As an eagle gracefully descends from the sky, the “thumb” that is typically tucked under each wing steadies its movements, extending out to become visible when the aerodynamic creature lands with feathers fully displayed. Named after the Latin term “alula,” the digit aids birds in flight, guiding from high angles to support swift, downward motions.
That same level of trust and efficiency is what Glen Eagle Advisors, a Kingston financial firm, is trying to capture with the launch of alooola, a mobile application for the millennial and Gen-Z demographics currently working to build wealth.
alooola is co-created by two Glen Eagle executives, CIO Rob Michel and COO Carol Ann Fernandez, who are also siblings. Their shared dream of “democratizing” investing, more than five years in the making, came to fruition with the release of alooola’s mobile app in May and an influx of people joining their platform in June.
The free application prompts users to fill out a financial profile with the necessary information so that they can receive recommendations on how to grow wealth, meet goals, and monitor progress on their journey to a financially secure future.
Besides the ability to track investments and accrue wealth, alooola features the ability to speak with licensed financial advisors in two additional tiers of service; for $10 a month, users can schedule live calls with a licensed financial advisor, and for $25 a month, they can continue to have that privilege, as well as “receive a comprehensive financial plan.”
Michel says that under parent company Glen Eagle Advisors, alooola has been able to access and benefit from the company’s experience, funding and values — but there’s more of a “parent” relationship than first appears.
The creators’ mother, Susan Michel, is the founder and CEO of Glen Eagle. She runs a multi-generational organization that specializes in the areas of wealth management, financial planning, and trading.
The three family members have all been residents of Mercer County, and Susan is on the board of trustees at the Hun School of Princeton, which Rob and Carol Ann attended as well. Glen Eagle’s current office is about a 10-minute drive from Princeton, maintaining the vision statement of “faith, family [and] firm” in their global operations.
Rob Michel received a B.A. in economics and political science from Yale, then his MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Michel started as a Glen Eagle intern in 2011, then worked on Wall Street for Morgan Stanley’s Investment Banking Division before returning to the firm.
Fernandez went to University of Notre Dame for both an undergraduate degree and her MBA in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial studies at the Mendoza College of Business. She worked for entities like Prudential Financial and Merrill Lynch before becoming an executive associate at M&T Bank in New York. Then, in 2017, she started at Glen Eagle.
Michel says that together, the siblings “realized that a lot of our peers and friends were being ignored by the traditional wealth management industry” because of estimated profitability, student loans and other reasons barring them from insight.
As college students, “[Carol Ann and I] became pretty passionate about this idea of the growing wealth gap in America,” Michel says. “There are obviously a lot of reasons why that gap exists. But one of the reasons that we became pretty fixated on was this idea that if you look at stock ownership, it’s not proportional to the population in the U.S.”
Noting how the “top 1 percent” of Americans own more than 50 percent of all stocks and mutual funds, therefore increasing the wealth inequality between them and others of lesser economic standing, Michel explains that this economic problem continues into wages.
“[Most] Americans have been relying on wages, which for the better part of the last two decades have been very slow to grow or stagnant, while the wealthiest Americans have been getting these huge multiples on their wealth growth because they were invested in a growing stock market,” Michel says, conceptualizing with his sister ways to ensure “that everyday Americans who can afford to be in the stock market are able to get the same long-term wealth benefit that the richest Americans are receiving from their investments.”
This notion correlated with how Fernandez and Michel were beginning their careers, albeit from different sides of the same financial coin. Fernandez is a certified financial planner with years of experience at internationally recognized firms. She handles the operations of alooola, ensuring that the concept came to fruition. Michel’s specialties are in strategy and growth, addressing big issues using his background in investment banking.
These conversations had a profound impact on the two siblings out in the field, with many friends in startup careers. Michel says that some people tried to open an investment account or consulted an online brokerage firm, but those options left them without advice or a real sense of empowerment.
“Our ultimate goal here is to make sure that we’re setting a young professional on a path that will let them grow their wealth so that they never go to bed stressed out about finances, or feeling like they’re falling behind their peers. We often find that when people join our platform or start a conversation with us, that’s exactly what they feel,” Michel explains.
