Paul D'Aiutolo

Paul D’Aiutolo subscribes to what he calls the Fred Reish philosophy of “If you are not allowing participants to retire with a 75% income replacement ratio, you’re not doing your job.” He is a proponent of plan design features such as the automatic enrollment and deferral increase provisions, as well as customized models built at the plan level, which can help participants get on track. His focus on doing the right thing for participants carries across all areas of his business. Although D’Aiutolo admits he cannot convince all his legacy clients to adopt new plan design features, these days he only works with providers that can accommodate such features, so they are available to all his 40 clients.

His favorite part is working with participants, whether through group or one-on-one meetings. D’Aiutolo says he offers targeted education, made possible through gap analysis and information provided by plan recordkeepers.

Although D’Aiutolo has only been running his retirement plan practice for five years, he has spent his entire career in the retirement plan industry. After interning at a regional TPA in college, he worked there afterward to help it build out its 401(k) business. He moved in the late 1990s to a local broker/dealer (B/D) that was doing defined benefit business, but wanted to get more involved in the 401(k) space. The broker/dealer was not a good cultural fit for him, he says, and he moved to his next job, which was “probably the launching pad for me to see the opportunity in 401(k)s.” Joining Manning & Napier, D’Aiutolo had a multidimensional job. He focused some on the participant experience, some on participant education, and some on sales.

That was when Pat Oberlander called. Oberlander, then with McDonald Investments (Key Bank), was looking to hire a regional sales consultant who could drive retirement plan sales through bankers and brokers. D’Aiutolo answered that call, and joined McDonald Investments in 2000. In 2003 when he decided it was time for him to build an institutional team of his own, he decided to do that within McDonald.

Since then he has accumulated 40 clients and he is happy at UBS (which acquired McDonald in 2006), which has done a good job putting tools together for his practice and does not get in the way of him serving as a fiduciary, D’Aiutolo says.

Photo by James Rajotte