Home >> About Pinnacle >> Principles

Mission

Pinnacle Financial Partners will:

• Provide distinctive financial service and advice to clients
• Enrich employees personally, professionally and financially
• Make a significant positive impact on the community
• Create outstanding long-term value for shareholders

Place your cursor inside the pyramid for more on a particular topic.

"We believe so strongly in this foundation that 100 percent of our associates go through a three-day orientation to enable them to understand and adopt our mission, vision and values. Conducted by me and others on our Leadership Team, the orientation builds team, provides a clear sense of the Pinnacle culture and ensures we all share the same goal."

Terry Turner
President and CEO
Pinnacle Financial Partners

************************************************************************

VISION

To be the best financial services firm and the best place to work in Tennessee

President and CEO Terry Turner on Pinnacle's Principles

Q: Why is it so important that Pinnacle be the best place to work?

A: Banking is still a "people business." It is impossible to be the best financial services firm without having the best people -- and is virtually impossible to amass the best people without being a great place to work.

One of our original hiring criteria was that we would hire no one with less than 10 years as a banker or a broker. So virtually everyone who works at Pinnacle is an extremely experienced financial services provider and was universally viewed as successful at their prior employer. In fact, our associates average more than 20 years experience. Attracting seasoned, successful associates is only half the battle, however. The other half is ensuring their engagement in what makes Pinnacle different and excellent.

If we treat associates with unrequited passion, they treat clients and prospects with that same passion. Shareholders win as a direct result of the firm's ability to attract and retain valuable clients.

So, in order to attract and retain experienced, successful associates and engage them in providing distinctive service and effective financial advice to our clients (which is our only reason for existence), it is critical that Pinnacle be the best place to work in Tennessee.

Fortunately, Pinnacle has been selected four times as the top award winner in our business size category in the Nashville Business Journal's "Best Place to Work" awards.

Q: What are you doing to achieve the "best place to work" part of your vision?

A: We take a multi-faceted approach to creating an atmosphere where people can become fully engaged, enjoy what they're doing and be successful. Some of the specific steps we take include:

• Three-day orientation session conducted primarily by me to help enable associates to buy into the firm's mission, vision, and values. We also do physical team building exercises at the YMCA.
• Quarterly meetings with all associates to review the firm's performance against its targets and BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals)
• Environment of independence and autonomy which is easily facilitated by hiring only experienced, successful associates.
• Quarterly "listening sessions" with associates led by me to gather feedback and solicit suggestions.
• Book Clubs that are available to all associates, where Leadership Team members host discussions on books that hold some applicability to Pinnacle. Approximately 75 percent of associates volunteer to participate.
• Annual Work Environment Survey, in which 100 percent of associates participate. All unedited results and Leadership Team responses are made available to associates.
• Frequent community projects such as volunteering for Special Olympics, building an affordable home for an individual with Downs Syndrome or handing out t-shirts at the Music City Marathon.
• Regularly scheduled family events such as a family picnic and the Christmas party at Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art.
• Frequent celebrations for major anniversaries and other milestones
• Annual cash incentives for all associates based on the firm's performance
• Annual stock option grant for all associates

Q: How do you know whether Pinnacle is the best place to work?

A: Pinnacle's associate retention rate has consistently been above 90 percent. We've been extremely gratified by our associates' "staying power" in an industry where 75 percent is a more typical employee retention rate.

Our annual Work Environment Survey lets associates rate the firm on 12 questions designed to measure associate engagement. We believe the most important requirement for associate engagement and low turnover is whether the associate feels that someone at work cares about them as a person. In 2006, the statement "My supervisor or someone at work seems to care about me as a person," received an average rating of 4.7 on a 5.0 scale, with 5.0 being "strongly agree."

Q: What are you doing to distinguish yourself as the best financial services firm?

A: First, we hire the best financial services experts in the market -- seasoned professionals who are already familiar to us. These are people whose client lists demonstrate their effectiveness, people we are certain will share Pinnacle's commitment to exceptional client service, people who view clients as partners and have proven themselves to be team players. By hiring seasoned financial professionals to take care of our clients, we are more than halfway toward our goal.

Secondly, we make sure our people have the right products, operations and service support to be effective. At the outset, we said we would create a company that's "more than just a bank," and we would create a company that gives clients a "different kind of financial services experience."

To ensure we truly are "more than just a bank," we are committed to delivering effective financial advice - and the appropriate product, service or outside partner - for a full array of financial services:

• Financial planning
• Cash management services
• Brokerage and asset management
• Wealth management
• Mortgages
• Insurance
• Traditional loans and deposit products
• Convenient access through online banking and ATM/check cards

To create a "different kind of financial services experience," we have taken the traditional model and turned it upside down -- not just to be different but to be excellent. A few examples are:

• Irritant elimination -- elimination of the most pesky irritants clients face with traditional banks, ranging from the never-ending "press 1 now" options on phone answering recordings (a live person always answers at Pinnacle during business hours) to constantly having to retrain your banker (with a 100% associate retention rate among our financial advisors, you work with your favorite financial advisor year after year at Pinnacle). Click here for some of the top irritants and how we've fixed them for you.
• Access to decision makers -- every client contact associate at Pinnacle has authority to make decisions, honor commitments, fix problems and generally take care of clients' needs without six forms filled out in triplicate (or a permission slip from "corporate").
• Consolidated financial information - a combined statement, selected by the client, that provides information on their total relationship with Pinnacle, including deposit, loan and Raymond James investment accounts serviced by Pinnacle Asset Management. Click Here for a sample of our combined financial information statement.
• Pinnacle's "look and feel" - open, contemporary, casual and fun with light woods, contemporary furnishings, Learning Centers, water walls and local artwork on display in every office

Q: How do you know whether Pinnacle is the best financial services firm?

