John Rawlings

John Rawlings is a founder and the Chief Revenue Officer of Fidere Solutions, where he helped build and author the first system purpose-built for representative payee operations. He personally developed the underlying rep payee rulebook and the compliance and oversight engine that translate SSA's regulations governing the use of beneficiary funds into a working framework, then continuously monitor beneficiary-level activity against that framework to surface issues in real time. That foundational work is what made the rest of the platform possible.

The system provides individualized beneficiary-level fund accounting, enforces compliance with the SSA rules and regulations governing the use of beneficiary funds, and is scalable, automated, and centralized, with complete audit trails, standardized reporting, secure record retention, and strong internal controls. It is designed from the ground up to meet the specific regulatory and fiduciary requirements of organizational representative payees, rather than retrofitted from general accounting or case management software that was never meant for this work. The platform exists because the Fidere team did the harder upstream work first: understanding the rules deeply enough to actually deliver an end-to-end solution instead of another partial tool.

The other half of John's work at Fidere, and the part he cares about most, is finding payee organizations that want to grow and helping them actually do it. That means identifying organizations with the right values and the right leadership, then giving them the technology, the compliance backbone, and the operational support to take on more beneficiaries without sacrificing quality. The country has a shortage of good payees and a surplus of vulnerable people who need one. Closing that gap is the work.

The reason John ended up here is the same reason he has ended up everywhere worth being. He sees a problem he thinks he can help fix, and he digs in until he actually understands it. At Pacer Financial he walked into the ETF and asset management world knowing almost nothing about it, built the Northeast territory from scratch, and grew it into the fourth largest market out of forty, averaging 36 percent annual sales growth. He then moved to Crumdale Partners in the employee benefits space, an entirely different industry he again knew nothing about going in, launched the Texas territory, scaled it into one of the firm's largest, and was named Salesperson of the Year in 2023. In both cases the pattern was the same: become a real subject matter expert, earn trust the hard way, and do what he said he was going to do.

He is now applying that same approach to the rep payee space, and is widely regarded as one of the leading subject matter experts in the country on the SSA Organizational Representative Payee Program. He is also actively engaged in federal policy and advocacy work alongside Continental Strategies and Congressional offices, including efforts through Congressman Sessions' office, around how SSA recognizes and supports purpose-built compliance technology for the rep payee community.

John is a Delco-Chesco hybrid. He grew up between Wallingford and West Chester before heading to Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. He still lives and works in the Philadelphia area with his wife Kristin, their daughter Ruby, their son James, and a baby girl on the way.

Why Auxilium Payee Services?

The short answer is Paul. I've spent years inside this space. I've sat with payee organizations across the country, I've read the audit reports, the GAO reports, the OIG reports, and the SSAB reports, I've helped architect the technology, and I've helped lead conversations with Congressional offices and SSA. The honest truth is that the rep payee program is full of organizations that are either drowning in paperwork, cutting corners they shouldn't, or both. The people who actually pay the price for that are some of the most vulnerable people in America, beneficiaries who in many cases have no one else looking out for them. So when I decide where to spend my time outside of Fidere, it comes down to the people running the organization. Are they in this for the right reasons, and are they actually going to do the work?

With Paul, the answer to both is yes. I've gotten to know him personally, and what stands out is how genuinely driven he is to help people and leave a real impact, especially for Philly. He cares about the city, he cares about the people Auxilium serves, and he holds himself to a higher standard than the program requires. That's the kind of leader I want to back, and Auxilium reflects that. They treat this work as a calling, not a line item, and they're willing to do the harder, slower work to get it right.

The board seat is a different way for me to do the same work I do every day. At Fidere, my job is finding payee organizations that want to grow and helping them actually do it. At Auxilium, I get to sit at the table, ask the right questions, and help an organization I already believe in scale responsibly. Same mission, different chair. If what I've learned can help Paul and his team serve more people the right way, that's exactly where I want to put my time.