You run a respectable wealth management practice with a hard-earned stable of clients, but you’d like to further expand your book of business. Over the years, you’ve found that retail investors can be slow to grow their portfolios — particularly during volatile markets. Plus, retention can be an ongoing struggle, and the availability of free trading platforms doesn’t help matters. You want to diversify your offering with business that’s more scalable, stable and tends to require fewer acquisitions before making an appreciable difference in your bottom line.
One solution may be to add retirement plans to your practice. After all, it’s just one step removed from your current advisory work, and there are numerous organizational prospects — possibly connected to your current wealth clients — who could benefit from the advice of a specialist. Here are some reasons you may want to pivot your practice in the direction of retirement plans.
Each New Client Offers Exponential Growth Potential
In addition to the business you bring in with every retirement plan acquisition, all those participants represent additional potential tributaries of your income stream. Those employees might need assistance with saving for college tuition, rollovers, IRAs and other investment planning tasks. You can leverage plan consulting to build a solid lead generation foundation for personal advisory business.
Plan Consulting Can Provide Stability and Stickiness
Retirement plan participants tend to remain fully invested and continue making contributions, even when markets decline. With automatic payroll deductions, not to mention auto-escalation in some plans, employees are much more likely to remain in the game over the long term — and even increase their stake in it — no matter the economic headwinds. For those organizations that offer matching contributions, the incentive for workers to keep investing is even greater. And the combination of all these factors is what can allow retirement plans to add ballast to your advisory revenue stream.
It Leverages Skills You Already Have
Educating clients about financial planning and retirement and helping them make prudent investment decisions is what wealth managers do best. That same skill set is readily translatable to retirement plan consulting. Of course, you may need to broaden your knowledge base in certain areas — such as plan operations and design — and ERISA compliance. And you’ll need to familiarize yourself with the roles and responsibilities of recordkeepers, third-party administrators and retirement plan committees. But essentially, you’re taking a lot of what you already know and putting a new twist on it. Leverage the knowledge you’ve acquired over the years to give yourself a running start on a new source of business.
Prospects Are All Around You
Finding corporate clients can take work, but there may be more potential inroads than you realize. Relatives, friends, acquaintances and even your existing wealth management clients can all point you toward potential prospects. Once people begin to recognize you as a retirement plan expert, new opportunities can easily open up. So spread the word, and don’t overlook the potential for business that may be right in front of you.
Tools to Succeed
PlanFees offers a quick and easy way to stay on top of one of a retirement plan advisor’s most important responsibilities — maintaining the reasonableness of plan fees. Our robust fintech platform gives advisors the ability to benchmark investment, recordkeeping, administration and advisory fees on the go in just two minutes. With PlanFees, you’ll come to the table with an immediate value-add for prospects, and the ability to offer meaningful, powerful insights. You can also use PlanFees to provide an annual fee checkup whenever you — or your clients — feel there’s a need, instead of only at the customary three- to five-year live-bid reporting interval.
Consider growing your book of business by adding retirement plan consulting to your advisory offering. And let the power of PlanFees help you cultivate prospects, while providing a greater degree of fiduciary oversight and a higher level of service to clients. PlanFees has given wealth managers just like you the tools they need to help transition into retirement plan advisory services. We’d be happy to give you a complimentary walk-through of the platform and answer any questions you might have.