A: One key metric is growth. While size does not necessarily demonstrate client satisfaction, it is extremely difficult for an early-stage firm to grow if the company's existing client base is chiefly dissatisfied.

In less than three years of operation, Pinnacle became the largest Middle Tennessee-based financial services firm and the largest start-up of the 185 commercial banks chartered in the U.S. in 2000. In just six years, Pinnacle amassed over $1.5 billion in assets through organic growth.

Today Pinnacle has grown to $2.2 billion in assets with 18 offices in Middle Tennessee and has expanded to Knoxville, where we plan to add five full-service offices by the end of 2010.

This rapid growth is indicative of a combination of 1) fast-growth markets with ample opportunity, 2) the right strategy for seizing the opportunity and 3) a satisfied existing client base.

It would be impossible to build a $2 billion bank in just six years having never run an advertisement if clients didn't believe you were better than the rest.

Another key measurement is client satisfaction To that end, we utilize seven different client survey instruments (but we don't bombard the same client with all seven) to gauge their satisfaction with Pinnacle.

In these surveys, we measure everything from whether we greeted the client in a friendly, courteous way to whether we listen and understand the client's needs before proposing a solution.

In virtually all cases, our average rating is a 4.5 or better on a scale where 5.0 is the most positive rating possible. And in every survey, 100 percent of clients have rated Pinnacle as recognizably better than our competitors.

Q: How do you hire the best and make sure you've got the right people in the right seats?

A: First of all, Pinnacle has established a strategic framework containing approximately 20 significant strategic measures and long-term performance targets for each to ensure the long-term success of the firm. Each year, the Leadership Team (business unit heads) develops a three-year plan, rolling it out a year at a time, establishing short and intermediate targets that move us toward our long-range targets. We examine market opportunities based on:

• Market sizing and trends
• Client buying behaviors
• Competitive landscape
• Current situation
• Strengths and weaknesses
• Threats and opportunities

As a part of the planning process, we identify the human resource requirements necessary to execute the plan by unit.

Each member of the Leadership Team has responsibility for recruiting and hiring the associates required for their plan. In other words, they are not reliant on a Human Resources Department. They know who the key players are. We do not take applications, nor do we hire from resumes.

Each Leadership Team member keeps a list of high profile personnel that match our target (at least 10 years of experience as a banker or broker in the market and universally viewed as successful in their current role) and are at some stage of recruitment. For critical hires, I usually lead the recruitment process.

We also invest ourselves in making sure we get the "right fit." We spend a lot of time ensuring that potential associates understand key differences between Pinnacle and other large regional banks from which they are likely coming.

We must make sure a potential associate "buys-in" to: 1) the fact that Pinnacle is a "values-driven" organization; 2) that we care deeply about and will measure individual performance, but that we care more about team performance; 3) that our monetary incentives are a function of how well the firm does, not how well the individual does.

Q: What's your reward/recognition system for associates?

A: With the exception of the annual cash incentives and the annual stock option grant for all associates, both of which are determined by the company's financial performance, rewards and recognition are the responsibility of those in leadership positions.

Research shows that most employees are more interested in being appreciated than getting pay increases. Consequently, our leaders are continually looking for opportunities to praise and recognize their associates - to "catch them doing things right."

As for the rewards -- sometimes it's a simple "thank you." Sometimes it's an e-mail or hand-written note. Sometimes it's a gift certificate or recognition in front of everyone at an all-associate meeting. On our Work Environment Survey, 96 percent of our associates said they had received praise or recognition for good work in the last seven days.

Q: What specific strategies do you have for creating shareholder value?

A: While we cannot control the market, we can control a number of factors that influence shareholder value.

One of the most critical is shareholder alignment. Our Leadership Team and our associates drive the company's performance, so our interests must be aligned with those of our shareholders. The best way to ensure this alignment is to make shareholders of all associates. To that end, we have in place:

• Associate ownership of 30 percent
• Executive ownership of 13 percent
• Performance-based, at-risk compensation for the CEO, with 60 percent of CEO pay tied to the company's annual and long-term performance
• Broad-based stock option plan for all associates, creating a keen sense of ownership
• Vesting of current option grants over five years based on achievement of annual performance targets, thus ensuring associates have a strong desire to achieve performance targets.
• Annual cash bonuses for all associates based on corporate soundness and earnings thresholds, rather than on product sales or sales call numbers that may create a whirlwind of activity but have no effect on earnings.