As more Maine employers look to increase their attractiveness to current and potential employees, Presque Isle-based Thompson Financial Group recently began offering group insurance benefits as a new service to its business clients.
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As more Maine employers look to increase their attractiveness to current and potential employees, Presque Isle-based Thompson Financial Group recently began offering group insurance benefits as a new service to its business clients.
The firm, which also has an office in Bangor, employs 23 people and was known as Thompson-Hamel until last fall, when it rebranded as Thompson Financial. Founded in 1962, it advises clients on estate planning, personal investing and insurance, as well as offering payroll and business services, which now includes group insurance.
“We were finding that small businesses across all sectors were not offering benefits to the employees, because they didn’t know about it, thought it would be too expensive or no one had ever approached them to discuss it,” says Bryan Thompson, the company’s owner and CEO.
“Our goal is to be a resource for these companies, to educate and answer questions, then develop a benefits package that is cost-effective and something that employees will want and value,” he said. “That will in turn attract and retain talent.”
That’s also true nationwide, as noted by Tim Glowa, human-resources consultant with Grant Thornton. He recently told financial weekly Barron’s that companies will need to get creative with employee benefits beyond flex time or the ability to work from home.
Back in northern Maine, Thompson Financial advisors have been meeting with clients in person since June 2020, though the CEO says that Zoom is useful for touching base with clients from afar. The company, founded by former potato farmer Art Thompson, also puts a lot of effort into self-branding via social media, including a series of videotaped interviews with its founder. At 87, his role is mainly a mentoring one, though he still meets with clients; he does so in person and via Zoom, which he mastered during the pandemic. The firm also uses social media to promote its brand.
“We don’t want to push ourselves on people, but just get our brand out there and show that we’re a fun group of people that just want to help,” says Bryan Thompson, a distant cousin of the founder.
Asked about the northern Maine economy, Thompson notes that food and hospitality businesses have been hit as hard there as everywhere else.
On the other hand, he says it’s been a plus to be in an area with lower COVID case counts at the start of the pandemic, owing in part to the U.S.-Canada border closure. (That changed Aug. 9, when Canada reopened its border to fully vaccinated U.S. citizens and permanent residents, while the U.S. plans to keep its northern and southern borders closed until Sept. 21, as announced on Friday.)
“From a COVID side, our counts were lower than anywhere else in the state for most of the time,” Thompson says. “That has allowed us to be a little more resilient and for a lot of businesses to continue.”