Pendleton Financial partners with businesses and organizations to provide thoughtful, values-driven retirement plan solutions. We typically work with clients who have $500,000 or more in plan assets, or those seeking a strategic partner for long-term growth, fiduciary support, and employee financial wellness.

We proudly serve companies whose employees reflect a wide range of backgrounds including individuals of African, European, Hispanic, Indigenous, Middle Eastern, South Asian, East Asian, and Pacific Islander descent.

We are honored to support workplaces that include veterans, military families, neurodivergent individuals, and people with disabilities, including those with invisible or non-apparent conditions.

We’re grateful to support organizations whose employees are part of the LGBTQIA+ community, and we are committed to creating a space where all identities are welcomed, respected, and honored.

Pendleton Financial is a Christian-led firm, and we are also deeply respectful of all faith traditions. We warmly welcome clients of every or no religious background. Our work is grounded in care, compassion, and integrity — because every employee deserves to feel seen, supported, and valued in their financial journey.

Our mission at Pendleton Financial is to run a business for you, a business that's essential to your success but peripheral to your focus. We take work off your shoulders, and that includes helping you design the optimal retirement plan for your participants, managing it in a cost-effective way, managing risks and overseeing your fiduciary progress, and being a valuable resource for your benefits team and participants.

Measure us by our ideas and our results; we should be bringing you ideas you wouldn't have thought of yourself, and executing them in ways that bring you success.

Our firm focuses on three core areas with our retirement plan clients: 

1. Fiduciary Assistance.  Ensuring the Plan's administrators, investment committee members, trustees and all other fiduciaries understand their fiduciary responsibilities.  We help them navigate their fiduciary responsibilities in many areas including maintaining their Fiduciary Audit File and ensuring the plan is bench-marked and the employees are educated and engaged.  We serve as a 3(21) Fiduciary and have the ability to provide 3(38) Fiduciary services through our affiliates
2. Employee Education and Engagement.  We meet with all employees at least once per year to help them understand the plan and how they can save for retirement.  By engaging employees we drive up participation and increase satisfaction of the employees.  We also help them understand what an awesome benefit it is you are providing.
3. Investment Selection and Monitoring.  We help you select the absolute best available institutional investments for your plan and participants and monitor those investments.  There are no hidden fees or revenue sharing on the plans we manage and monitor.  We evaluate the performance and management of the funds consistently and formally each quarter.

The Department of Labor fines or penalizes 85% of the plans they audit and the average fine is $600,000*.  Fiduciaries like us help mitigate some of this risk through better compliance practices.

Industries we serve:

• Medical
• Engineering
• Biotechnology
• Pharmaceutical
  
• Professional 
• Technology
  
• Retail
• Legal
• Non-Profit

We also assist organizations with deferred compensation and executive bonus plans using mutual funds, annuities and/or life insurance.  Our unique ability to offer not just one product allows us to evaluate what is truly best for your organization and employees, not what is in our best interest. 

UPMIFA, the Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act has changed your world.  We help you navigate this new world with the best of Fiduciary assistance.  Gray Pendleton serves as the president of a Raleigh based Foundation (we do not manage for conflict of interest) and he helps other Foundations, Endowments and Institutions manage their assets with the best available strategies, while ensuring their Fiduciaries are educated and remain compliant.