Celebrating Sergio Campos’ Feature in UC Berkeley Extension Voices
We’re proud to share that Sergio Campos, founder of El Camino Financial (ECF), was recently featured in an updated article on UC Berkeley Extension Voices. The article, “Hard Work Leads to Financial Gains,” highlights Sergio’s journey through education, financial services, and entrepreneurship — and how that path ultimately led to the creation of a platform purpose-built for financial planners.
UC Berkeley Extension: A Turning Point
Segio earned a degree in economics from San José State University and began working in the wealth management industry. For years, he partnered with advisors across client service, operations, and back-office roles.
This firsthand exposure revealed a consistent challenge: many financial planners lack modern, affordable, and flexible tools that truly reflect how they analyze client finances in the real world.
This burgeoning insight blossomed into a full-blown theory about how financial planning and technology should work together during his time at UC Berkeley Extension in the Certificate Program in Personal Financial Planning.
The program deepened his technical knowledge and reinforced the discipline behind comprehensive financial planning — cash flow analysis, tax considerations, retirement projections, and scenario modeling.
The UC Berkeley Extension experience gave Sergio both the technical foundation and the confidence to rethink how financial planning software could better serve professionals.
Building ECF for Financial Planners
During the pandemic, Sergio began building what would become El Camino Financial, drawing directly from his experience as a financial professional and his Berkeley Extension education.
Unlike tools designed for a broad consumer audience, ECF is built specifically for financial planners — advisors who need flexibility, transparency, and planning-first analysis rather than black-box outputs.
ECF is passionate about providing advisors with a functional tool that’s intuitive and simple to use. These are some of the key areas that make ECF stand out among other financial planning apps.
Planner-centric financial modeling
Unlike with some other financial tools, which request inputs and then spit out a proprietary score that means nothing to the uninitiated, ECF uses models that will be instantly recognizable to financial planners (and understandable to their clients).
For example, the ECF Retirement Planning tool is based on the Pure Annuity Model, a standard calculation to determine how much a client should save to reach their stated retirement goal. The ECF output shows how much they need to save each month leading up to their retirement, while the progress meter shows how far along they are toward their goal.
This information gives you and your client real insights into their individual financial strengths and weaknesses. And if a client is unsure what a chart or figure means, they can check the ECF FAQs section to learn more.
Clear visibility into assumptions and calculations
ECF knows that advisors serve a range of clients, so standardized assumptions won’t fit everyone’s circumstances.
That’s why ECF empowers advisors to adjust the default assumptions informing the models clients see. To return to the retirement calculation example, there are standard assumptions around key details like:
- Retirement age
- Percentage of income your client would like to make in retirement
- Inflation
- Pre- and post-retirement return
Advisors have the power to adjust these assumptions on a client-by-client basis so the modeling best suits that individual’s plans, goals, and current reality.
Tools to support (not replace) your professional advice
ECF is built to supplement and enhance the vital role an advisor plays in financial planning and wealth management conversations. ECF’s structure facilitates in-depth discussions, starting with its seven-step onboarding workflow, ECF Discovery. The process gathers information and invites you to really probe each client’s goals and current financial situation.
As you map out recommendations, you can share ECF Snapshots with clients, to provide them an overview of their current financial picture and support your suggested next steps. Clients, in turn, can save their ECF Snapshots and chart how they progress over time.
The goal has always been to empower planners — whether independent advisors, RIAs, or firm-based professionals — with software that complements how they actually think, analyze, and advise.
Learn More About How ECF Founder Sergio Campos’ Personal Experience Informs His Work
Being featured by UC Berkeley Extension is meaningful not just as a personal milestone for Sergio, but as validation of ECF’s core philosophy:
- Education fuels better tools
- Planning should be practitioner-led
- Financial planners deserve software built around their expertise
Sergio’s journey — from student to financial professional to founder — mirrors the values embedded in ECF today: rigor, transparency, and respect for the planning profession.
You can read the full UC Berkeley Extension article, “Hard Work Leads to Financial Gains,” on UC Berkeley Extension Voices.
Thank you for being part of the ECF community. We’re excited to continue building tools that help financial planners deliver better advice, with clarity and confidence.
— The ECF Team