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Waypoints Financial
Kevin M. Sánchez founded Waypoints Financial in 1999, structuring an independent RIA around the specialized retirement rules facing professional pilots.
Waypoints Financial
Waypoints Financial launched in 1999 when Kevin M. Sánchez identified a gap in financial advice for professional pilots navigating the Federal Aviation Administration's mandatory retirement age of 65. The firm built its early book by advising United Airlines pilots during a period of industry pension freezes, translating complex airline benefits—A Plans, B Plans, and PBGC guarantees—into actionable retirement roadmaps. The firm's strategy concentrates on pilot-specific asset management, blending retirement income modeling with liability-driven investment approaches tailored to lump-sum pension elections and deferred compensation plans. Its service stack spans traditional brokerage accounts, IRA consolidation, airline 401(k) management, and risk mitigation through long-term disability insurance structuring. The practice operates nationally, with clients concentrated among major airline domiciles in the United States. Waypoints operates as a boutique practice, with Sánchez maintaining principal responsibility for client relationships and portfolio design. The firm's affiliation with a larger broker-dealer or RIA network provides its compliance and custodial infrastructure—a common architecture for solo and small-team advisory shops serving occupational affinity groups. In July 2023, the firm issued guidance addressing American Airlines pilots' new collective bargaining agreement provisions, a timely client communication demonstrating embedded industry monitoring. The firm's structural differentiator is its single-occupation focus. Unlike generalist financial planners competing on asset-gathering scale, Waypoints competes on the depth of its airline benefits literacy—a moat built on two decades of translating FAA regulations, union contract schedules, and airline-specific pension math into individual financial plans.
General information
Firm type
Asset Manager
Year founded
1999
AUM
Undisclosed
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
San Francisco
Corporate office
San Francisco, CA, United States
Principals
Kevin M. Sánchez
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
What kind of clients does Waypoints Financial serve?
The firm was purpose-built for professional airline pilots, whose mandatory FAA retirement age at 65 creates a compressed accumulation window distinct from almost every other profession. Waypoints also advises a smaller subset of other aviation professionals, including corporate pilots and flight attendants, where similar airline benefit structures apply.
Is Waypoints Financial a single-advisor practice, or a team-based organization?
Kevin Sánchez founded the firm and remains the lead advisor on client relationships and portfolio design. The practice operates as a boutique, with operational and compliance support provided through its broker-dealer or RIA network affiliation—a structure common among occupational-niche advisory firms that prioritize specialized domain knowledge over scale.
How does FAA mandatory retirement shape the firm's investment approach?
Pilots face a hard stop at age 65, compressing their peak-earning years into a shorter band than most high-income professionals. Waypoints models this by emphasizing pre-65 accumulation velocity, tax-efficient rollover management of lump-sum pension distributions, and sequence-of-return sensitivity in the five years surrounding the mandatory retirement date—all calibrated to FAA regulation rather than a generic retirement age.
Does Waypoints Financial manage discretionary portfolios, or is it planning-only?
The firm operates as a registered investment adviser, which includes discretionary asset management for client accounts. Its offering wraps investment management into broader financial planning engagements, handling airline-specific variables like PBGC coverage limits on frozen defined-benefit plans and 401(k) loan scenarios tied to furlough recency.
What investment vehicles does Waypoints typically use?
Client portfolios are built from publicly available securities—mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, individual bonds, and occasionally individual equities—allocated across an asset mix that reflects each pilot's pension reliance, equity exposure in their airline, and liquidity needs near mandatory retirement. The firm does not offer proprietary funds or private-market products.
How does Waypoints Financial charge for its services?
As a fee-based RIA, the firm charges on an assets-under-management basis for advisory services, which is typical for practices serving a concentrated occupational niche. Financial planning components may carry separate fees, and the custodian and brokerage relationships used by Waypoints generate standard transaction costs disclosed to clients at onboarding.
Is Waypoints affiliated with a specific airline or union?
No. While the firm's early growth concentrated among United Airlines pilots during a period of pension restructuring, Waypoints operates independently and serves pilots from multiple major carriers. Its guidance addresses collective bargaining outcomes as a client-service function, not as a union-endorsed benefit.
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