Match Grade Advisors

Match Grade Advisors

Welch and Vaughan co-founded the firm in 2018, combining Welch’s three-decade insurance and planning background with Vaughan’s 15 years of specialized retirement-plan administration. The Greenville, South Carolina-based RIA operates without the legacy revenue streams of a broker-dealer or insurance carrier. Welch holds the CFP and AIF designations; Vaughan is a Qualified 401(k) Administrator and Certified Plan Fiduciary Advisor. The firm’s wealth-origin is practice-based: two careers in corporate retirement services, cross-referred into personal planning for plan participants and high-net-worth individuals. Match Grade deploys across three delivery lanes: company retirement plans, individual wealth management, and business financial consulting. The firm administers over 91 corporate retirement plans, a volume that creates a direct pipeline into personal planning — 284 financial-planning clients anchor the individual practice. Asset-class exposure is shaped by the retirement-plan core, with model-driven allocations for plan sponsors and customized portfolios for private clients. The geographic footprint is concentrated in the Upstate South Carolina market, with client service radiating from Greenville into the broader Southeast. The strategy does not advertise direct deals, fund-of-funds access, or structured alternatives; the observable model is plan-level fiduciary work, individual AUM-based advisory, and tax-integrated planning through CPA-credentialed advisor Bobby Edwards. The firm lists seven team members on its website, including enrolled actuary Richard C. Vaughan, whose 35 years of qualified-plan consulting embed technical authority inside the advisory practice. No additional offices are reported beyond the Greenville headquarters. The firm does not publish deployment figures, adjacent investment vehicles, or private-wealth club memberships. No dated operational event from the last 24 months could be verified through the firm's own materials. Match Grade’s structural distinction is the enrollment of an in-house actuary inside a wealth-management RIA — a configuration that compresses retirement-plan administration, compliance testing, and personal financial planning into a single advisory team. Most RIAs of comparable size outsource actuary and third-party-administration functions; by retaining both, the firm captures the participant-to-individual transition without external handoffs. The partnership between Welch and Vaughan — co-founders with distinct licenses and certification sets — embeds succession-capable leadership at the top of a flat organization, avoiding the key-person single-advisor risk common in sub-$500M practices.