Couplr partnered with The American College of Financial Services — the 97-year-old nonprofit that has conferred professional designations to more than 100,000 financial professionals — to connect consumers with advisors on behavioral fit rather than postcode. In an interview recorded in October 2024, Jared Trexler, now Executive Vice President and Chief Growth Officer at The College, explained the problem it was trying to solve: consumer advisor searches are “based on zip codes or topic area,” and “a lot of advisors say they’re experts or do all of these different topic areas regardless if they are or not.” At the time of recording, roughly 1,500 College designees in good standing had created Couplr profiles. Trexler described the work as “the first step in a multi-step process” and said The College was rebuilding its Your Advisor Guide platform to “deeply integrate Couplr into it.” That integration is now live.
Interview recorded October 2024 with Jared Trexler, Executive Vice President and Chief Growth Officer, The American College of Financial Services. Conducted and written by Derek Notman, CFP®, Founder and CEO of Couplr. Published September 2026 with The College’s permission. Figures attributed to The College are its own; we have not independently audited them.
Watch the interview
Why did The American College of Financial Services partner with Couplr?
The College describes itself, in Trexler’s words, as “a 97-year-old startup.” It was founded by Dr. Solomon Huebner, a Wharton professor, in 1927, and it is a nonprofit accredited by — as Trexler puts it — the “same accrediting body as some of the Ivy League schools.” It expected to serve nearly 20,000 students and confer nearly 6,000 designations in the year of the interview. More than 200,000 advisors and agents have taken at least one course there.
Its interest in matching came from a shift in what a credential now signals. Trexler argued that CFP® and ChFC® have become “minimum thresholds or standards” — the equivalent of an MD or a JD. His point was that the broad programs leave an advisor “knowing a little about a lot,” which is not enough for a client with business-succession, retirement-income or special-needs complexity. So The College began positioning itself as the place “where you can turn from a generalist into a specialist.”
That creates a distribution problem. If an advisor earns a specialist designation, the consumer has to be able to find them for that specialism — and has to understand what the letters mean. As Trexler put it: if an advisor is going to put a credential on their business card, “the consumer should know what it means.”
What is wrong with zip-code-based advisor search?
Trexler’s critique of conventional advisor directories is the sharpest passage in the interview, and it is worth quoting at length because it comes from an institution that has no commercial interest in flattering us:
“Right now you go to websites and advisor searches are based on zip codes or topic area. And a lot of advisors say they’re experts, or do all of these different topic areas, regardless of whether they are or not.”
Two failures are stacked there. The first is geography: after 2020, as Trexler noted, advisors run most meetings on video, so “it’s not really about the zip code you’re in. It’s about how you can help solve a client’s problems.” The second is self-declaration. A directory that lets every advisor tick every specialism carries no information.
His analogy for what should replace it is medical. With a heart problem, you do not go to a family doctor “who’s handing me a lollipop” — you go to a cardiologist. Applied to advice, that means matching on the specific problem and on the relationship, which is what Couplr Match is built to do through its questionnaires and matching algorithm.
Notably, Trexler reached independently for the same analogy Couplr has used publicly for years, calling the result “eHarmony for financial services.” We did not put that phrase in his mouth; it is his own summary, and it is the reason we treat behavioral compatibility rather than product fit as the unit of matching.
How many American College designees joined Couplr?
At the time of the recording, Trexler reported that The College had “opened the doors for our designees in good standing to a Couplr interface to create profiles,” and that “something like 1,500 have so far.”
He was explicit that this was an early number and expected it to grow, because most designees only log into their College portal during professional recertification: “we think we’re going to see a huge uptick during the professional recertification period.”
He also volunteered what he thought the mechanism was — not more leads, but better-fitting ones. Advisors, he said, otherwise spend their time “maybe converting five, 10% of a pipeline,” where matching should deliver “consumers or clients that match the advisor’s desires as well, from a relational standpoint.” That is the lead-conversion-over-lead-generation argument, stated by the partner rather than by us.
What happened after this interview?
This is the part that makes the interview worth publishing two years later. In October 2024 Trexler made three forward-looking statements. All three have since been delivered, and The College published the evidence itself.
| What Trexler said in October 2024 | What happened |
|---|---|
| “We’re in the process of redesigning our Your Advisor Guide platform, in which we’ll deeply integrate Couplr into it.” | Your Advisor Guide now sits in The College’s primary site navigation as its consumer-facing “Find an Advisor” destination. |
| “Not to get too far ahead of an announcement we’re planning for this year… the consumer should know what [a designation] means.” | In October 2025 The College announced a consumer campaign spotlighting specialists, stating that “Your Advisor Guide partners with Couplr.AI for sophisticated, AI-enabled matching.” |
| “Now we’re just ready to launch what we’re calling the retirement course.” | The Retirement Course is live in The College’s consumer financial education catalogue. |
A partnership announcement is a promise. What is unusual here is a public, dated record of the promise followed by the partner’s own published confirmation that it happened.
