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Stewart D. Frank, CPA/PFS, AIFA®


Stewart Frank, CPA/PFS, AIFA® has become, in recent years, an uncommon, if not unique, professional financial specialist in the field of Prudent Investor compliance evaluation. Indeed, Mr. Frank is one of only a few CPA's who have completed specialized training from the Center For Fiduciary Studies at the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh and where he earned special certification for conducting fiduciary audits based on standards of fiduciary practices applicable to retirement plans, foundation funds, endowment funds and private trusts.

 

Mr. Frank received his BBA from the Ross School of Business at The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He holds a Michigan CPA license, is a Life Member of the Michigan Association of Certified Public Accountants (MICPA) and a member of The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). In addition to his CPA licensure and professional membership affiliations, Mr. Frank has earned two special accreditations. He is accredited by the AICPA as a Personal Financial Specialist (PFS), and as an Accredited Investment Fiduciary Auditor (AIFA®) by the Center For Fiduciary Studies, University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business.

 

Mr. Frank has practiced continuously as a Certified Public Accountant since 1962. Currently, he is a member of Randel, Frank, & Schwartzman, CPA, PLLC, a Michigan professional limited liability company. In addition to his CPA practice, Mr. Frank is the principal of Precision Fiduciary Analytics

(PFA) and serves as the Chief Executive Officer that organization. PFA specializes in ERISA fiduciary compliance, Uniform Prudent Investor Compliance, and litigation support. Additional information concerning PFA can be obtained from www.precisionfiduciary.com on the World Wide Web.

 

With expertise in fiduciary compliance and forensic accounting, Mr. Frank is frequently able to identify and analyze issues not discernible to other experts. Furthermore, because he and his firm do not render investment brokerage; consulting; management; or advisory services, his expert opinions are recognized to be at the highest level of objective and independent. As a result, he has been engaged to provide litigation consulting services in federal court cases and multiple state (Michigan, California, Florida, South Dakota, Hawaii, Ohio, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Minnesota) jurisdictions as well as FINRA arbitrations.

 

The American Institute of CPAs and the Michigan Association of CPAs frequently sponsor Mr. Frank to instruct continuing education courses for their members in the area of fiduciary compliance. He was the sole presenter on a continuing professional educational webcast, broadcast nationally, by the American Institute of CPAs on the subject of prudent diversification methods. He has been a featured speaker at numerous meetings where he has addressed groups of judges, attorneys, CPA’s, trustees, RIAs, stockbrokers, Certified Financial Planners (CFP), trust beneficiaries, and non-profit organization board members on the subject of prudent investing. He authored and presented a paper entitled “The Frank Method, an 11 step process to Prudent Investor Compliance" as part of the Institute of Continuing Legal Education’s (ICLE) fall 2000 program on trust administration. He has authored and co-authored many white papers on financial planning and fiduciary issues, and has been published in Employee Benefit News. He was extensively quoted about his expert witness experiences in an article exploring breaches of fiduciary duty committed by corporate trustees that appeared in the November, 2005, issue of Bloomberg Wealth Management, and was featured in an article about oversight of trustees that appeared in the November 6, 2006, issue of Business Week. He was a content contributor to two books recently by fi360, Prudent Practices for Investment Stewards and Prudent Practices for Investment Advisors, and served as a Special Consultant on Fiduciary Matters to the Fiduciary Task Force of the AICPA’s Personal Financial Planning Executive Committee during their technical review of the two books.

 

In addition to his professional responsibilities, Mr. Frank serves as chairman of the Investment Committee of Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and is an officer and trustee of the Ted Lindsay Foundation, Troy, Michigan.