HAPPY NEW YEAR!

At Covington, we are incredibly excited about another year of opportunities to fulfill our clients’ financial goals.  This past year we enhanced our firms’ services by expanding our compliance program with the hiring of a new compliance associate, Natalie Kennedy and hiring a new Office Manager, Jen Buterbaugh.  In our recent electronic Holiday Thank You Card to clients, we stated that we will continue to provide you with the highest level of service and expertise in 2025.  We take that assurance seriously, and in preparation for doing so, the entire staff has participated in ongoing strategic planning and training.  Our firm met throughout the past year to define Covington’s future direction by setting priorities and goals, allocating resources and establishing objectives to achieve a shared vision of remaining a private family office.  In full transparency, we not only acknowledge our firm’s strengths but also areas of deficiency.  We then analyzed our internal and external resources and determined the best course of action to meet our goals and address the areas needing improvement.  From this analysis we updated our strategic plan addressing short-term and long-term initiatives.

We accomplished this by working together as a team and engaging with a professional consultant, Glenn Flickinger. Mr. Flickinger is an experienced business professional who provides business coaching and peer advisory board facilitation for private companies.  Mr. Flickinger was brought on to review and update our strategic plan, while incorporating input from our staff.  By bringing him on for six months, we were able to gain impartial insight into Covington’s strategic plan and overall operations.  Importantly, by reviewing the firm’s overall operations, he assisted in identifying the future needs of the company.  Additionally, he stress tested our internal succession plan to remain a private family office.  As an entire staff, we reviewed and updated our strategic plan, participated in training, identified the firm’s growth needs and the plans for our next hires. Specifically, each employee at Covington participated in an in-depth personality assessment tool (DISC) that aided in understanding our individual behavioral styles in the workplace and how we interact as a team.  This exercise helped improve employee communication and collaboration by identifying our strengths and areas needed for improvement while addressing our core mission. The time taken during 2024 to better understand ourselves as a firm and what our future needs are was done to better serve our clients as a private family office for years to come.

With that in mind, we are excited to announce the promotion of Cindy Jones to Chief Operating Officer as of January 2025.  Mrs. Jones has been with Covington since 2012.  Over her years of service at the firm, she has expanded our compliance program serving as our Chief Compliance Officer, coordinated our financial planning analysis, expanded our technology and portfolio management processes, while concurrently providing first-class personalized financial management services to our clients.  Mrs. Jones has spent numerous hours preparing client financial plans, meeting with clients, researching the best practices, and training and mentoring staff.  Her ongoing dedication to the firm and innovation has been exemplary year after year.  We are ecstatic to have her as our newly named Chief Operating Officer. Mrs. Jones holds her Series 65 securities license and Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation. Additionally, Nick Allen has been promoted to Portfolio Manager and Research Analyst. Nick started his career at Covington having graduated from Indiana University of PA with a degree in Finance. He has served as our primary research analyst and has managed our trading desk. Nick holds his Series 65 securities license and is pursuing his CFA designation. Hannah Patton continues to serve as our Client Services Administrator. Hannah holds a CTFA designation and has taken on the administrative management of our family trusts and foundations among many other responsibilities. 

We also start the new year with the hiring of Jacob Devlin, who will serve as our Financial Planning Associate utilizing MoneyGuidePro which we recently purchased as a more comprehensive tool for financial planning.  Mr. Devlin is a soon-to-be 2025 graduate of St. Vincent College, majoring in Finance and Business Economics. Over the spring semester Mr. Devlin will be working part-time at Covington while finishing his remaining classes and upon graduating will be full-time at the firm. We are excited to provide a dedicated financial planner for our clients.  Additionally, we have identified the need for a client relationship manager.  This position is currently open, and we look forward to filling this role so that we can continue to actively cultivate personal client relationships.  Once we have identified who that may be we will let you know. Lastly, we are actively working on a personal Covington App that can be used by clients for a seamless experience and way to connect to their portfolio and performance at any time. As this new technology is developed, we will keep you informed. 

I will continue as our Chief Executive Officer and Lead Financial Advisor. Additionally, I remain Chairman of our Investment Committee.  As the founder of Covington, having a carefully crafted succession plan is of utmost importance. A successful succession plan must be prioritized early to ensure lasting business success.  With the growth of our firm to over 200+ families and $800M+ in assets under management, our goal has not waivered which is to be an enduring family office dedicated to enhancing our clients’ financial lives generationally as we continue to grow. We have prospered because of our client’s success. While their success has been primarily driven by their hard work and dedication to their respective business endeavors, we have helped to facilitate their ongoing financial success by establishing comprehensive financial planning, estate generational planning, charitable foundation administration and prudent portfolio management practices.  As the firm continues to grow in terms of clients and assets, we want to be ahead of the growth in staffing and technology.  We are committed to enforcing best practices and customized portfolio management.  As you may know we have benchmarked the company annually with the Charles Schwab benchmarking study for over 20 years, allowing us to benchmark ourselves to the industry’s best practices, which has also helped drive our achievements as a firm. With each addition to our staff and enhancement in services, we persist in our progress to maintain the longevity of remaining a private family office.  As I’ve stated, we are a private family office, and our goal has and will continue to be, to remain as such.  My family needs it, and I know how important it is for your families to know generationally our philosophy and approach will go uninterrupted. We want to sustain that for clients beyond the founder and we have placed great effort into our internal succession plan to be able to do so. Just as many family offices have done around the world. We give our utmost thanks to our clients, as it is a privilege to serve you at Covington.