Financial services firm invests time, resources into disruptive model

Vimvest seeks to be at the front of the line as its industry chases tech-based disruptions. To get there, the company is seizing on a seismic shift in how people invest and save money.

By Mark Gordon
| 5:00 a.m. July 16, 2020
| 0 Free Articles Remaining!

Courtesy. Vimvest executives Stuart Dickson, Maggie Hixon, Justin Bailey and Phillip Dickson, have high hopes for the companyâ€™s app.

Finance

Up until 2017, Margaret Hixon had a thriving investment advisory business in Sarasota for some 25 years, working with a range of clients on retirement planning under the brand CD Advisory Services. The company also had an insurance arm that held about $18 million in premiums. “We were chugging along,” Hixon says.

Then her sons, Phillip and Stuart Dickson, who worked at the firm with Hixon, came to her with a proposal to transform the business. Together with another partner, Justin Bailey, their plan was create a smartphone app that could handle the money management trifecta for clients: investing for the long term, saving for the short term and giving to charities. The Dicksons and Bailey had to convince Hixon to not only shift the direction of the entire business but to also put up about $1.2 million to fund the nascent project.