March 10, 2010

Team Building

Whether in your affiliation, preferred provider relationships, or participant education, with whom you choose to do business matters

Reported by Alison Cooke

“Should I Stay or Should I Go?” Inevitably, the words to The Clash’s song ring through every adviser’s mind. There are a multitude of things to consider when figuring out with whom you want to rest your practice. We have segmented this complicated question into six sub-questions in our cover story, “Beneath the Surface” (page 28). The article includes five advisers’ perspectives on why they chose their particular affiliation. Whether you are seriously considering changing, or it is just a back-of-mind idea, this article will help you settle on staying or going.

How you affiliate might affect some of your provider relationships, both with recordkeeping firms and custodians. On page 46, in “Provider Choice,” we have delivered some insights and Top 10 lists from sister publication PLANSPONSOR’s annual recordkeeping survey. If you are a registered investment adviser (RIA), you probably work with some of the custody firms in the marketplace. Otherwise, you might not be aware that, even if you aren’t an RIA, there are many custodial firm offerings for all types of advisers, some of which are detailed in “Out of Sight” on page 70.

Regardless of your affiliation, you probably have a few letters on your business cards, signaling the credentials you hold. After spending days, months, or sometimes years pursing those designations, are they helping you and your business? Do your clients respect them? In “Head of the Class” (page 38), we offer insights from a survey that attempted to answer those questions by interviewing advisers and plan sponsors about designations in the retirement plan space. You might be surprised at some of the answers by both groups, or it might reinforce why, after all, you have those letters following your name.

The most common reason people turn to an adviser is to prepare for retirement and investment planning, and those that do work with financial advisers are saving more and are on track to replace more income in retirement than those that do not (see Trendspotting articles, “Be Prepared” and “Advice Agenda,” page 16 and 18, respectively). Plan sponsors seeing statements such as these might be eager to have you start working one on one with their employees, counseling them about their retirement plans. However, how do you, when working with retirement plans, make one-on-one education for each participant profitable for you? In “The Big Picture” on page 62, we show how some advisers have made delivering personal financial planning to individual participants work for their practices.

In continuing the ongoing discussion about affiliating and what your choice means for your business, stay tuned for our first listing of broker/dealer offerings in the retirement plan space in the Fall issue of PLANADVISER.

On another note, this fall, we will bring you the first PLANADVISER National Conference in Orlando, Florida, where we will bring to life many of the ideas presented in the magazine. I look forward to seeing, and meeting, many of you there.