Looking Glass
In the retirement plan industry, 2011 was a year of watching for regulations—though not many were made final, we found many proposed, re-proposed, and/or deferred for further consideration—and watching the markets—concerns about whether the country would have a double-dip recession and about global debt levels that have found their way into all areas of our economy and industry. With not much final at the end of this year, planning for 2012 becomes vitally important.
At PLANADVISER, 2012 planning is well under way, and I imagine it is for your advisory practices as well. At the PLANADVISER National Conference, we ended with a panel called The 10 Things You Need To Do Now. It was so well-received that we decided to turn the topic into our cover story this issue. On page 32, you will find 10 ideas to help you manage your practice, ensure your client delivery model is best-suited for your team, and focus your value proposition.
Many of the items discussed in our cover story involve understanding your value and what you do better than your competition. In “Stepping Up,” you will find the results of our annual PLANADVISER Adviser Experience Survey, helping you understand how you stand up to your fellow retirement plan advisers (page 42). In our last issue, we covered adviser assessments of defined contribution providers and investment managers, and this issue’s results include questions relating to the size and scope of the adviser’s qualified plan business, practice management, broker/dealers, compensation, and client service.
As I mentioned, in September, we hosted the fifth annual PLANADVISER National Conference in Florida. We’ve recapped most of the sessions online and included some of the conference highlights in this issue (page 54). Plans are already well under way for the 2012 conference, to be held in Orlando, September 10-12, and the agenda will be posted online in January 2012, with a call for speakers to follow. (As in years past, if you are interested in speaking or moderating, please look for our call for speakers on PLANADVISER.com and in the PLANADVISERdash.)
Again this year, we are publishing a special segment of data focusing on micro plans from sister publication PLANSPONSOR’s well-known annual DC Survey data. In PLANSPONSOR, a micro plan is generally defined as $5 million or less in assets, but the survey now produces such a large sampling of plans with less than $1 million in plan assets, we wanted to show what “true” micro plans were doing—and the dynamics of what plans with less than $1M are doing compared with plans with $1M to $5M are doing may surprise you. You also can see which providers stood out for service to those markets, beginning on page 62.
According to the PLANSPONSOR DC Survey, the percentage of plans with a Roth 401(k) option has nearly doubled since 2010. However, participant usage of this option is not rising at anywhere near the same rate. When we set out to talk with advisers about ways to get more participants interested in making Roth deferrals, advisers shared that that wasn’t very high on their priority lists. Find out how they approach the Roth conversation in “Finding Its Place,” (page 70).
If you’ve been following PLANADVISER’s Learner’s Permits throughout the year, by now your advisory firm should have a well-established online presence, including accounts on Twitter and LinkedIn, is using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to enhance your firm’s Web site, and possibly incorporating video or podcasting technologies to make the site more interactive. In this issue, we tackle Web analytics, to see how all of those efforts are working (page 12).
As we come to the close of another year, I want to thank all of you who have supported PLANADVISER (and its Web site, newsletter, and conference). I hope the timely nature of some of these features gives you food for thought as you prepare for the end of the year and develop your business plans for 2012.
Best wishes for a happy holiday season and a happy new year! —Alison Cooke Mintzer, Editor-in-Chief