By Scott Morgan
Joseph Savino, the managing partner of the Savino Financial Group of Northwestern Mutual Financial Network in Princeton, likes to help young professionals get a head start in the financial industry.
Savino says his business prides itself on the financial training it provides to college interns — some 40 of them this summer alone, spread across four locations — in hopes of building tomorrow’s financial professionals and entrepreneurs.
This is fitting because it is how Savino himself started out. A native of Long Island, Savino earned his bachelor’s degree in business at the University of Rhode Island, where he also interned for what then was known as the Northwest Mutual Agency in Trenton. In 1983, Savino took over the firm and is now the managing partner of a company that has been around for about 85 years.
Savino Financial hosts college interns throughout the entire school year, and the program is part of the firm’s goals of expanding in the Princeton market. The company has been recognized by the Vault Guide To Internships as having one of the top 10 internship programs in the United States for 15 consecutive years.
Savino says the firm, which employs about 40 people in the Princeton office and another 40 or so in its offices in Wall, Clinton and Newtown (its newest), is hoping to hire another seven or eight financial advisors at the Alexander Road headquarters.
“We’re most excited by our expansions,” Savino says, adding that his firm offers a generous plate of salary, commissions and benefits. “It’s an awesome program, actually.”
Savino says his firm is driven by client-centered service, something not all financial firms can boast. The company offers a full range of risk management products (life and disability insurances, long term care insurance, annuities) and investment products (such as money markets, mutual funds, and stocks).
Savino Financial, which has sold more than $7 billion in financial products (and paid out more than $5 billion in 2011 to clients who own life, annuities, disability and long-term care policies) also has the bragging rights to an enviable list of recognitions. It was ranked among Selling Power magazine’s annual “50 Best Companies to Sell For” list in 2007. It has been repeatedly named to Fortune’s “World’s Most Admired Companies List.” And it even was given money by a nonprofit — $50,000 from the Special Olympics, in recognition of the firm’s volunteerism efforts over the years.
Outside the office, Savino likes to travel, is an avid golfer, and is even more an avid supporter of high school and college wrestling. In fact, he attended Rhode Island on a wrestling scholarship, and still coaches wrestling teams in the area. He also is a past president of the National Association of Managing Partners.
Back inside the office, Savino likes to see himself and his firm as family-oriented. His wife, Joanne, a one-time nurse, is the company’s director of marketing, and two of his three adult children work for the company (though, for the record, he doesn’t like to single them out because he doesn’t want to give them special treatment over the rest of his employees).
“I’d feel remiss if I didn’t say we have awesome people and a great staff,” he says. “We’re like a family here.”
Savino Financial Group is located at 731 Alexander Road, Building 1, Suite 300 in Princeton. Phone: (609) 951-8700. On the Web: savinofinancial.nmfn.com.