What should wealth and insurance executives take from this?
Asked directly what he would tell an executive considering something similar, Trexler gave two reasons, both demographic.
The first is advisor supply. He cited internal College research finding that “in the next decade, the industry needs to hire 500,000 advisors and agents to keep up with demand.” His argument is that you cannot solve that by asking advisors to market themselves: their best skill is serving clients, not “how do I go out here and be my own business development and do my own marketing — that’s going to stifle growth.” He also cited a College designation outcome study finding designation holders roughly 20% more productive than those without.
The second is the great wealth transfer. As trillions pass to younger inheritors, he argued the relational component of choosing an advisor becomes decisive — and that investments themselves are “becoming more and more a commoditized offering,” a point he attributed to College professor Michael Finke. His conclusion:
“The value of an advisor or the agent is in the advice they give. And advice is inherently relational: what is your problem, and how can we solve it?”
If you are working through the same question for your own firm, the advisor, broker-dealer, insurance carrier and bank pages set out how a deployment works, or you can book a demo.
Sources
- The American College of Financial Services — Partnership with Couplr.AI (May 2024)
- ThinkAdvisor — American College Partners With AI Firm on ‘Matchmaking’ Solution (May 2024)
- The American College of Financial Services — Alumni Resources
- The American College of Financial Services — New Campaign Spotlights the Specialist (October 2025)
- Jared Trexler — leadership biography, The American College of Financial Services
Further independent coverage of Couplr is collected on the Couplr in the Press page.
Full transcript: Jared Trexler on the Couplr partnership
Lightly edited for readability. Auto-generated captions were corrected for names and designations — Solomon Huebner, Michael Finke, Ed Slott, RICP®, CAP®, ChSNC®, ChFC® — with no change to meaning. Speakers: Derek Notman, CFP® (Couplr) and Jared Trexler (The American College of Financial Services).
Jared’s role and The College (00:00)
Derek Notman: Jared, thank you so much for joining me today, I really appreciate it. I’m excited to talk more about our partnership. What I’d like to do, just to get things kicked off, is tell me a little bit more about your role at the college. What do you do there?
Jared Trexler: We like to call the American College of Financial Services a 97-year-old startup. It was founded by Dr. Solomon Huebner, a Wharton professor, back in the mid-to-late 1920s. And since then, applied financial knowledge has been the root of everything we do.
So much of education in and around financial services is based on theory — what you read in a book. And you and I both know, advisors every day, the way they’re acting with clients, the way they’re pulling from their knowledge base with clients, isn’t what’s in a book. It’s how you take what you learn and apply it in real-life situations and scenarios. That’s really what the college has been about for 97 years. It’s still the root of what we do: applied financial knowledge through professional designations.
We have a master’s degree in advanced financial planning. We have certificate programs. And we recently launched Knowledge Hub Plus, which is our continuing education platform. We have enterprise events every single year — both community-based events and more knowledge-based events, including Horizons, which is next March. It’s really the first of its kind retirement conference in the space.
And as a nonprofit, we’re an accredited institution — same accrediting body as some of the Ivy League schools. But also, as a nonprofit organization, our mission says to benefit society. So we’re looking for ways, through programming, through research, through scholarships, to continue to uplift the profession and democratize financial education at the consumer level as well.
Who The College serves (01:44)
Derek Notman: You’re speaking my language on all of those. I love how you say applied knowledge. I think that is so important, because we’ve got to take it from the book and actually use it in real life. Tell me a little bit more about how many advisors you’ve served, what type of advisors — what’s the breadth of advisors that you serve?
Jared Trexler: I would say the college has gone through a transition in the types of advisors it serves, as the industry has gone through a transition. Back in the 1920s, when Solomon Huebner said we want to professionalize financial services, that meant an insurance agent. The insurance agent was the financial professional.
And now the industry is so complex — many different types of individuals, whether you’re looking for a more transactional or a more relational relationship. Most planners are selling different products and offering different strategies. So we would say today that the college’s student base looks very much as eclectic as the profession itself. Anything from the 23-year-old insurance agent to the 50-year-old business owner who runs his or her own RIA firm.
We’ll serve nearly 20,000 students this year, and confer nearly 6,000 designations.
Derek Notman: Wow.
Jared Trexler: We really look towards the future of the college — again, coming back to that root of applied financial knowledge, and what it means from a credentialing perspective on an advisor’s business card. We look at the landscape and say CFP® and ChFC® have really rooted themselves as minimum thresholds or standards. But as we look at what clients need moving forward — if that’s the minimum, think an MD or a JD — if that’s the minimum to get in the door as a financial planner, what do you specialize in?
