Table of Contents
An Unfamiliar Corner Of Finance
Over his career, Tom Batterman built a reputation for handling one of the more specialized corners of financial advising: managing surplus investment funds for small mutual insurance companies. Batterman, who spent more than three decades as a fee-only fiduciary advisor in Wausau, Wisconsin, and now splits his time between Wisconsin and Florida, says the work came with rules that took real effort to understand.
“The rules and regulations applicable to this line of work were very obtuse and confusing,” Batterman said, describing the regulatory framework that governs how mutual insurance companies can invest their surplus funds.
A Conversation That Went Nowhere, At First
Tom Batterman didn’t enter this niche through a marketing plan. It started with a personal connection. A friend serving on the board of a small mutual insurance company suggested the board consider bringing in outside help to manage its investments, since the company’s own manager had been handling the funds internally.
“They came and had me come and talk to the board,” Batterman said. He presented his approach to the company’s president and vice president at the time. The board decided not to make a change, and the conversation ended there.
A Call Seven Years Later
The story might have ended after that single meeting, but it did not. The vice president who had sat in on Batterman’s original presentation eventually left the company for a different position. Seven years later, the company’s president also departed, and the vice president returned to fill that role.
“The vice president said, I don’t know anything about investments, though. I remember that presentation that guy did, like seven years ago. Maybe we could talk to him about coming back in and doing that,” Batterman said, recalling how the opportunity resurfaced.
The company brought Batterman back to make his case again, and this time, the board decided to hire him.
“That’s what kind of got us into it,” Batterman said.
Building A Niche Through Word Of Mouth
Once Batterman took on that first mutual insurance company client, the relationship helped establish his firm’s reputation within a small, tightly connected industry. The company was well known within its state association, and other mutual insurance companies began asking about the investment work Batterman was doing on their behalf.
“It was one of the larger, more well-known companies in the state association group, and so they started talking to other people about the work we were doing for them,” Batterman said. “Just kind of went from there.”
That word-of-mouth growth eventually made surplus fund management for mutual insurance companies a defining part of Batterman’s practice, alongside his work with individual clients.
Why The Work Required A Different Structure
The regulatory requirements tied to insurance company investments also shaped decisions Batterman made about how his firm was organized. Wisconsin law did not allow the type of trust company he had founded, Vigil Asset Management Group, to provide investment services directly to insurance companies. That restriction became one reason Batterman later moved this part of his business into a registered investment advisory structure through Financial Fiduciaries, LLC.
“We couldn’t do that inside of a trust company structure. The law of the state of Wisconsin didn’t allow our type of trust company to provide services to those insurance companies, so we needed to have an RIA to be able to do that,” Batterman said.
An Example Of Fiduciary Work In A Specialized Setting
For Batterman, the mutual insurance company work reflects the same underlying approach he applied throughout his career: research the rules thoroughly, understand a client’s specific circumstances, and provide guidance without any product-related conflict of interest. The niche required a deeper familiarity with a regulatory framework that most advisors never encounter.
Now retired and dividing his time between Eagle River, Wisconsin, and The Villages, Florida, Batterman looks back on the surplus fund work as one example of how a single referral, followed patiently over several years, can shape a lasting part of a financial advisory practice.
