Katie Thornhill leads Confluence Financial Partners as Chief Compliance Officer. In this role, Katie’s focus is to learn and interpret industry rules to keep clients safe and Confluence compliant on a firm level. Katie became interested in compliance early in her career as she began to see the connection between rules and regulations, how they improve the client experience, and how trust between the client and firm is built over time. Katie finds that each day brings a new topic, inquiry, or question which is both challenging and fulfilling. She enjoys the challenge of implementing new rules and processes, and seeing them come to fruition at the client, advisor, and firm level.
Katie graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. She began her career at PNC in retail banking sales and then pivoted to the investment side of the industry and spent time as a trader at Hefren-Tillotson. In her time as a trader, Katie learned how portfolios were built and managed, and the connection compliance had within that process. Katie shifted to the compliance team where she focused on internal audits, anti-money laundering, public communications review, regulatory exams, variable annuity approvals, developing compliance testing programs, and training advisors. In her new role at Confluence, Katie will be developing a vision for the compliance role as the number of associates and clients grows, identify potential areas of risk and develop mitigation procedures, keep up to date with new rules and help determine how the firm will implement them, provide compliance training to associates and perform ongoing testing to keep the firm compliant with all new and existing regulations.
Originally from Moon Township, Katie and her husband Jordan reside in the Greentree Borough and have a great big yard for their two Bernese Mountain dogs, Honey and Bee. In addition to doing home projects, reading, being with her husband, her friends and family (including 5 nephews and niece), traveling the world is her favorite and most humbling passion. She has visited 22 countries and she and her husband plan to visit as many as they can in their lifetime! Katie enjoys seeing how other cultures live day to day as it helps her value the simplicities in life and not to take anything for granted.
