Nick Della Vedova’s RPAG Legacy

Starting a new business is no easy feat. Nick Della Vedova, President of RPAG and one of its founders, is highly aware of the importance of what goes into creating a successful business.

When we say that RPAG is a platform “Built For Advisors By Advisors,” we mean it. The inspiration for the platform came from Nick’s days as a retirement plan advisor, and having his staff manually put together reports in documents and spreadsheets without industry specific technology.

“I still remember looking down at a report I was about to deliver and seeing Fidelity was spelled Filedity.” 

He knew his team needed to invest in technology to automate processes that every advisor did daily. Creating the producer group allowed investment in a technology benefiting the entire industry and a place for advisors to collaborate and share ideas and best practices. It’s what has allowed RPAG to keep a pulse on the industry over decades. We create industry leading output for advisors to bring deep value to their customers, whether it’s choosing the most appropriate Large Cap Value fund, Stable Value Fund, target date fund, or recordkeeper.

Nick’s numerous jobs growing up in the Midwest taught him to “roll up my sleeves, put my head down and get the job done.”  That attitude influences the culture of RPAG and is a reflection of our members’ drive to help hard working Americans achieve successful retirements in their future.

In the early days of RPAG, Nick helped shape basic deliverables including the Scorecard System. Quickly he transitioned to recruiting new members through networking, demoing the software and designing/implementing a service structure. In a relationship heavy industry, networking is imperative to growth in the early stages of a business.

A potential roadblock to this growth and success was that RPAG was a sister organization to 401(k) Advisors, a retirement plan advisory firm itself, deeming them a competitor with their targeted buyer. Nick managed this though creating strict rules of engagement between 401(k) Advisors and RPAG. This led to the development of opportunities to partner with the advisors creating a win for RPAG members.

Keeping that trust also meant holding the quality of the organization to a high standard. Customer service is the cornerstone of RPAG’s success, and our member relationships are built on respect and trust. Our technology continues to be the best in the industry, and we have grown significantly to over $1.6 trillion in assets under influence (AUI), but we are still the same early years organization that focuses on high quality service.

With such a high standard for success, there needed to be a collaborative culture where team members could continuously innovate the platform’s technology. Whether that is creating the RPAG scorecard, then automating the scorecard, or creating a meeting minutes template then automating the template, and everything in between, the culture lives today to continue that cycle of innovation to automation. Currently we are working on expanding our technological capabilities to leverage AI to deliver even more compelling output in an efficient manner.  We are working “in the lab” seeing how we can bring AI within the RPAG ecosystem to drive even more results for our members. Stay tuned for a rollout in 2025.

RPAG development doesn’t just come from our technology, but our team members as well. Nick fondly reminisced about our own Senior Vice President, Jesse Taylor, when he started at the company as an RFP Specialist. “To see the growth of someone is without a doubt the most gratifying part of the 20-year ride of RPAG.” Retaining employees for 5, 10, 15, and 20 years is a testimony to the wonderful job that Nick and the entire Senior Leadership team has done to ensure that RPAG stays at the forefront of the retirement industry in service, culture, and technology.

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