2025 Top Retirement Plan Adviser: Douglas Stalter

This year, PLANADVISER followed up with advisers on the 2025 Top Retirement Plan Advisers listing to get to know them better. These are the responses from Douglas Stalter of Oswald Financial in Cleveland.

PLANADVISER: What does it take to be a successful retirement plan adviser in 2025?

Stalter: Adviser success in 2025 is defined by a singular, non-negotiable trait: holistic accountability. Plan sponsors no longer just need investment monitoring; they require a strategic partner who manages risk and drives demonstrable results for their workforce.

To meet this standard, a successful retirement plan adviser must excel in three core areas:

1. Mastering the Fiduciary Evolution
   The adviser must act as a proactive chief risk officer for the plan committee. This involves moving beyond basic 3(21) or 3(38) services and providing forward-looking guidance on regulatory risks, particularly those driven by SECURE 2.0. We continuously audit plan operations and benchmark vendors to ensure the documented process can withstand scrutiny. Our primary role is to simplify immense regulatory complexity, allowing the plan sponsor to focus on their core business.
2. Connecting Retirement With Financial Wellness
   A successful practice recognizes that retirement savings are often derailed by immediate financial stress. Our focus at Oswald Financial is addressing this financial triage by leveraging data analytics to identify core gaps. We implement customized, measurable solutions that improve overall financial health and participation rates.
3. Simplifying Decumulation
   The biggest shift is transitioning from being accumulation experts to decumulation specialists. The wave of new lifetime income solutions requires us to guide sponsors through the complex product landscape. Success lies in having a disciplined framework (focused on liquidity, portability and value benchmarking) that simplifies these choices and ultimately helps participants transition from a large balance to a reliable, monthly paycheck for life. This is the single greatest determinant of retirement dignity.

PLANADVISER: How do you balance the desire to grow with the need to keep clients happy?

Stalter: At Oswald Financial, we view client satisfaction and firm growth not as competing interests, but as interdependent forces. Sustainable growth is simply the inevitable result of exceptional, repeatable service.

Our philosophy focuses on strategic, quality growth, not growth at all costs. We achieve this balance through two key strategies:

1. Standardizing the Client Experience (the “How”)
   We institutionalize our client experience by defining and documenting every process, from onboarding to quarterly plan reviews. We utilize advanced CRM technology to ensure every client—regardless of size—receives the same high-touch, proactive service model every single time. This standardization allows us to scale efficiently. By automating administrative tasks, our advisers are freed up to focus entirely on consultative, high-value fiduciary guidance, which is what truly drives satisfaction and loyalty.
2. Deepening Relationships through Individual Consultation (the “Why”)
   Our growth is not primarily driven by marketing, but by the high-touch, consistent engagement our advisers deliver at the client level. We commit to scheduled one-on-one consultative interactions that go beyond the committee room and into the lives of plan participants. This dedication to granular, individual advice—addressing personal liquidity concerns, tax efficiency or Social Security sequencing—demonstrates value that far exceeds investment selection alone. When plan sponsors and participants feel this level of personalized attention, they become our most passionate advocates, driving an organic, referral-based growth model that is both high-quality and sustainable.

PLANADVISER: For those plan sponsors looking for a new plan adviser, describe what makes your firm stand out.

Stalter: What truly sets Oswald Financial apart is our specialized focus: We act as a fiduciary risk manager that provides hyper-personalized participant consulting.

While many advisers offer standardized products, we distinguish ourselves in two critical ways:

1. The Fiduciary Mandate: Independence and Process
   As an independent firm, we are not constrained by proprietary products. This allows us to offer completely open-architecture solutions and focus solely on the best interests of the plan. We combine this independence with a robust fiduciary process—implementing 3(38) services where appropriate and providing continuous compliance auditing—to aggressively reduce the plan sponsor’s liability and simplify their operational burden.
2. Personalized Consultation, Not Just Education
   We don’t simply offer group enrollment meetings. Our practice is built around scheduled, one-on-one consultative interactions for participants. Our advisers in Cleveland help individuals tackle personal financial challenges—like health savings account optimization, Social Security sequencing or tax-efficient Roth conversions—which creates deep trust. This level of granular personalization drives dramatically higher engagement and participation rates than generic educational programs.

Click to see the list of 2025 Top Retirement Plan Advisers