Sheryl O’Connor, CEO & Co-Founder, Income Conductor
Sheryl O’Connor is CEO and Co-Founder of IncomeConductor with over 25 years of experience across financial services and technology innovation. A demonstrated leader and entrepreneur with a proven track record and results.
Podcast
Overview
We plan our careers, we set our goals and then we work towards achieving them. Whatever we do, we do for ourselves. We plan our careers in a way that would either benefit us financially or would give us mental peace. But, for this episode of The Brand Called You, we bring you a very accomplished leader, Sheryl O’Connor, who is working to support the retired people more than herself.
About Sheryl O’Connor
Sheryl is CEO and Co-Founder of IncomeConductor with over 25 years of experience across financial services and technology innovation. A demonstrated leader and entrepreneur with a proven track record and results, Sheryl is skilled at building large enterprise program teams across global business and technology sectors as well as small, agile teams at start-ups.
In 2017, Sheryl co-founded IncomeConducto. Since then, she has been an influential team leader who helped shape IncomeConductor into the revolutionary platform that it is today because of the standards she set along the way paired with decades of experience in the industry.
Sheryl has also won 1st prize in the “FFiT – Female Founders in FinTech” global competition in recognition of the firm’s innovation and her contribution to the future of retirement income planning.
Sheryl has since received numerous awards, including the 2020 NYC Inspiring FinTech Females, InvestmentNews’ 2021 Icons & Innovators firm award, and ThinkAdvisor’s 2021 Luminaries award for Executive Leadership.
Sheryl is dedicated to helping all women succeed in FinTech. She is a Global Ambassador for Quesnay, Inc., an organization that promotes female founders in technology around the world. In that position, she acts as a mentor and coach to the female participants. She serves as Vice-Chair, Executive Committee of the Connecticut Technology Council which holds an annual Women of Innovation awards event that recognizes female technology leaders from various industries in CT.
Senior citizens and IncomeConductor
What motivated Sheryl to start IncomeConductor
IncomeConductor is a software subscription platform used for advisory purposes. It engages the company clients irrespective of their age in preparing a customized financial plan for their retirement.
Prior to founding IncomeConductor, Sheryl worked as a Strategic Program Director at MassMutual and The Hartford and co-founded an SEC-registered asset management firm, 3D Asset Management in 2006 where she built a high service level TAMP.
In 2008, they saw a huge market crash. At that time she noticed that many of her clients, who did not call them back, were retirees. She grew interested in this subject, did research and this is how IncomeConductor eventually came into existence.
What are the financial challenges that retirees face?
Sheryl tells us that financial risks that retirees face are not consistent throughout the world. They vary depending upon how society supports them. Talking about the US, Sheryl tells us that:
- The retirees in the US face the risk of not having enough guarantees.
- She also talks about longevity risks. She says that retirees spend about two to three decades without working, so they face challenges in making their money last.
- The third risk she talks about is inflation risk
- Sheryl tells us that in the US, retirees also suffer from expensive health care
As a financial advisor, what does Sheryl advise people to make financial ends meet?
Sheryl says that if someone tells her that she has a 70% chance of not running out of money post her retirement, she will take it as a 30% chance of getting out of money.
She says that the financial industry is giving retirees a probability of success for years. According to her, it is not what they need. Retirees need a customized plan for being able to pay their bills after they retire with the money they have. However, she says that making a plan is just one step.
After the client goes into retirement, change can take place. So what IncomeConductor does is give the advisor and the client the ability to know how their plan is performing every single day with actual data and not with probabilities.
Profile
Sheryl O’Connor is CEO and Co-Founder of IncomeConductor with over 25 years of experience across financial services and technology innovation.
A demonstrated leader and entrepreneur with a proven track record and results, Sheryl is skilled at building large enterprise program teams across global business and technology sectors as well as small, agile teams at start-ups. In 2017, Sheryl co-founded IncomeConductor, which distributes the fintech platform she co-developed under the same name.
Ever since 2017, she has been an influential team leader who helped shape IncomeConductor into the revolutionary platform that it is today because of the standards she set along the way paired with decades of experience in the industry. Early on Sheryl was awarded 1st prize in the “FFiT Female Founders in FinTech” global competition in recognition of the firm’s innovation and her contribution to the future of retirement income planning.