Because those programs are so wide that you end up knowing a little about a lot. But if you’re working with business owners, or pre- or current retirees, or you have a book that includes special needs planning, you’re not learning enough in those programs to deal with client complexity.
So we’re really positioning ourselves for the next 100 years as not only the place you can come for foundational financial planning knowledge, but where you can turn from a generalist into a specialist. And really that’s at the root of what we call lifelong learning.
Derek Notman: I love that. And that’s exactly what’s happening with the industry at large. And I believe you’ve served over 200,000 over your almost —
Jared Trexler: We have. Over 200,000 financial advisors or agents have taken at least one course with the college. When we look at our designee landscape, over 100,000 financial professionals have received a designation from the American College. And we’re really excited, under President Nichols’ leadership, to see where we can go as we move towards our centennial in 2027.
The problem: connecting consumers to the right advisor (04:34)
Derek Notman: Amazing, absolutely amazing. So, switching gears a little bit — because you talked about applied financial knowledge and serving the end client, really engaging them: what problems or challenges was the college facing on how best to engage or connect consumers with their alumni network?
Jared Trexler: That’s a great question. We’re looking at this from parallel paths. One is, we believe a more knowledgeable client makes a better client. So how can we get appropriate financial wellness, literacy, education — whatever you want to call it these days — how can we get applied financial knowledge in the hands of consumers?
That’s a first for the college in its 97-year history. It’s why we developed Know Yourself, Grow Your Wealth, which is a foundational financial literacy and wellness program, very focused on underserved communities. We’ve gotten a lot of penetration in historically Black colleges and universities, for example.
And now we’re just ready to launch what we’re calling the retirement course, which is a crash course for current or pre-retirees on how to make their assets last as long as they do, and beyond. It’s what my former boss Ed Slott used to call the second half of the game. Advisors are very geared with their clients on the first half of the game — accumulating assets. But as people live longer, as there’s so much complexity and dynamism in tax planning and income strategies, that’s a knowledge gap we think we can help serve advisors with. But also, we want retirees to ask the right questions.
So: financial wellness and literacy, getting it in the hands of consumers in a variety of ways — perhaps through where they work, perhaps through their alumni connection at an undergraduate college, or directly from their advisor as a tool to help their client or prospect become better educated and ask the right questions, which helps get the wheels in motion on the financial plan. Education at the core of what we do — that’s one path.
The other path — and that’s where we are really excited about our partnership with Couplr — is that we know the relationship between a consumer and an advisor is more than the ETF or mutual fund selection. It’s more than “do you need some type of annuity and income planning, or do you need a life insurance policy over here?” It’s very relational. It’s much more than money.
The industry has started to embrace this, with behavioral finance coming into CFP® and ChFC® curriculums. We’re even looking at it from the retirement side as we go to Horizons. Imagine someone really successful in their career for 30 years, and suddenly they’re no longer working — what sort of behavioral impact does that have on the client, for whom maybe work was their purpose? How do you find purpose in the second half of life?
When we look at all of that, that’s where the relationship, the communication, the synergies between the advisor and the client are really, really important. And we feel there’s a huge gap in the industry that Couplr’s helping serve. Because right now you go to websites and advisor searches are based on zip codes or topic area. And a lot of advisors say they’re experts, or do all of these different topic areas, regardless of whether they are or not.
But tools like Couplr bring the humanization into the process. Especially post-COVID — advisors are doing a lot of meetings like you and I are talking right now, on Zoom or Teams or Google Meet. So it’s not really about the zip code you’re in. It’s about how you can help solve a client’s problems. And Couplr, through its questionnaires and its AI algorithm, is really helping get to the root cause of that.
And we believe, as more consumers need specialists and are searching for specialists — we liken it to the MD model. If I have a heart problem, am I going to go to a family doctor who’s handing me a lollipop? I’m going to go to a cardiologist.
So as clients demand more from their financial advisor, when they’re looking for that specialization and human connection together, we feel Couplr — powered through Your Advisor Guide on the American College of Financial Services — is a perfect match to help solve that problem. No pun intended.
Working with the Couplr team (08:50)
Derek Notman: No pun intended, I love it. I really appreciate the kind words, and we’re really excited to be working with you and all the alumni as well. Can you tell us a little bit more about what your experience has been working with me and the Couplr team thus far?
Jared Trexler: Communication. Really good communication. I think it’s important in any partnership, whether we’re talking client, or advisor, or folks serving the financial services industry.
Something I take great heart in is that the industry — more so today than when I started in it, dating myself, 20 years ago — people are far more open to partnership. We were with our FinServ network and ambassador group last week: successful, wildly successful financial advisors, and none of them sat there and didn’t share.
