Products September 29, 2016

PCS Reveals ‘Advisor Lab’ Fiduciary Toolkit

The new program from PCS enhances advisers' ability to establish and demonstrate compliance with the DOL's fiduciary rule reform.

Reported by

John Manganaro

PCS, provider of fiduciary retirement platforms, announced the launch of its new Advisor Lab Fiduciary Toolkit, aimed at enhancing financial professionals’ ability to comply with the Department of Labor (DOL) fiduciary rule.

According to PCS and others, the upcoming regulatory change associated with the fiduciary rule and its various selling restrictions and exemptions “has forced every retirement-plan enterprise to reassess its procedures. Advisers, home offices, plan sponsors—they are all feeling the pressure.”

For advisers on the ground, Advisor Lab is presented as “a lead- and prospect-generation engine with an integrated DOL 5500 database.” Advisers can benchmark plans and create customized reports for plan sponsors using the system, among other functions.

“With an online proposal system and conversion stage workflow, advisers can efficiently engage with new plan sponsors and effect a turnkey conversion,” PCS explains. The Lab’s Fiduciary Toolkit adds detailed task-driven workflows, including auto-reminders, responsibility tracking and completion reporting to the Lab’s suite of FINRA-reviewed tools, as well as plan acquisition support, benchmarking services and “on-going management materials,” such as enrollment forms, fund fact sheets and fiduciary notifications.

From the home office perspective, PCS anticipates the DOL regulations will soon require that broker/dealer operations staff comply with much more extensive requirements. The Advisor Lab Fiduciary Toolkit provides an administration portal and dashboard that facilitate user management, providing data aggregation and reporting; compliance notifications; book-of-business analysis; and a document vault.

Additionally, the toolkit includes an individual retirement account (IRA) rollover solution. According to PCS, the toolkit’s automated rollover solution can reduce fiduciary risk associated with rollovers by providing the investor with “clear information about current versus proposed fees and services a compliant rollover journey … It allows for the simple transition of assets with minimal market risk and enables advisers to compliantly maintain fees on assets leaving plans, as it is designed to fall under the Level Fee Fiduciary Exemption.”

More information is available at www.pcs401k.com.