family were moving to Michigan. Without hesitation Alan and I said to Diane "Do you want to work from home or from an Office?". With the boys – she rightfully opted for an office.
I'd like to introduce the people of ASC that are here so you can put a face with the person.
Laurie Joiner, Ann Marie Gottleib, Sherry Hack, Laura Morgan - these are the supporting characters that facilitate just about everything that we do, making sure every detail is attended to.
Mike Boecher and Ken Joseph, the original support and development team from the beginning.
Diane Storm and Tom Adams, our Actuarial resource.
Bob Long and Tom Lusby who run our daily valuation.
Sarah Simoneaux and the balance of our support team - Sheryl Stucky, Claire May, Brad Watson and Michelle Dysthe; and Carol Moore representing the Smart system support team. You know they do so much more than support – demos, training, writing the help guides.
And representing the sales and marketing area, Kim Szatkowski, who as you may be aware while working for the former FDP was the instructor for a training I received back in the 1980's before I joined ASC. She was very young….
John Griffin and Charles Lockwood, our newest additions. Many of you know John and Charles from their collective years in the industry interpreting the legal side of this business we call retirement plans. Also, you may have attended one of their many conference sessions and public trainings. Alan and I are thrilled to be associated with John and Charles and are really excited about our new ASCi entity that we'll talk about later. Having John and Charles involved as extended family members give our support and development team another perspective and resource to draw upon.
And finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my wife Ellen Quinlan. While her day job is managing and growing her TPA firm, she serves as an unofficial advisor and lends a lot of her expertise and perspective as a long-term user to ASC. She actually started our first Users Meeting eight years ago. Not in attendance here today are: Brian Olson and Mary Turley. Mike Cooper and his team of .NET developers. Sue Deyo and her group who run our marketing and strategic planning processes. Sara Davis who takes care of our writing needs.
