Best of the Best
Two years ago, PLANSPONSOR launched the Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year award, designed to recognize “the contributions of the nation’s best financial advisers in helping make retirement security a reality for workers across the nation.” Once again, this award seeks to acknowledge a demonstrated excellence and commitment to the retirement plan business, as evidenced by increased participation and participant deferral rates, improved asset allocations, reduced fees, or expanded service levels.
There were nearly 300 nominations for this year’s award, culminating in the collection of 182 advisers, 110 of whom were eligible to compete. Once again, the group of advisers was diverse, collectively serving more than 7,000 retirement plans. In the past year, this group has added 1,128 plans to their collective businesses, 10 times the number they have lost. Moreover, their average client tenure is a little more than seven years. Nearly three-quarters have been serving retirement plans for more than a decade, and 15% have been in the business for more than 20 years.
Although one of our most-successful listings considers assets under advisement as a criterion, the majority of advisers are not targeting huge plans, and many are building significant books of business out of mid-size plans. In fact, most continue to specialize in plans between $2 million and $50 million; a little more than half (51.8%) of those completing the nomination process focus on the $2 million to $10 million market, and another 28.2% target plans in the $10 million to $50 million space.
As in previous years, in addition to recognizing the Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year finalists, we also present a list of our “most successful’ advisers: those with the most assets under advisement. However, this year, we also acknowledge success in terms of the most plan clients.
Additionally, this year, we are launching a new award: one that acknowledges the special contribution of a select number of adviser teams. In addition to our five individual retirement plan adviser finalists, for the first time, we are acknowledging the contribution of three team finalists.These finalists have all proved their worth to their plan sponsor clients and have made a noticeable difference to the plans they service.
The five finalists for the individual retirement plan adviser of the year award are Troy Hammond at AmeriFlex Financial Services in Santa Barbara, California; Chad J Larsen of Moreton Financial Solutions, a member firm of National Retirement Partners in Denver, Colorado; Tom Noble, from Noble Retirement Group in Sugar Land, Texas; Jim O’Shaughnessy of Sheridan Road Financial in Northbrook, Illinois; and William M Peragine III with UBS in Huntington, New York.
The three finalists for the retirement plan adviser team of the year are Steve Wilt and The Star Group at Merrill Lynch in Akron, Ohio; Rob Kieckhefer and The Kieckhefer Group at RBC Dain Rauscher inMilwaukee, Wisconsin; and Wade Walker and the Walker/Bafs Retirement Group at Merrill Lynch in Indianapolis, Indiana.
The winners of the awards will be announced at the 401(k) Summit in San Diego, California, in February. You also can look forward to profiles of both the Adviser of the Year and the Adviser Team of the Year in more detail in the Spring 2007 issue of PLANADVISER.
The Individual and Team Finalists