Data & Research November 1, 2017

Americans Say Tax Reform Proposal Would Affect Their Savings

Fifty-seven percent of Americans surveyed somewhat or strongly oppose reducing the maximum amount employees can defer pre-tax into a DC plan to $2,400 per year.
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Fifty-seven percent of Americans somewhat or strongly oppose reducing the maximum amount employees can defer into a defined contribution (DC) plan to $2,400 per year, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.

Tax reform proposals have suggested that anything above that be contributed on an after-tax, or Roth, basis. Fifty-one percent said the limit should not be in the tax reform bill, while one-quarter said it should.

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Nearly one-third (32%) of survey respondents said if this provision is passed, it will cause them to save less in their retirement accounts. Sixteen percent said they will save about the same.

Half of respondents believe this proposal will cause the average American to save less in their retirement plans. The Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) released an analysis of retirement savers that may be affected by this tax reform provision.

Forty-nine percent of respondents to the poll have a retirement savings account.

Products November 1, 2017

BrightPlan Launches ‘Hybrid-Robo’ Advisory Service

The inspiration to create BrightPlan was based on the idea that everyone deserves access to trusted, affordable financial advice that supports long-term financial goals. 
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A new robo-advisory platform has hit the market, under the moniker BrightPlan.

BrightPlan is built on the advisory experience of Plancorp and incorporates Nobel Prize-winning research into its methodology, according to the firm. In addition, BrightPlan has been certified by the Centre for Fiduciary Excellence (CEFEX), showing the platform follows a certain set of best fiduciary practices to provide clients with a service they can trust to act in their best interest.

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BrightPlan Founder and CEO Marthin De Beer says the inspiration to create BrightPlan “was to provide everyone access to trusted, affordable financial advice in order to achieve life’s most important goals.”

Important to note, according to the firm, clients are not required to invest through BrightPlan in order to receive financial planning advice. They can manually input external account balances or link external accounts from more than 10,000 financial institutions to BrightPlan, which will monitor goal progress and provide advice to stay on track. For example, BrightPlan will recommend a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds for a client’s existing external 401(k) account based on a defined retirement goal.

Those who choose to invest through BrightPlan will benefit from automated saving and investing in low-fee mutual funds and exchange traded funds, the firm says. BrightPlan additionally “handles all the details including automated contributions, rebalancing, dividend reinvestment, and tax loss harvesting.”

Clients can choose a digital-only service or a hybrid service, which taps the experience of wealth managers from Plancorp, a subsidiary of Prumentum Group.

“We have collaborated with the BrightPlan team to integrate our 30 years of experience working with high-net-worth individuals, families and institutions, into proprietary algorithms and approaches which are now available via BrightPlan,” explains Chris Kerckhoff, president of Plancorp. 

As the firms lay out, the demand for a mass market fiduciary financial service is fueled by the largest transfer of wealth in history. Millennials and Generation X are expected to inherit $30 trillion of wealth over the next two decades and their needs, according to BrightPlan, “are not being met by traditional firms.”

To be clear, BrightPlan and Plancorp are both subsidiaries of Prumentum Group, Inc. More information is available at www.prumentum.com. 

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