The board of directors of Vestia Personal Wealth Advisors, a Nashville, Tenn.-based independent registered investment advisor working primarily with a niche clientele of physicians, has appointed co-founder Lauren Oschman to the position of chief executive officer, the company announced.
Oschman succeeds Tommy Martin, who will serve as a member of Vestia’s board.
“Lauren’s ascent to the CEO role has been eagerly anticipated by all of us at Vestia and was never a question of ‘if’ but simply ‘when,’” Martin said in a news release. “Vestia has excelled to this point thanks to her tireless dedication and passion for serving our clients. We are excited about Lauren’s plans as she leads our firm into the future.”
Founded in 2018, Vestia has over $500 million dollars in assets under management and specializes in delivering bespoke financial planning for physicians, primarily those who are women.
Vestia is primarily comprised of women as well. Two-thirds of the firm’s 21 employees are female, and five of the 11 team members that function in advisory roles are also females—more than double the industry average for women in financial planning, advisory and investment management positions, the company said.
Oschman, 33, said in the news release that she will lead the firm during its next phase of growth.
“While Tommy set a clear leadership benchmark to measure against, my plan is to double down on our approach to client service, maintaining our accelerated objectives for growth, while leaning into our firm’s value of never letting clients or team members guess,” Oschman said in a prepared statement. “We will advance the financial lives of the clients that we serve today and tomorrow via a strong mix of skills, experience, and innovative thinking.”
In an email, Oschman discussed her firm’s focus on serving a distaff clientele.
“In my experience, the ‘nuts and bolts’ of financial planning are similar for men and women,” she said. “What differs between genders is the preferred approach in building the plan. Women prefer to lead with their values and collaborate to be sure that how they use their money lines up with their values and what’s important to them. Women appreciate [that] approach to building their financial plan, and they prefer more education along the way to really understand how the plan comes together.”
Asked to described the client needs unique to physicians, and specific to those physicians who are female, Oschman said that while most professionals start earning money and contributing to a retirement plan in their 20s, specialized physicians often do not start their practice until they are in their mid-30s, giving financial advisors a shortened window to help them save for retirement.