Scott Horsburgh, CFA® | Jul 02, 2026

As discussed in a recent email to all clients, I decided to retire from Provident after 34 years at the company out of a 40-year career in investment management. I'd like to use this space to reflect on my career in investment management. I graduated from Hillsdale College with a degree in Economics in 1986 and joined National Bank of Detroit. I might have been junior deputy waterboy, but I was in the investment department and that's all that mattered! I spent six years at NBD, gaining valuable experience and earning the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation, which I concluded would serve as my passport to something better.

I met Ralph Seger and Maury Elvekrog through the CFA Society of Detroit, with whom the company had posted a job. It was a perfect position for me since I would be the obvious successor in a firm run by two older guys (from the perspective of a cheeky 26-year-old). When I started, we had a very small facility with two offices for Ralph and Maury, and a smallish operations area staffed by three part-time employees. There was one computer that kept client records, but dividends and stock trades had to be recorded by hand.

We added some sublet space from the architect across the hall. They assigned me to follow financial stocks because I had worked for a bank. My first task was to call all the clients and introduce myself. I think there were 30-40 clients for whom we managed about $40 million. I had previously helped manage $300 million at NBD.

While the company was an ideal fit for me, it was a second career for both Ralph and Maury, which left opportunity to help evolve the business. Ralph and Maury were both "generalists" rather than specialists in particular industries. I pushed us to specialize.

Trading was chaotic as clients could choose their own broker. One year in, I had an idea. Instead of ten brokers, let's consolidate down to two. One of them would certainly be Kidder-Peabody, a full-service national firm with a local office that catered to investment advisory firms in southeastern Michigan. Half our clients were already there. Ralph would instruct potential clients to go to Kidder to open accounts. We persuaded almost all our other clients to switch to Waterhouse Securities, bringing us down to five. Trading became a lot less chaotic.

The next year, the opportunity came to make other significant moves toward professionalizing the business when Kidder Peabody fired our service team for reasons I never understood. We moved the clients over to Waterhouse. This also helped me solve the unconscionable problem of sending prospective clients over to a rival (Kidder) to open accounts. We took control of that ourselves.

Our partnership with Waterhouse grew quite close. They even asked me to join their inaugural "advisors panel" in the late 1990s. Many of the friendships I made on that panel survive to this day.

Doreen Phelps joined our team in 1998. We worked closely together for nearly 25 years. Maury succeeded Ralph as company president in 1999. I was focused on driving long-term success. What we needed was better marketing. I contacted the local offices of Waterhouse Securities to set up joint marketing seminars. One of the Waterhouse employees I discussed this idea with was Dan Krstevski who has now become Provident's longest-serving employee. Whenever we held our seminars with Dan's office, three-quarters of the attendees were his invitees even though he was the youngest broker in his office. I decided to poach him from Waterhouse. His first interview almost didn't happen because it was scheduled for the week of September 11th. The market didn't open that week, and we didn't know whether or not the economy was headed for a depression. The interview went ahead. That was nearly twenty-five years ago.

The growth also meant that we needed more help analyzing stocks and working with clients. This led to important developments in Provident's history, the hiring of Dan Boyle. I also met Miles Putnam earlier that same year when he contacted me after attending one of our Waterhouse seminars. Miles invited me to speak to the University of Michigan student investment club. I was impressed by Miles' maturity and interest in investing, and he accepted our offer of an internship the same summer Dan joined.

Ralph had been gradually reducing his role in the company. Bringing Dan Boyle onboard in 2004 allowed Ralph to retire at the end of 2004. Maury offered me the chance to take on the title of President, which I accepted.

Waterhouse had been undergoing significant changes over the years. After several years as a public company, it was taken over by Toronto-Dominion Bank and renamed TD Waterhouse. Its growth and takeover by TD began causing trouble. It suffered a data breach that caused the leak of customer data, including ours. Our previous client consolidation to Waterhouse and movement of the other half of our business there laid the groundwork for a full move to Fidelity.

Not long afterward, the Global Financial Crisis brought new challenges to our company, our industry, and the economy. Changes in personnel moved our center of gravity to the western suburbs of Detroit. With the pending expiration of our lease, we moved to Novi, near where many of our employees lived, including Dan Boyle and me.

I had kept in contact with Miles since his internship in 2004, and this time he didn't spurn my offer of a job! The addition of Miles allowed Maury to retire from the company he co-founded almost 30 years before. Now with my retirement he steps into the President role that Ralph, Maury, and I all held in the past. The year 2010 also saw the retirement of two long-time employees, Pat Beach and Whitney Shapland. Shortly thereafter, we welcomed Terri Buchanan, now Manager of Operations, and later added Jeanine Russ to support the operations team.

I quietly made the decision to change the name of the company but wanted to allow some time to pass out of respect to our founders. Provident was one of the names under consideration. I looked up its exact definition, "Planning carefully for the future." I couldn't imagine a more fitting name.

We continued to grow and add staff. We hired James Skubik, a seasoned analyst who will assume the role as our Chief Investment Officer. To bolster our internal tech, we hired Eric Pozolo, who graduated from University of Michigan with a Masters in Information Sciences. Today, Eric is Provident's Director of Operations and Chief Compliance Officer.

Business was humming along until Covid hit. The market seemed to go down every single day. This left the Investment Committee with two choices: each pick a corner and cry ourselves to sleep or recognize that crisis brings opportunity. We chose the latter route. We hollowed out the middle of client portfolios - good companies at reasonable prices - and replaced them with a combination of bulletproof companies that would grow no matter what, plus what we labelled "victims." "Victims" were good companies whose stock prices were decimated by fears about what the pandemic could do to their businesses. The seeds of many great investments were planted at that time.

We also changed client record-keeping software, which turned out to be more significant than we initially realized. I always knew that we would eventually need to make the change as our provider sold its business to a larger company.

No sooner did we begin implementing the change than we received a significant piece of news. Fidelity was instituting a platform fee. Either we or our clients would have to pay annual fees or be removed from the platform.

We began talking to Schwab, which had a different approach to the custody business and a better advisor technology platform. Schwab matched or improved on the features our clients enjoyed at Fidelity while saving us money.

Over the next few years, we added Sarah Croucher to our operations group and Eric Wathen to our investment staff. This brought us to ten employees. Not just ten people, ten very talented and dedicated people capable of driving Provident forward.

The great energy of youth that helped me lead Provident for all these years was giving way to other ambitions. With my kids graduating college and building adult lives, I began spending more time at Detroit Tiger games and continuing ballroom dancing lessons with my wife. Having spent my career helping clients work on their own retirement, I had finally arrived at the moment I always hoped I would be able to recognize - the time to call it a career, a new chapter for both me and the company. It is important to hire partners who take a personal interest in your success. The remaining team all know the true essence of their daily task—to plan carefully for your future. That is how the business and its clients will thrive together, the Provident way.