Nate Moody

Partner, Senior Advisor, Lebel & Harriman Retirement Advisors

Business at a Glance

PLANADVISER: What does “success” look like for your firm beyond asset growth? How do you balance business performance, client results, and team development?

Moody: I grew up watching my father run an auto body shop. Every decision he made came back to the people who showed up every day and did the work alongside him. When he transitioned the business to operate as an employee stock ownership plan, he wanted the people who built that company to share in what they'd built. That stuck with me.

We know retirement plan advisory isn’t the biggest money-maker in this industry. But it’s the best way we know how to use our skills and passion to help the most people. And honestly, the people who need it most are often the ones getting the least support.

Small businesses are the clearest example. Their employees shouldn’t be penalized financially just because they work for a 20-person company instead of a 2,000-person company. We take a ton of pride in helping small employers find a way to offer their people an effective retirement program and to use that as a doorway to help those employees navigate one of the most intimidating things any of us do in life: saving for retirement.

Success for us is measured in coverage: More people with access. More participants actually engaged. More small business owners who feel like they’re doing right by their team. That’s the scoreboard we care about.

PLANADVISER: What’s one lesson you’ve learned the hard way as a retirement plan adviser—and how has it changed your approach?

Moody: I used to think the strength of my recommendation would carry the day. If the data supported automatic enrollment or the investment menu needed streamlining or a recordkeeper change would save participants real money, the decision felt obvious.

I quickly realized plan sponsors have a million reasons for not making a change. Some are legitimate, but most are rooted in confusion. Retirement plans are complicated, and when you make committees feel overwhelmed by jargon, compliance requirements and competing priorities, they don’t say, “explain it again.” They say, “not right now.”

I think some advisers talk over their clients' heads on purpose, whether it’s to demonstrate expertise or create a kind of job security by making everything feel more complicated than it needs to be. We just try to explain things how we would want them explained to us. We try to use metaphors rooted in the industry our client works in (and often butcher the delivery, but they appreciate the attempt). We use visuals instead of spreadsheets when a chart tells the story faster. We lean on analogies. I've compared investing for retirement and target-date funds to a busy highway and a self-driving car more times than I can count. But a comparison that clicks is worth more than a technically perfect explanation that lands on a blank stare.

When a plan sponsor actually understands what we’re recommending and why, you don’t have to convince them; the right answer is obvious.

PLANADVISER: What are the biggest barriers preventing small or start‑up employers from offering retirement plans today? Which barriers are structural versus behavioral?

Moody: Cost used to be the easy answer, but SECURE Act tax credits have done a lot to close that gap. The bigger barrier now is workload.

The biggest lie in our industry is that starting and maintaining a retirement plan is “easy.” It's not. Vendors love to market simplicity, but the reality on the ground for a 15-person company is very different. There’s payroll integration, eligibility tracking, compliance testing, contribution processing, employee communications and a fiduciary responsibility that most small business owners don’t fully understand until they’re already in it.

Large employers have HR departments and payroll teams to absorb that work. Small businesses don’t. It’s usually the owner or their spouse handling plan administration on nights and weekends on top of everything else they’re already carrying. When that reality sets in, a lot of employers either never start. If they do, they often launch a plan and then slowly disengage because the operational burden wears them down.

That’s a structural problem, not a behavioral one, and it’s where advisers have the biggest opportunity to make a difference. When we show up for a small business, we’re not just picking investments. We’re helping them build a system that actually works within the constraints of their operation. If we don’t solve for the workload problem, the tax credits and automatic portability and everything else we celebrate as an industry won’t matter.

PLANADVISER: What specific approaches have you used to move these employers from hesitation to action?

Moody: We built a dedicated small business team, which I oversee, specifically to serve this market. It’s a team with its own adviser and relationship manager, its own service model, and a process designed around the reality of how small businesses actually operate. We’ve facilitated more than 40 new plan startups in the last three years, and that volume has taught us a lot about where employers get stuck and how to get them moving.

The biggest thing we do is shrink the decision. Small business owners get paralyzed when they’re handed a binder full of plan design options, provider comparisons and compliance obligations. We show up with a short list of vetted solutions that fit their size, their budget and their payroll system. We take the complexity off their plate before they ever have a chance to shut down.

We also stay deeply involved in the broader effort to expand retirement plan access in Maine. I serve as vice chair of the Maine Retirement Savings Board, which oversees the Maine Retirement Investment Trust, the state’s automatic IRA program. That work gives us a front-row seat to where the coverage gaps are and what’s actually moving the needle at a policy level. I also serve as president of the Maine Employee Benefits Council, where we provide education to benefits professionals and employers across the state.

All that feeds back into how we advise. We’re not waiting for small employers to find us. We’re building the infrastructure to reach them.