PLANADVISER Top 100 Retirement Plan Advisers

Many years ago, to help readers learn about the evolving specialist retirement plan adviser marketplace, PLANSPONSOR introduced a “Most Successful Advisers” list, recognizing 25 individual advisers who had a sizeable book of business in terms of retirement plan assets under advisement (AUA). That list has morphed into the annual “PLANADVISER Top 100 Retirement Plan Advisers,” which includes individual advisers, but also adviser teams, ranging from small, single-office teams to mega firms.

In years past, advisers had been able to determine into which category they would be placed, but that  increasingly was making for muddled lists—and some potential for gaming the system. This year, as the process for gathering the submissions was changed (see Methodology, page 39), so were the categories. Advisers were segmented into four groups based on the number of advisers and number of total employees including support staff. Those figures assigned advisers into the following categories: individual adviser – meaning one adviser with support staff; small team – a group of 10 or fewer, comprising two or more advisers and support staff; large team – a group of 11 to 25 advisers and support staff; and mega teams – 26 or more team members. This year’s list includes 18 individuals, 43 small teams, 22 large teams and 17 mega teams, which can be seen here.

We highlight the quantitative standouts according to the dollar value of qualified plan AUA as well as the number of plans under advisement. The qualification standards have risen considerably since the first list, as specialist advisers and consultants have built their practices. This year, individuals needed to have more than 100 plans or more than $1 billion in retirement plan AUA; small teams had to advise more than $2 billion in retirement plan assets or more than 100 plans; large teams needed more than $3 billion in retirement plan AUA or more than 170 plans; and mega teams had to oversee more than $5 billion in retirement plan AUA or more than 250 plan clients.

METHODOLOGY
The “PLANADVISER Top 100 Retirement Plan Advisers” list is compiled from responses to the PLANADVISER Retirement Plan Adviser Survey. The list is drawn solely from a set of quantitative variables and information in the survey supplied by the advisers themselves. For an adviser to be eligible for recognition in this year’s Top 100, he had to submit a completed entry to our 2015 Retirement Plan Adviser Survey, which was fielded this past September. A sub-segment of the questions was used to determine eligibility for the Top 100.