BOSTON, MA, April 12, 2010 – LifeYield, LLC, a developer of tax-smart household management software solutions that produce better after-tax returns for financial advisors and their clients, today announced the formation of the LifeYield Advisor Solutions Group.
The LifeYield Advisor Solutions Group is led by Tom Prior, EVP, Head of Sales and Jack Sharry, EVP, Strategic Development and includes Danielle Driscoll and Denis O’Connell, each a Vice President of the firm with deep experience supporting and servicing advisors. The group was formed specifically to provide training, best practices and operational support for Independent Broker Dealer (IBD) Financial Advisors and Registered Investment Advisors (RIA) in maximizing their clients’ ability to achieve more income in retirement, and to listen to feedback and feature improvements from advisors.
LifeYield’s software suite, LifeYield ROI™, views all assets in a client household and suggests the most tax-efficient method to accumulate and withdraw taxable and tax-advantaged assets across an entire household. A recent independent study by Ernst & Young found LifeYield ROI can produce up to 20% more after-tax income over a 25-year period. LifeYield ROI automates the many-labor intensive, complex and time-consuming tasks involved in managing a household, while helping to minimize ordinary and capital gains taxes and maintaining the client’s desired asset allocation.
“We will be training and supporting hundreds of financial advisors over the next few months and we wanted to ensure we deliver better results, a better experience and a more complete service to financial advisors and their clients,” said Mark Hoffman, CEO and Founder of LifeYield. “We’ve built a team that is extremely experienced in understanding and working with advisors to meet their specific needs.”
LifeYield Advisor Solutions Group
Tom Prior, EVP, Head of Sales
Tom has over 25 years of experience in technology, with particular focus on financial technology. Tom was Head of Sales at Upstream Technologies from 2002 until it was acquired by CheckFree, now Fiserv, in 2007. Before Upstream, Tom held a number of senior sales positions, including Director of Sales at Zantaz, a provider of compliance technology to the financial services industry; Vice President of Sales for Quote.com, a financial applications and tools provider later acquired by Lycos; and Director of Sales at Information Access Company, a Thomson Corporation company.
Jack Sharry, EVP, Strategic Development
Jack has nearly 30 years experience in financial services holding senior positions in sales, marketing, product development, operations and distribution strategies for several of the world’s leading asset managers, insurance and annuity companies and broker dealers. Prior to LifeYield, Jack was a senior executive with The Phoenix Companies where he developed the first-to-market income guarantee on a money management program. He headed up Phoenix’s annuity distribution and built Phoenix Investment Partners into one of the largest managed accounts aggregators in the industry. Jack headed up broker dealer sales, retail marketing and product development at Putnam. At Morgan Stanley he led insurance and annuity sales. Jack is Chairman of the Managed Money Institute’s Retirement Solutions Committee.
Danielle Driscoll, Vice President, Advisor Solutions
Danielle has 10 years of sales and marketing experience in financial services and technology. She was part of one of the world’s largest technology companies, Oracle, where she focused on enterprise solutions, spearheading market strategies for a new organization in the Small to Medium Sized Businesses market. Danielle was a marketing manager at FundQuest, focused on the Independent Broker Dealer and Wirehouse channels, educating advisors on Separately Managed/Unified Managed Accounts and advisory solutions. Her in-depth knowledge of competitive offerings and advisor best practices helped advisors develop and present differentiated client solutions.
Denis O’Connell, Vice President, Director of Operations
Denis brings 18 years of investment and technology experience to LifeYield. He worked as a Financial Advisor/Portfolio manager for O’Connell Investment Services, an RIA, and Rockland Trust. Denis was a member of Fidelity Investments Equity Trading Technology group and helped develop Fidelity Management and Research’s global trading platform and helped bring this technology to Fidelity Capital Markets. He was an early member of Eze Castle, a trading system and financial software integration company, where he was responsible for the Boston consulting operations. At Reuters, he was a managing consultant responsible for integrating technologies and platforms into many leading financial institutions. He has been an active member of the CFA Institute, Society of Financial Analysts and Financial Planning Association.