Steven Fraidstern, CLU, ChFC

Mr. Fraidstern received a B.A. from City College in New York in 1968 where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He received his Masters of Arts degree from Trenton State College in 1970. Mr. Fraidstern has been involved in insurance and employee benefit planning since 1972. He has served as President of the South Florida Employee Benefit Council. He is a frequent lecturer on retirement plans, has taught courses for the Florida Institute of Certified Accountants, and received its outstanding lecturer award. He received his Chartered Life Underwriter designation in 1976.

Steve joined Associated Pension Consultants Inc., in 1981, which was succeeded by Associated Financial Consultants, Inc. in 1990 and has actively designed, installed and administered in excess of 1,000 retirement plans for businesses and professionals.

Steve has also acted for numerous clients as plan consultant and liaison with third party record keepers.

In May 2015 Financial Times Magazine recognized Steve for his outstanding work in the 401(k) industry as one of the Top 401 Retirement Advisors¹; in addition Associated Investor Services was also recognized as part of the Top 100 Teams in Plan Adviser Magazine².

In 1989, Steve co-founded Associated Investor Services, Inc., which has become A Registered Investment Advisory Firm. He holds his securities license through Securities America, Inc. a Registered Broker/Dealer Member FINRA, SIPC.

¹The list recognizes the top financial advisors who specialize in serving defined contribution (DC) retirement plans. The list was developed in collaboration with Ignites Research, a subsidiary of the Financial Times that provides business intelligence on asset management, and Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. a leading provider of data solutions and market intelligence. Ignites Research created the methodology and ranked the advisors. Broadridge provided unique data from its proprietary databases that helped identify advisors who specialize in serving DC plans, including 401(k) plans and other DC accounts. To qualify for the list, advisors had to have 20% or more of their total client assets in DC plans. Qualified advisors were then graded based on seven broad factors: DC assets under management, growth in DC plans and assets, degree of specialization in the DC business, experience, participation rate in DC plans advised, industry certifications, and compliance record.

² The “PLANADVISER Top 100 Retirement Plan Advisers” list includes advisers at the top of their respective peer groups in terms of assets under advisement (AUA) or number of retirement plan clients—including sponsors of defined contribution (DC), defined benefit (DB) and nonqualified plans. To become eligible for this annual listing—which is based on purely quantitative measures—advisers had to either submit information and references for their practice or be nominated and enter the awards process for the 2015 PLANSPONSOR Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year. Respondents are divided into categories for evaluation—these categories are defined by the number of advisers, plus support staff, in the practice. The three categories are individual adviser, adviser team or multi-office team. An individual adviser is one person serving one group of clients; a team is a group of two or more advisers in one office location who collectively serve one group of clients, sharing relationships and sales and using the same client support team; a multi-office team is a group of two or more advisers across multiple office locations who share support staff and follow the same guidelines and procedures to serve their clients. This year’s list includes 34 individuals, 50 teams and 16 multi-office teams. Qualification standards for the list include: Individuals had to either serve 105 or more plans or have at least $750 million in AUA; teams needed to advise at least $2.25 billion in assets or a minimum of 145 plans; and multi-office teams needed to oversee $10 billion in plan assets or 400 or more plans.