“I would say a lot of people think of this as just investing, but really what we’re trying to address is a [larger] financial issue here. The people that become members on our platform are going through a series of very large life events, whether that’s buying a house, paying off student loans, starting a career, getting married, having children. Very few of those are directly related to investing,” he continues. “But they still want answers to those questions, right? They want some advice, and that’s what we tried to build through our mobile app. [They can now] get that advice without talking to someone, but also have the ability to speak with a licensed financial adviser if they need that extra support.”
Michel and Fernandez echo that while volunteer opportunities like a soup kitchen are always available as charitable options, Michel says that they personally “can also focus on providing financial education, and access, in helping young professionals grow their wealth in an attractive way. To us, that’s giving back in a different way, too.”
Fernandez adds that financial guidance was always a necessary component, because alooola was more than just helping young professionals invest in the stock market — it’s a way for them to become educated in the nuances of it. “Once people understand what they’re doing, they’re less fearful of investing. They realize it’s not that difficult,” she says.
In addition to Praxent, the fintech design firm that helped support alooola, Michel also credits the rest of their team for the aesthetics and branding of the app. The interactive product is “simple, approachable, and cutting edge.” This repetition of three elements is also part of how the name “alooola” ties into the relationship between Glen Eagle and the new brand — the trio of O’s is a nod to the motif of three simple steps and the core company values of faith, family, and firm.
“Glen Eagle’s symbol is obviously an eagle, and alula, spelled differently but pronounced the same, is a piece of the eagle’s wing that helps it fly steady,” Fernandez says. While the eagle does not need the alula to fly, she says that “it keeps it soaring evenly” through the sky.
Her brother’s research showed that not only is it beneficial to have the app’s title be a palindrome, but it honors the anterior feathers that Michel notes “helps [an eagle] glide” from place to place — in a similar style, he hopes “to the way their app can help their members glide financially” with ease.
Glen Eagle and alooola are separated “to better address the needs of different investors with different goals,” but Michel equates their relationship to Lexus and Toyota, which are two brands under a single company.
alooola users, as part of their premium plan, can schedule a date and time to speak with a licensed professional within regular business hours. alooola’s office phone number is also accessible for quick questions, Michel says, although “there’s no limit on how much you can talk to advisors.”
“That was something we were honestly a little bit nervous about from an operations standpoint, but it turns out that people really are comfortable, once they build trust in us and the app, [they understand] that they really can call us when they need us. It’s not like they’re calling us on a weekly basis, but they’re more than welcome to if they needed to,” he adds.
Michel and Fernandez observed how young professionals tended to use their phones to manage taxes, credit scores, and debts by themselves, sometimes without any prior industry knowledge. Inspired, they approached alooola’s inception in a mobile-first strategy that prioritizes the ease of use on personal devices.
By looking at demographic trends and the daily habits of potential members, they took note of how those groups were “increasingly accessing every part of their life through their mobile apps.” But a technical obstacle of that, Michel continues, “is how you provide members with access to their account, investment documents, and financial recommendations in a user-friendly interface that simultaneously fits within the confines of a mobile phone screen.”
Fernandez adds that “vocabulary is a big challenge as well,” given that some of the people who are now utilizing the application may not know what Roth IRAs or traditional IRAs are — meaning that straightforward terminology is imperative for understanding.
“Our hope is that we can provide access to as many young professionals as we can,” Michel says. “Not only can they invest in portfolios that we help them manage, so their money is working for them while they’re working hard in their everyday life, but they’re also able to receive customized and easy to understand financial advice … they can do it for free, with some added support if they choose to have it.”
Prior to the app’s development under Glen Eagle, students in the same target age group attending the University of Pennsylvania participated in webinars to test out the educational aspects of alooola’s platform.
“For us, they’re not separate. Providing the education component, whether someone joins the app or not, or becomes a member or not, is integral to our ultimate values and our goals,” Fernandez says, to which Michel agrees.
“I think that we’re unique in the sense that we do have that free membership, so we’re trying to lower those barriers to entry,” Michel says. “Our messaging often is that we’re here to help you guide your finances, but ultimately, we’re empowering you.”
alooola is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
Glen Eagle Advisors LLC, 4422 C Route 27, Box 399, Kingston 08528. 609-631-8231. Susan Michel, chief executive officer. www.gleneagleadv.com.
