Chad Carroll, MAP Retirement
Chad Carroll is a man on the move – both figuratively and literally. He is a Managing Partner at MAP Retirement, which is experiencing intentional and rapid growth, having doubled in size over the last six months. Also, Chad managed this interview while he was on the road driving from Wisconsin to Indianapolis. If there was a prize for best behaved kids while Dad was on a business call in the car, Chad’s kids would win.
Joining Chad in running MAP Retirement are his partners Matt Reimer, Angela Thrift and Bob Carroll. Chad and Matt took over the firm in 2014 and cemented their growth plans within the first few years by building solid relationships with advisors across the Midwest. In June of this year, Angela Thrift and Chad’s brother, Bob, joined MAP to assist in growing MAP and taking the organization to the next level. With every TPA firm in America exploring an acquisition, MAP decided to ‘zig’ while everyone else ‘zagged’. “We are all in this together for the long haul,” Chad explains. “There is so much opportunity right now and we are committed to being independent and providing advisors and their clients with the white glove service they deserve. Make no mistake – the advisors are our top priority.”
In addition to rapid growth, this year also saw MAP launch a revamped product line to give their advisors the tech-enabled services usually offered by much larger firms. This was driven by a rock-solid commitment to acting on employee feedback. “Our people are the best; as leaders we listen to their ideas and then provide the support they need to execute. They are the ones that drove our technological revolution,” underscores Chad.
Recruiting and training top talent is a challenge, but his team is stepping up to the plate. “Most of the people we hire across the country are referred and vetted by an existing member of the team. It’s really exciting to see that, when we hire great people, they bring more great people,” said Chad. However, growth isn’t the only goal; staying true to the neighborhood TPA level of service and vibrant employee culture at MAP must remain as they scale.
So how do they maintain service levels and culture? Chad believes that their technology is a critical component. “We originally started out with a different CRM than PensionPro, but once we decided that growth was our goal, there really isn’t a better product on the market to help systematize and scale operations.”
As an advisor-centric firm, MAP uses PensionPro to keep their advisors abreast with where plans are in the workflow, providing assurance that the work will get done correctly. Chad smiles and says, “We chose a software that can grow with us. The integrations PensionPro is developing with our other software tools gets us really excited about the future. I don’t know how anyone thinks they can grow a TPA shop using excel spreadsheets alone.” With its plans to scale the neighborhood TPA model to a national level, software integration will save time, mitigate risk and allow the team to focus on doing what they do best. The most recent addition to the MAP technology roadmap is the new PensionPro planned integration with Mid Atlantic Trust Company’s Participant Distribution Solution, a solution to efficiently and effectively handle distributions, while helping to protect against fraud, a rapidly progressing industry issue. “The more we can integrate with our other key systems, the faster we can grow. It’s that simple. This integration allows us to hand off distribution risk, which is a no-brainer to sustain our growth model and continue to provide top notch service to participants across the country.”
In the venture capital world, they refer to fast-growing firms as rocket ships. It’s clear from 45 minutes with Chad that the team at MAP Retirement are all currently wearing spacesuits!
To connect with Chad Carroll on LinkedIn please click here.
