Deals & People February 16, 2010

McDaniel to Spearhead Key Partnerships at Clark Consulting

W. Garrett McDaniel Jr., a senior-level financial services and executive benefits marketer, has joined Clark Consulting, LLC, to help spearhead the company’s outreach initiatives through select third party alliances.
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“This is another critical step we are taking to reach out to new markets through new channels,” said Kurt Laning, president of Clark Consulting, in a press release. “Garrett is among the best of the best in our industry, and the fit with Clark Consulting is an excellent one.”    

McDaniel, who will serve as the firm’s Managing Director, Institutional Sales, has worked with major financial services firms from Kidder-Peabody to Prudential Securities and Paine Webber. In addition to his work at large corporations, he has served as an officer of smaller community banks – one of several Clark Consulting markets, according to the announcement.

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The hire was described as part of a strategic offensive by Clark Consulting “to innovate both new services and new channels offering its products and services”. Clark Consulting specializes in helping companies establish executive benefit programs, programs that can be offset by sophisticated financing through bank-owned or corporate-owned life insurance (BOLI and COLI), according to the firm.

Clark Consulting primarily offers its services through independent consultants and continues to support that channel. At the same time, it is developing services that allow third party channels – such as major brokerages – to tap into Clark Consulting’s product and service offerings.

Clark Consulting, LLC, headquartered in Dallas, is an AEGON company. AEGON N.V. is an international life insurance, pension and investment group based in The Hague, The Netherlands, with businesses in over twenty markets in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

More information is available at http://www.clarkconsulting.com

Products February 16, 2010

Blue Prairie Group Unveils New Consulting Report

Blue Prairie Group is launching its proprietary Fiduciary-based Investment Consulting report.
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According to a press release, this report is the culmination of over a year of internal work, including “significant feedback from clients”. The Chicago-based retirement and investment consulting firm says that the redesigned report is intended to define a new standard for ERISA investment consulting.     

The proprietary Blue Prairie Group Smartcard, described as “the heart and soul” of the new report, combines quantitative data and qualitative analysis to give plan fiduciaries a sense of how their investments are doing relative to the monitoring benchmarks established in their investment policy statement. In addition to actively managed funds, the Smartcard analyzes target date funds and passively managed investments using similar criteria. The data is color coded, and presented in a single-page format – “so that plan fiduciaries know immediately if further action is required,” according to the announcement.

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Sara Braz, the Blue Prairie Group consultant who served as the internal project manager said,  “We see this report as much more than just an aesthetic redesign. For us, it represents a complete retooling of the behind-the-scenes work flow we use to generate our proprietary investment reports for our busy plan fiduciary clients.  Having sat in scores of meetings with plan fiduciaries, I know our clients want actionable information presented to them in a concise, easy-to-read format. I’m delighted to say that this report does that.”  

Not everything in the report is changing, however. Gary Silverman, Blue Prairie Group’s Chief Investment Officer, worked closely with the firm’s investment analysts and the Internal Investment Committee in modifying the underlying methodology of linking current investment performance to each client’s investment policy statement (IPS.)

In addition to investment Information, the report also features client-specific information on plan fees and plan design so that busy plan fiduciaries can better understand how their plan stacks up against national normative data. It also offers expanded sections devoted to stable value analysis, money market and target date funds.

Tess Malone, Blue Prairie Group’s Institutional Retirement and Investment practice leader, says “Based on our review of the competitive landscape, most plan sponsors lack good, actionable information related to the ERISA investment monitoring process. This report redesign is a continuation of BPG’s pioneering work in taking complicated, abstract investment information and presenting it to plan fiduciaries in a concise and easy-to-understand way.”

According to the firm, the newly redesigned report is one of the cornerstones of Blue Prairie Group’s proprietary, 5-step Fiduciary-based Investment Consulting Process “designed to improve investment outcomes and protect busy ERISA plan fiduciaries from unnecessary risk”.

More information is available at http://www.blueprairiegroup.com.

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