I liken that to what we’re doing: the idea sharing, the entrepreneurial spirit of the American College. But also knowing Couplr is in its infancy, and it’s very nimble as it moves out there and tries to affect the marketplace. So communication and idea sharing have been fantastic. We’re very much aligned, as I talked to you about, on this really being the first step in a multi-step process here at the college, on what we believe is the need for specialists and how Couplr can help. It’s been amazing from our side so far.
Early results: 1,500 designee profiles (10:07)
Derek Notman: Awesome, likewise. It’s just so fun to have these idea-sharing conversations, and where we’re taking things, and how aligned we really are. It’s refreshing, it’s fun, it’s exciting. So I know we’re early days, but can you share any impacts, any positive feedback or experiences you’ve had so far in our relationship?
Jared Trexler: Yeah, I would say advisors are chomping at the bit — and I get it. As we think about this multi-step process, we’ve opened the doors for our designees in good standing to a Couplr interface to create profiles. Something like 1,500 have so far.
But we know we’re entering a period — depending on when this is published — of our professional recertification time. And as we know, advisors are busy. It’s very likely that, if they’re not a current student with the college, many of them are logging into their portal for the first time since they had to recertify last year. We’re trying to find ways to engage them throughout the year through Knowledge Hub Plus and other means. But we think we’re going to see a huge uptick during the professional recertification period.
We’re in the process of redesigning our Your Advisor Guide platform, in which we’ll deeply integrate Couplr into it. And then — not to get too far ahead of an announcement we’re planning for this year — we believe that if an advisor is going to put an RICP®, or a CAP®, or a ChSNC® if they’re a special needs planner, on their business card, the consumer should know what it means.
This whole idea of benefiting society in our mission means we need to explore ways for broader awareness of our designation programs in society — that brings more people to the Your Advisor Guide platform, brings more consumers into the Couplr universe. And then that matching and AI algorithm can take over. Everyone wins that way. It’s all about that awareness.
Advice for wealth and insurance executives (11:54)
Derek Notman: If there’s anyone listening who is an executive at a wealth management or insurance company that might be considering doing something like you’re doing with Couplr, what thoughts, insights, tips or best practices could you share that they could walk away with?
Jared Trexler: I would just say to think to the future. We look at demographics on each side of the equation. The industry is aging — there are so many articles out there about it. We’ve done some internal research that says in the next decade, the industry needs to hire 500,000 advisors and agents to keep up with demand.
Derek Notman: Wow.
Jared Trexler: So that’s one point. And suddenly you’re bringing in advisors who are used to experimenting and using a lot of different technologies — and those advisors are also really busy. Their best skill set is: how do they serve clients or customers? Not “how do I go out here and be my own business development and do my own marketing?” That’s going to stifle growth.
So first I’d think about it from that side. And we just did a designation outcome study that shows designations make advisors something like 20% more productive than those who don’t have a college designation. So first, take the knowledge. But then don’t make those advisors spin around and be anything more than what they’re really, really good at. Allow something like Couplr, or the relationship with the college, or even internal resources, to power the lead generation model.
Then think of the client, the future — the great wealth transfer that’s occurring. Most of the gray-haired matriarchs and patriarchs of families are going to be passing down trillions of dollars in assets over the next decade or two to young people. How do they want to choose a financial advisor? We know that relational component is much more important to them.
And if you look at the future of financial planning — I was talking to Michael Finke, a professor at the college, a few weeks ago — investments are becoming more and more a commoditized offering. We know it’s table stakes, with so much technology advancement and low-cost funds everywhere. The value of an advisor or the agent is in the advice they give. And advice is inherently relational: what is your problem, and how can we solve it?
So young people are going to really be focusing on an advisor they can relate to. And Couplr will allow them to break through all of that surface-level noise and open opportunities to that strong relationship. It will also probably bring better quality prospects to an advisor’s or agent’s door — so they’re not spending all of this time maybe converting five, 10% of a pipeline, but actually getting consumers or clients that match the advisor’s desires as well, from a relational standpoint.
And that harmony — eHarmony for financial services, and harmony — is really, I think, what Couplr can bring. We feel it here at the college. And I think if wealth management and insurance firms are really looking at the future of how they obtain clients and keep them, something like this is of extraordinary importance.
Close (15:09)
Derek Notman: I agree. I don’t have anything else to add — that was really well said, and I appreciate the insights. Very excited to be working with you, Jared, and the whole college. It’s just such a great group of people. Looking forward to continuing to work with you on all the things we’re doing together. Thank you for your time today, really appreciate it.
Jared Trexler: Great having you — and to be part of the Couplr family as well. Absolutely, Derek. Take care.
Derek Notman: You too. Bye-bye.
Derek Notman, CFP® is the founder and CEO of Couplr. Jared Trexler is Executive Vice President and Chief Growth Officer at The American College of Financial Services. This interview was recorded in October 2024 and is published with The College’s permission. Statistics attributed to The American College are drawn from its own research and statements; Couplr has not independently audited them.