Advisor Spotlight: Craig Joncas, Penobscot Financial Advisors

December 3, 2025

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

A conversation with a college professor landed Craig Joncas, CFP®, financial advisor, and partner at Penobscot Financial Advisors, an internship with the firm he’s now called home for his entire career. Craig prides himself on going deep with clients to understand their motivations and goals, then creating a plan and providing support that helps them move more effortlessly toward their retirement dreams. In our conversation, we discuss how Craig discovered Flourish Annuities^∫ and the role it now plays in helping him serve his clients.

Flourish: Thank you for taking the time to chat with us today, Craig. To get started, could you share about your personal journey into wealth management, and tell us how you got to where you are today? 

Craig Joncas: I started in wealth management through a fortunate internship in college. My personal finance professor connected me with Penobscot Financial Advisors, the firm that I'm still with today. I got my foot in the door and the rest is history. Right after college, the firm offered me a job. I received my licensure that September and started running my own book of clients within the company.

Flourish: Tell us about the firm. What's the focus, what kind of clients do you typically serve? 
Craig: We're a full service, fee-only wealth management firm that aims to function as the CFO for our clients. We want to know them very well: to understand their family, their money, and their goals for the future to help them make optimal, efficient decisions to get there.

We work with people that have worked hard, saved up a strong nest egg and living, and are looking at making a retirement transition at some point. They’re overwhelmed by putting their plans together and want somebody that can take over the reins.

Flourish: When did you start working with Flourish? Do you remember how you heard about us, and what made you interested in partnering together?
Craig: We started using Flourish Cash^† with some select, high-value clients first, as a sort of test case. After a few months, we found that the platform was really easy to use and it gave us more insight into client cash positions and spending.^∆ It proved to be something we wanted to roll out to a lot more of our clients.

Flourish: In your work as a financial advisor, have you utilized annuities within the client portfolios?
Craig: The majority of what we use through Flourish Annuities is MYGAs (multi-year guaranteed annuities) for clients that have a higher cash requirement than we might have as their advisor. We like to use these solutions to help clients earn a better yield on cash, while still satisfying their personal risk tolerance and need for having something guaranteed.^††

Flourish: Before Flourish Annuities came on the scene, what was your process for offering annuities to clients?
Craig: We used several different general agents over the years, but we stopped using them because they all had service issues and other problems. Then, we started going directly to insurance companies that we knew had fee-only offerings. But we never really found a fit where we could broker multiple products in one place. That's important to us because we don't want to bring everyone to the same insurance company. We want it to be competitive. 

We were looking for a solution that delivered good service and made the process easy. We tried a lot of different things over the years, but they all came with a lot of headaches.

Flourish: What made you interested in using Flourish Annuities? What were you hoping to address when it came to those problems?
Craig: Primarily, it was the technology and actual setup of an annuity contract. With Flourish, it’s a completely digital process. There is no need to send paperwork back and forth, which makes it easy for us and our clients. We have one place where we can track all applications and stages of the process with one login and one service team, rather than multiple logins to all these different annuity carriers.

Flourish: What benefits have you seen for your firm and also your clients from working with Flourish Annuities and the OID (Outsourced Insurance Desk)?
Craig: The technology benefits are key for us. It’s a big deal to be able to issue business in one place, have it all link into our Black Diamond system, and gain visibility in reporting to it there. With Flourish, I like that cash and annuities happen in the same place. It becomes a repository of money that is safe and secure. Flourish becomes the place a client can turn to for key, lower-risk assets they hold outside the traditional portfolio.

Flourish: Were you able to execute more with Flourish Annuities on behalf of your clients than you were with other systems?
Craig: With Flourish, it's so simple: go online, prefill the application, and send it to the client. I usually get an email from somebody on the Flourish Annuities team that they've done the review, then the client clicks to sign — wonderful. With our previous provider, we were doing physical paperwork that was printed, mailed, signed, sent back. It took forever and was a logistical pain.

Flourish: What would you say to advisors who are hesitant to incorporate annuities into offerings with clients?
Craig: I'd say start simple. We started with really simple products like MYGAs. Also, make it easy for the client to understand the annuity so they won’t be surprised later. Advisors being structured in a fee-only capacity helps, too. That removes the pressure to sell a complex product with the goal of generating the best commission possible, which is what gave some annuities a bad reputation.

Flourish: One last question: How do you think Flourish Annuities will help you continue to improve client outcomes going into the future, and potentially even support firm growth?
Craig: For firms to be competitive today, they have to become more for the client than just an investment broker. Over the past 10 years, our firm has continued to increase our scope, quality, and detail of work. 

With Flourish, the platform feels like it’s ours and it’s another thing we’re offering to clients. In the past, our conversations around cash management decisions looked like, "Go find an online high-yield bank, or wherever you want to stick your savings, here's how much you should put there." I think Flourish will continue to generate better referrals for our firm because it represents another expansion of our offerings.

Penobscot Financial Advisors and Flourish are separate and unaffiliated firms. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. This material is provided for informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the individual being interviewed and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Firm or any clients of the firm. The inclusion of any external party in this interview does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by the Firm. The information provided is not intended as financial, investment, or legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. This feedback may not be representative of the experience of other customers and is not a guarantee of future performance or success. Penobscot Financial Advisors does not receive compensation from Flourish for their use of the platform. Use of Flourish products does not constitute an endorsement and may not be suitable for all investors.

About Flourish

Flourish builds technology that empowers financial advisors, improves financial lives and retirement outcomes, and delivers new and innovative investment options to advisors. Today, the Flourish platform is used by more than 1,000 wealth management firms representing more than $2.6 trillion in assets under management. Flourish is wholly-owned by MassMutual. For more information, visit www.flourish.com.