The new year traditionally brings increased focus on goals and priority setting — as well as greater scrutiny on time management as a tool to help maximize those efforts. As a retirement plan advisor, you’re well aware of the many demands that compete for your time and attention including — but not limited to:
- Meeting with retirement plan committees
- Plan design
- Assessing markets and investment performance
- Providing participant financial wellness support
- Evaluating service providers
- Monitoring DOL and other regulatory changes
- Participant communications
- Meeting with prospects
- Monitoring the reasonableness of fees
Furthermore, the role of retirement plan advisors continues to grow and expand. According to Morningstar.com, fewer retirement plan advisors are limiting their role to investment guidance and are increasingly providing fiduciary governance. Retirement plan advisors also find themselves facing heightened fee compression pressures in an environment increasingly subject to the risk of 401(k) class action litigation.
According to Morningstar contributor David Blanchett, increased transparency in the area of fees will “pave the way” for retirement plan advisors to compete more successfully. “The role of the defined-contribution advisor has been evolving over the past decade, and we expect the pace of change to [only] accelerate,” he said. “Investments in technology, service and scale can help advisors compete more efficiently while also offering better services to plan sponsors and participants.”
PlanFees leverages advanced technology with a robust proprietary live-bid database powered by RPAG, a leading retirement plan advisor practice management platform. PlanFees allows advisors to provide better 401(k) fee monitoring for clients and participants.
Time saved in any area of an advisor’s scope of services translates to hours that can be invested in providing higher-touch service or growing their book of business. Monitoring and benchmarking plan fees is one area that can consume a significant amount of time. Prudent advisors who wish to provide intermittent fee checkups between the 3- to 5-year live-bid intervals are often relegated to vendor solutions that can take several days to complete and deliver to a client. PlanFees offers busy advisors a better option.
With PlanFees, you can conduct a quick and convenient annual checkup on your clients’ retirement plan fees and break down investment, recordkeeping, TPA and advisory fees in just two minutes. And you can easily customize your benchmark to plans with a similar number of participants and total assets by entering just a handful of data points.
How reliable a benchmark can you generate in two minutes? With PlanFees’ robust live-bid database based on tens of thousands of plans and hundreds of billions in assets, you can trust the data that you provide to your clients and prospects. And for maximum flexibility and convenience, you can use the platform’s web portal or mobile app to benchmark on the fly — whenever and wherever you need to.
You can reveal areas of fiduciary concern, help plan sponsors make better business decisions and produce better plan outcomes while saving time. In short, PlanFees allows you to maximize your productivity while keeping a closer eye on your fiduciary duties. Use your extra time to provide a higher level of client service or meet with prospects.
If your new year’s resolutions include upping your service offering and providing a higher level of fiduciary oversight, consider bolstering your benchmarking efforts with PlanFees. We wish you a productive and prosperous 2022.
Source:
https://www.morningstar.com/articles/945685/the-evolving-role-of-retirement-plan-advisors
