PLANSPONSOR Announces Winners of 2009 Retirement Plan Adviser and Adviser Team of the Year

Steven Dimitriou, of Mayflower Advisors, LLC, in Boston, Massachusetts, has been named the 2009 PLANSPONSOR Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year, and Fiduciary Investment Advisors of Windsor, Connecticut, has been named the 2009 PLANSPONSOR Retirement Plan Adviser Team of the Year.

The announcement was made Thursday night at the PLANSPONSOR and PLANADVISER 2009 Awards for Excellence dinner. Dimitriou and Fiduciary Investment Advisors were selected from more than 550 nominations. This was the fifth year for the award, which acknowledges the efforts of the nation’s best retirement plan advisers in helping make retirement security a reality for workers across the nation.

The other finalists for the 2009 individual Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year award were Claiborne “Chip” Morton, III, with Corporate Advisors Group in Destin, Florida; Mark Temple, O’Hanlon Michener & Douglas, an NRP member firm in Slingerlands, New York; Paul D’Aiutolo, UBS, in Rochester, New York ; and Philip Steele, Pension Architects, an NRP member firm in Malibu, California.

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Other finalists for PLANSPONSOR’s Retirement Plan Adviser Team of the Year were The Kelliher Group at Morgan Stanley (Stephen Kelliher, Joseph McLaughlin, Bennett White) in Norwell, Massachusetts; Pensionmark Retirement Group (Troy Hammond, Laura Battle, Devyn Duex, Deanna Bamford, Mike Woods, Daren Alcantar, Denisse Hernandez) in Santa Barbara, California; SageView Advisory Group (Randall Long, Jon Upham) in Irvine, California; and the Kieckhefer Group, RBC Wealth Management (Rob Kieckhefer, Janet Ganong, Brian Kertscher, Darlene Roslawski, Meghan Madigan) in Milwaukee.

Nominations for the Retirement Plan Adviser and Adviser Team of the Year awards were solicited online from retirement plan advisers, their employers and/or broker/dealers, and plan sponsors, as well as from working partners of these advisers.

The judges panels for the awards included PLANSPONSOR Editor-in-Chief Nevin Adams; Steff Chalk, CEO of the Fiduciary Consulting Group; and Alison Cooke, Managing Editor of PLANADVISER, both of whom served on individual and team panels. Smith Barney’s John Mott, the inaugural winner of the award, and 2008 winner John Barry with JMB Wealth Management served as judges for the individual award.Stephen Wilt, now with CAPTRUST, the leader of the inaugural team winner in 2007; and Barbara Delaney, leader of the team winner in 2008, contributed their insights for the team judging.

Millionaires, Affluent Investors Return to Bearish Territory

Spectrem Group’s Millionaire Investor Index rose 8 points in March, returning to a mildly bearish stance.

According to a news release, the rise follows a 13-point decline in February, bringing the index off a near-record low of -34. Likewise, the Spectrem Affluent Investor index, which measures the outlook of households with $500,000 or more in investable assets, rose 8 points to 30—also mildly bearish territory. That follows a 10-point decline the prior month.

“Millionaires and the affluent showed a bit more optimism in March,” said George Walper, president of Spectrem Group, in the release. He cited the stock market’s improvement together with low energy prices and some good news on home construction as reasons for the improved outlook. “However it’s too early to know whether investment optimism is truly stabilizing for the nation’s wealthiest investors,” he said.

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When asked an open-ended question about the most serious threat to achieving their financial goals, the largest number of affluent investors and millionaires cited the economy (27% and 28%, respectively), followed by market conditions (16% and 14%).

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