Fident Financial

Dan Wrenne founded the firm in 2013 and serves as its lead financial planner. He is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ and a NAPFA-registered advisor, which requires a fee-only fiduciary obligation to every client. Timothy Hayes also serves as a financial planner on the team, supporting the firm's physician-focused client base.

Fident uses a flat-fee and retainer-based model rather than the traditional assets-under-management percentage. This structure is designed for physicians early in their careers — those with high student-debt burdens and strong income trajectories but limited investable assets. The firm argues that AUM-based fees are misaligned for this demographic, pricing planning around the complexity of the financial situation rather than the size of the portfolio.

Wrenne identified a gap where most wealth managers compete for established high-net-worth households, leaving residents and early-career attending physicians underserved during their highest-stakes financial years. Physicians face a compressed timeline of student-loan repayment, loan-forgiveness program elections, disability insurance purchases, and first-attending-contract negotiations. Fident's entire service stack — cash-flow planning, loan optimization, insurance analysis — is built to solve the specific sequence of decisions that occur in the first decade of medical practice.

Fident is a fee-only registered investment advisor and financial planning firm, not a family office. It serves multiple physician households under the same fiduciary standard, providing individual planning and discretionary portfolio management to clients who typically begin the relationship during residency or fellowship.

Yes. For clients who have advanced past the aggressive debt-reduction phase and have accumulated investable assets, Fident offers discretionary portfolio management. The firm constructs evidence-based portfolios using low-cost vehicles. However, much of the early engagement with a client emphasizes debt structuring, insurance protection, and cash-flow planning before portfolio implementation begins.

Dan Wrenne is the co-host, alongside San Diego-based fee-only planner Ryan Inman. The podcast serves as an educational platform aimed at physicians, residents, and medical students, covering topics from student-loan strategy to contract negotiation. It operates as an extension of the firm's niche educational content, not as a separate business entity.

Wrenne is a NAPFA-registered financial advisor, which requires the firm to adhere to a strict fee-only fiduciary standard — no commissions, no product sales, no kickbacks from recommended insurance or investment products. The firm is also regulated as an investment advisor under state and federal securities laws, with a Form ADV Part 2A available to clients and prospects.