In Practice

Independent retirement plan advisers must leverage third-party service providers to achieve scale and combat business challenges without a large internal support network.

Having more offices often means more opportunity, but even well-organized advisory firms can find it challenging to deliver consistent services across disparate geographic locations.

Financial wellness programs can be a value add for advisers, especially when they help drive retirement readiness and address the roots of participant inactivity.

Workers in Generation Y want advice on budgeting, saving and how to manage student loan debt, says TIAA-CREF, but they aren’t necessarily eager for professional advice.

Retirement investors are, for the most part, willing to sacrifice some overall returns to secure more predictable portfolio outcomes, according to Natixis Global Asset Management.

Finders, minders and grinders are all critical members of successful retirement plan service teams, and growing an advisory practice will require all three skill sets working in concert.

The formula behind successful firm marketing and public relations in the retirement planning industry includes a combination of authenticity, clarity and consistency.

Some subsets of Millennial investors are just as likely as their parents to seek professional financial advice, according to new research from Phoenix Marketing International.

Total U.S. retirement assets reached $24 trillion as of June 30, up 2.8% from $23.4 trillion measured on March 31.

A new study suggests it is a lack of awareness among college students and young professionals, not a lack of interest, which has led to the advisory industry’s...

Women rarely take steps to maximize Social Security benefits, and only about a third say they work with a professional financial adviser, research finds.

A new Schwab Advisor Services study explores industry attributes that attract professional financial advisers to the registered investment adviser (RIA) profession.

Defined contribution (DC) plan sponsors are already adopting defined benefit (DB) best practices in plan design, but plans could benefit from more DB-like investing and communication.

It’s an important question for advisory firm owners to ask, says Independent Financial Partners CEO William Hamm, Jr.: What happens to my clients if I have to quit...

Research from financial analytics firm Cerulli Associates shows more than a quarter of 401(k) participants look to their plan’s recordkeeper as their primary source of retirement advice.

Ranging over a number of factors that impact branding and differentiation, panelists at the 2014 PANC in Orlando, Florida, discussed what builds a retirement plan adviser's brand.

For industry executives on one panel at the 2014 PLANADVISER National Conference, retirement plan sponsor and participant education is a three-part effort.

On the third day of the 2014 PLANADVISER National Conference, the chief executive officers of Pershing and LPL Financial spoke about how their firms are supporting advisers.

A new report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) asks whether household expenditures commonly change with age for older Americans.

There is no end of things to benchmark in a retirement plan, and measuring advisers’ own services are especially key from a number of standpoints, said panelists at...