Advisors can serve as doctors' 'objective voice'

Lauren Oschman, partner and CEO of independent firm Vestia, says her personal background led her to her niche of serving doctors, a background “that would be really hard to recreate as an outsider coming in.

“That's not to say it's impossible, but I think it would be much harder to get yourself to understand what it really takes to become a doctor, and how much of yourself you give without having seen it firsthand,” she said.

As National Doctors’ Day approaches on Saturday, Oschman reflected on what made her decide to solely focus on serving doctors: her personal relationship with one, her father.

“My father's an interventional cardiologist,” she said. “[Growing up], my family wasn't like all of the other families in certain ways. My dad worked all the time. He would work all night. He couldn't be at all our activities, he couldn't always join family trips, just because medical training is really, really demanding.

“I watched him go through a medical malpractice lawsuit and just struggle with this concept of having a lot of financial ability. Doctors make really good money, but not knowing how to figure out how much is enough. And doctors are very driven. They wouldn't become doctors if they weren't really ambitious and driven to succeed,” she added.

That inspired Oschman, who will be a speaker at the upcoming RIA Connect New York conference, to pursue a career in financial advice and ultimately focus on working with doctors.

“There's a real value for an advisor to come and be this objective voice, who can help look at the situation objectively that a physician is in and help them understand what's really important to them,” she said. “Sometimes they don't know, you have to help them uncover that.”

The process at Vestia, based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, is designed to do just that, as well as to help doctors deal with compensation, lawsuits and liabilities and life goals. After all, the firm is centered on the journey of a physician and what physicians really need, Oschman noted.

“If we had made the decision to expand and just work with anyone who was in any kind of profession or situation where they had money, we wouldn't be able to be as focused on bringing value to doctors,” she said.

One of the most things that surprised Oschman when she started working in the niche was the fact that it’s more than asking doctors, "What is it going to take to get you to retirement?" but rather asking questions like, "What keeps you up at night? What do you need? What kind of life are you looking to create and what’s actually important to you?"

To help answer these questions, Vestia created an exercise that all its new clients go through to help the doctors prioritize and assist their advisors in understanding what’s important to their clients. Oftentimes, Oschman says, doctors don’t even know the answers themselves.

“They haven't spent a lot of time thinking about how to get the most out of life,” she says. “They focused on their medical training, and they're focused on when they don't have to do that anymore.”

Because doctors come out of medical school with student loan debt and very limited pay, Oschman says a lot of her work is spent focusing on risk management with her clients, negotiating contracts for them and ensuring they’re going to be paid fully.

Vestia subscribes to compensation data for physicians and has a contract negotiator doctors can work with to make sure “they’ve got that part of their plan buttoned up,” she says.

The sustainability of the firm has come from young advisors working with new physicians who are starting in their practices and more experienced advisors working with more experienced doctors.

The Vestia advisors enjoy working with the niche so much that they “hyper-niched.”

“We launched, over the last few years, two practice groups: one for orthopedic surgeons, the other is women physicians. These were two groups where we had a lot of connections and we just saw a need for even more specialized knowledge,” she explained.

Oschman added that Vestia started with the latter because the firm was being approached by women physicians “all the time.

“They were switching from male advisors who didn't specialize in physicians to our firm, where we specialize in physicians and have a lot of knowledge of just what it is to be a female in a male-dominated space. We’re looking at how do you navigate that and how do you make sure you get paid what you're worth?”

That’s turned out to be quite successful for Oschman and Vestia; the firm also presents at conferences for women physicians, particularly at orthopedic conferences, where it’s developed education specific to that specialty.  

As for what Oschman finds most challenging about working with doctors, she says, “They’re very busy.”

“We’re finding ways to consolidate into the time where they're gonna be in our office, or we're gonna have them on Zoom. They don't keep traditional hours either.” Sometimes Oschman ends up staying at the office past 7 p.m. to deal with a regular client.

Recognizing the impact that doctors have on the day-to-day lives of the public, Oschman said doctors are either improving other people's quality of life or giving people their lives back.

“They're giving families more time with their loved ones, they're saving lives. The ability for us [as advisors] to be tangentially part of their team is allowing them to do what they do really well, which is something only they can do, which makes a real difference,” she said. “I think it’s really cool.”

Name: Lauren Oschman
Position: Partner and chief executive officer
Company: Vestia Personal Wealth Advisors
Founded: 2017
Firm AUM: $713 million