ASPire Appoints Two New Board Members
TAMPA, FL, June 13, 2012 -- ASPire Financial Services, a leading integrated service provider of retirement plan solutions, today announced the appointment of Charlie Ruffel and Bob Francis to its Board, effective immediately. The appointment of Ruffel and Francis is an extension of the company's overall strategy of adding experienced leaders with vast industry knowledge and access to key market segments to augment its leadership team.
Mr. Ruffel is a leading authority on global pension issues, institutional money management, and international securities services. He is the Founder and former Chief Executive Officer of Asset International, an information services company with media products including PLANSPONSOR, PLANADVISER, NewsDash, and Global Custodian. Mr. Ruffel currently serves as a managing partner at Kudu Advisors, a New York City-based M&A advisory firm focused on assignments in the institutional investment management and investor services arena.
Mr. Francis has over 32 years of experience in the financial services industry, recently serving as Managing Director of Retirement Services at BlackRock. Prior to BlackRock, Mr. Francis was Executive VP of Retirement Strategy at LPL, Chief Operating Officer of National Retirement Partners and President of 401k Markets at ING. Prior to his tenure at ING, Mr. Francis held various executive level positions with Aetna Capital Management and Aetna Retirement Services.
"We are very fortunate to add two highly recognized industry leaders like Bob and Charlie to our Board," said Pete Kirtland, Founder and President of ASPire. "Their collective input and guidance will prove to be invaluable in accelerating our growth through markets to which we have had little penetration."
"It is clear that, in the retirement marketplace, intermediaries - whether RIA's, advisors, or TPA's - have a growing and vital role to play. ASPire was created to support and service these intermediaries, and is acutely positioned to excel in this decade" said Charlie Ruffel.
"The combination of regulatory and industry trends will uniquely position ASPire for accelerated growth in the qualified plan market in the immediate future. Price to value benchmarking and dollars per head administration, instead of basis points on assets, will be predominant themes going forward and ASPire excels in these areas, amongst many others." said Bob Francis.
About ASPire Financial Services
ASPire Financial Services is an open-architecture turnkey provider of retirement plan solutions (e.g. 401k, 403(b), 457(b) and IRA) to small and medium sized businesses, non-for-profit organizations and government entities. The company leverages its proprietary technology platform to offer cost-effective and fee transparent services to plan sponsors, third party administrators ("TPAs") and advisors through a web interface containing research, tools and access to investment products. The company has approximately 100 employees and more than $10 billion of recordkeeping assets, 8,000 plans and 275,000 participants.
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