Hoopis Performance Network
Building Elite Financial Leaders of Tomorrow

The financial services industry has always been a high-intensity sector, known for its competitive, aggressive nature. Evidently, financial services organizations are struggling to create a conducive, high-performance culture within their organizations that helps support their advisors through the mental ups and downs of their stressful roles. In such a scenario, companies with able leadership tend to be better equipped to create a supportive environment that fosters efficiency, where finance professionals can thrive without feeling overwhelmed by their responsibilities. Developing leaders from its ranks, who understand the company’s needs best, thus becomes a priority for financial organizations looking to create a culture that ensures better advisor performance and time management. However, the real challenge within the organizations is to identify financial professionals who have a propensity toward leadership and develop them to become leaders who make a difference.

Helping financial organizations identify and develop their best talent to excel in leadership roles is Hoopis Performance Network (HPN). This Chicago-based business training firm offers leadership development programs for managers of financial organizations, along with training for financial advisors in sales and marketing roles. Offering flexible learning solutions like online learning, blended learning, live workshops, and customized learning programs, HPN uses field-tested strategies to build efficient leadership in financial services organizations. To this end, HPN creates original digital content on leadership development – available in eight languages in more than 25 countries with over 50,000 subscribers – that teaches leaders the know-how to build a culture of high expectations, high productivity, and accountability. “We identify the top experts in financial services with a propensity for leadership, coach them to excel in leadership roles, and help companies leverage our digital content in their leadership development program,” says Joey Davenport, President and Principal, HPN.

A Field-Tested Approach to Leadership Development

Notably, HPN walks the talk, preferring to lead by example. HPN’s founder Harry Hoopis – who ran one of the top financial services firms in the United States for three decades – leveraged his business expertise to build efficient leadership in HPN’s ranks, helping lay the foundation for HPN to become a successful business leadership management firm.

“A lot of the leadership development that we’re teaching, we apply to ourselves,” according to Harry Hoopis, HPN’s Chief Executive Officer. “And we take that experience and our expertise to the entire financial services industry worldwide.” This industry experience helps HPN continually curate dynamic digital content that contributes to handling leadership and advisory development needs for its clients.

Elaborating on HPN’s approach to business leadership development, Davenport mentions the discovery process, which involves getting in touch with the company leadership or management, and analyzing the processes the company already has in place for leadership development, and locating gaps that HPN can fill in. Be it processes, systems, or tools, HPN can give financial organizations access to some of the best leadership development programs in financial services using the aggregated content produced by the HPN University faculty, with insights from top leaders in the finance industry.

We identify the top experts in financial services with a propensity for leadership and coach them to excel in leadership roles

This helps organizations leverage HPN’s services that lead to performance and productivity boosts along with enhanced accountability.

With services like digital content, live speaking, consulting, coaching, and more, HPN has various programs in place to address financial organizations’ diverse leadership management requirements. HPN University, the online learning portal designed by HPN, creates digital content useful in leadership and advisor training, while its Firm Foundations leadership development program runs live and virtual workshops dedicated to training company management in leadership roles. Additionally, HPN’s sales effectiveness program Trustworthy Selling helps train financial advisors in the knowledge and skills necessary to successfully build their practice.

To highlight the effectiveness of HPN’s programs, Davenport mentions a large US-based investment company that used Trustworthy Selling to coach the company leadership and management in training newly-recruited advisors, helping fast-track them into sales roles. They also implemented digital content related to leadership development from HPN University and trained their managers on the Firm Foundations leadership development program. HPN then tracked the productivity of the new advisors along with LIMRA, a hundred-year-old research association in the financial services industry, and discovered substantial productivity improvements compared to previous years’ performance. “We saw at the end of the 12-month mark, 59 percent increase in advisor retention, 61 percent increase in policy count, 66 percent increase in average premium, and 17 percent increase in investments under management,” informs Davenport. This was the result of the investment company incorporating content from HPN University and Firm Foundations leadership programs into advisor training and running the new advisors through the Trustworthy Selling quick-start program.

Driven by such encouraging results, HPN intends to create more digital content for businesses to aid their leadership development learnings. And with demands for digital learning soaring, HPN is set to present its content and learning modules to financial companies across the US and beyond. To this end, HPN has translated its content to Spanish, French Canadian, and five Asian languages. HPN further plans to offer its leadership development content library as a standalone online learning program to companies. “We’re going to continue to work with our existing clients, expand our markets, and help companies with their digital content needs, in particular around leadership development,” Davenport concludes.