Paul Worthington

Paul Worthington, a relationship manager at OneAmerica since 2018, is a lifelong recordkeeping devotee, having started in the business through a training program at Bankers Trust. His client, law firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP, headquartered in New York, with offices throughout the United States, relied on his experience for a major systems migration to a new recordkeeping platform—conducted during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Paul Worthington understands client service excellence in a new way,” says Anna Scarpa, director of human resources (HR) at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan. “OneAmerica had a recordkeeping system migration in June 2020, which is a tremendous project to undertake, especially during a pandemic. Paul was at the forefront, working with us [as well as the other midsize to large clients in his roster] to provide expectations at the beginning of the project in early 2020, discuss changes the migration would make and plan workflows it would affect.”

Worthington says the keys to top-notch customer service are focusing on communication, as well as setting expectations and being realistic about them as the project moves along.

And Scarpa says his work backs that up, noting that all throughout the migration process, from initial planning to final execution and review, Worthington’s communication was key. “He alerted us to disruptions that were affecting the project, assisted us in communicating the changes to our population—including both active and inactive participants,” she says. “Paul was honest, thorough and always came with a plan to get the migration back on track for us.”

She adds: “He was empathetic, a problem solver and a solution seeker. Paul truly went above and beyond—at all hours—to work with us to get through the migration system process.”

Worthington agrees that the project was a “somewhat significant undertaking.”

“Through acquisitions, OneAmerica had clients operating on different recordkeeping platforms,” he notes. “After reviewing each of those, we made the decision to move all clients to the newest and most technologically advanced recordkeeping platform that we have, and that was why we had to take Stroock & Stroock & Lavan through a migration to the upgraded recordkeeping platform.”

—Lee Barney