PLANADVISER: How do you define excellence in retirement plan advising today, and what factors do you use to measure or evaluate your effectiveness with clients?
Sauerman: Excellence in retirement plan advising is defined by delivering bespoke, holistic service that achieves measurable outcomes for both plan sponsors and participants.
The fiduciary functions of investment selection and monitoring, expense management and acting in participants’ best interest remain as relevant as ever. We closely monitor participation and deferral rates, utilization of plan features such as automatic enrollment and automatic escalation, income replacement scores and overall cost efficiency. However, we also monitor how we improve plan governance, build genuine understanding of fiduciaries’ roles and responsibilities, mitigate litigation risk and enhance plan design to optimize plan sponsors’ return on investment and participants’ retirement readiness. But we don’t stop there …
We want to understand how retirement benefits complement our clients’ broader benefits structure. By holistically assessing how the retirement benefits fit within organizations’ values, goals and budgets, we gain a more complete view of excellence. With this approach, we can measure correlations between improved employee financial well-being and efficiencies in health and wellness benefit costs, turnover rates, hardship claims and other metrics tied to financial stress and productivity.
Ultimately, our comprehensive definition of excellence optimizes participants’ financial wellness, as well as sponsors’ confidence in their retirement plans and their fiduciary role.
PLANADVISER: What strategic priorities guide your firm, and how have those priorities influenced your approach to business development?
Sauerman: Our firm’s strategic priorities are grounded in cultural alignment, fiduciary integrity and developing long‑term partnerships.
We prioritize relationships with plan sponsors who view their retirement plan as an important component of employee financial wellness, rather than a transactional benefit. This alignment allows us to deliver bespoke, high‑touch advisory services that drive meaningful outcomes, rather than simply pursuing growth for its own sake.
We value open dialogue, healthy challenge and shared problem‑solving, and we look for sponsors who welcome those dynamics. Plans with engaged committees tend to be the strongest long‑term partners and are where we often add the greatest value.
We intentionally partner with organizations that appreciate process discipline, documentation and continuous improvement. This shared commitment reduces risk, strengthens participant outcomes and creates more productive advisory relationships over time.
In the end, our approach to business development is deliberate and relationship‑driven. We prioritize sustainable, aligned growth with clients who share our values and expectations, enabling us to maintain the quality, consistency and fiduciary focus that defines our practice.
PLANADVISER: What aspects of retirement plan advising present the greatest challenges, and which aspects do you find most professionally rewarding?
Sauerman: The greatest challenges in retirement plan advising stem from the ever-evolving legal and regulatory environment, combined with the need to drive real behavioral change. Plan sponsors face compliance and litigation risk, fiduciary liability concerns and cost pressures, all while managing a diverse workforce with varying financial needs. Helping committees navigate these responsibilities, make prudent decisions and balance complexity with simplicity requires both technical expertise and strong communication.
Another ongoing challenge is improving participant engagement. Even well‑designed plans can fall short if participants do not understand or effectively use the tools available to them. Translating financial concepts into clear, actionable guidance that resonates across different demographics requires intentional plan design, targeted education, customization and ongoing reinforcement.
No matter the challenges, the most professionally rewarding aspect of retirement plan advising is the ability to make measurable, long‑term impacts on hard-working employees. Helping plan sponsors strengthen their prudent processes and enhance their appreciation of their fiduciary role is likewise satisfying, particularly because it reduces plan risk and leads to better participant outcomes.
PLANADVISER: For plan sponsors evaluating advisers, what characteristics or capabilities distinguish you from your peers?
Sauerman: For plan sponsors evaluating advisers, we believe differentiation comes down to creativity, breadth of approach, depth of fiduciary expertise, clarity of process and the ability to drive real outcomes—not just recommendations.
Our team’s disciplined fiduciary framework helps plan committees confidently navigate an increasingly complex legal and regulatory environment. We go beyond technical compliance by strengthening governance processes, improving documentation and ensuring fiduciaries clearly understand their roles and responsibilities. This reduces risk, improves decisionmaking and allows committees to focus on what matters most—participant outcomes.
We uniquely distinguish ourselves through a bespoke, holistic approach to plan design and participant engagement. Well‑designed plans only succeed when participants understand and use them effectively. We focus on translating complex financial concepts into clear, actionable guidance via customized, multimedia outreach strategies to meet each plan participant where they are. Our goal is sustained behavioral change, not one‑time education.
What further sets us apart is our focus on how retirement benefits fit within an organization’s broader benefits strategy. By understanding how retirement plans complement organizational objectives, we help sponsors optimize their overall benefits structure without undisclosed conflicts of interest (i.e. we are not health and wellness benefit brokers). This not only makes the most of sponsors’ benefit investments; it also allows us to provide more comprehensive guidance to plan participants, who often struggle to understand their full suite of employer-sponsored benefits.
We want our clients to choose us every day. By working hard every day to earn and re-earn our clients’ trust, we are honored that we have not lost a single client to a peer since the team formed.
PLANADVISER: What do you expect from plan sponsor clients in terms of commitment to plan design, communication or governance?
Sauerman: We view the advisory relationship as a partnership, and our expectations of plan sponsor clients are centered on shared accountability, thoughtful engagement and a commitment to continuous improvement.
We appreciate openness to evaluating if a plan is supporting positive participant outcomes. This includes a willingness to consider evidence‑based plan design features, appropriate investment strategies and participant outreach plans that encourage constructive financial behaviors. We do not seek constant change, but we do value sponsors who are willing to periodically assess design decisions in light of workforce demographics and evolving best practices.
In terms of communication and education, we expect collaboration and alignment. Participant engagement is most effective when plan sponsors actively support communication efforts and reinforce messaging through internal channels. We value sponsors who recognize that education is an ongoing process and who view communication not as a compliance obligation, but as a strategic tool to improve employee financial confidence and retirement readiness.
We encourage sponsors to embrace a disciplined fiduciary framework. This includes regular committee meetings, documented decisionmaking, timely reviews of investments and service providers, and adherence to prudent processes. We do not expect sponsors to be subject matter experts, but we do expect a commitment to understanding fiduciary responsibilities and engaging thoughtfully in the oversight process.