Albert Lea business intellicents recently announced the promotion of two of its employees, Nick Austin and Dave Rickert.

Austin has been promoted from manager of retirement plan services to the position of retirement plan consultant.

“Nick’s advancement within our organization has been ideal in preparing him for this new role,” said Brad Arends, CEO of intellicents. “Nick started out in the 401K recordkeeping division of our former sister company, and then became a retirement plan relationship manager for our fiduciary investment advisory division at intellicents. From there, he managed that department, and had responsibilities for many of our largest clients.

“Nick is very bright, is very competent with plan sponsor investment committees, and is exceptional delivering participant educational group meetings. In addition, he just organized and spearheaded 3,000 participant one-on-one meetings over a six week period for the rollout of custom target date funds for a heavy manufacturer client in the Midwest, which was tremendously successful,” Arends said.

“I have been working toward this opportunity in my career path at intellicents,” Austin said. “Intellicents gave me the opportunity to learn about what makes a successful 401K from the ground floor up. Over the past 18 months, they also had me play a role in numerous sales finalist presentations, which was just invaluable in my development. I am fortunate to work for a progressive company that has a history of developing and nurturing talent from within.”

Rickert has been promoted from manager of group insurance services to group insurance consultant.

“Dave’s knowledge base of both fully insured and self-insured employer-sponsored health insurance programs is exceptional,” Arends said. “He has worked with our consulting team on many of our largest clients, and oftentimes takes the leadership role in many of those engagements. In addition, his collaboration skills with our clients and insurance company partners shows great maturity and consistently receives recognition.

“People with Dave’s industry qualifications are rare outside metropolitan areas,” Arends said. “We are very fortunate to have him on our team in Albert Lea, and he has more than proven that he is ready for a lead consultant role within intellicents.”

“I started here literally knowing nothing about employee benefits and group insurance,” Rickert said. “But I saw an opportunity. Our formal group insurance department was in its infancy, but we had a mature stable of retirement plan clients that we could expand these services into. Today I am proud of the quality service the group insurance department provides, knowing I had direct involvement in the development and expansion here at intellicents. I look forward to the challenge of adding to its future growth.”