October 12, 2017

2015 RPAY – Thomas Ming

Reported by

PA: What is your mission statement?

Thomas Ming: At Tower Rock Advisors – Pensionmark Retirement Group, we believe in enhancing the lives of each participant we serve by being fair, honest, reliable, and providing quality and sound financial guidance.

Never miss a story — sign up for PLANADVISER newsletters to keep up on the latest retirement plan adviser news.

PA: How is your team/process/structure unique?

TM:Tower Rock Advisors – Pensionmark Retirement Group is made up of a network of specialists. We have a suite of tools and resources that make the retirement planning process understandable. As a network, we provide advisory services such as quarterly one-on-one investment reviews; retirement plan analysis technology, which provides future financial scenarios; qualified representatives who make up our Financial Wellness Help Center; and assortments of financial education resources such as financial and investment trackers, including our Personal Financial Portal, market updates, newsletters, articles and even social media outlets.

What makes us unique is our ability to reach any person at any time, no matter what portion of our business those individuals or corporations fall under; our dedicated team of experts will meet in one-on-one or group consultation settings to provide the information and tools clients need to stay connected to their future.

PA: What have you done in the past year to improve participants’ retirement readiness?

TM: Planning for retirement is more about time than it is about money. Similarly, results for retirement readiness take time—and yet, there are plenty of strategies and healthy financial practices to start implementing now so that, over time, the payout of developing those habits of saving will equate to a well-thought-out and planned retirement. 

Human behavioral studies have shown that participants are more likely to participate at a higher percentage if there is an enhanced matching component and an incentive to the plan itself. My team and I have introduced this matching option to plan participants through various methods throughout the 2014 year as well as presently. From automatic enrollment to auto-increase, we run stretch matching scenarios that engage the plan committees on reaching higher deferral rates. In the opinion of various investment committees, they see potential for deferral rates as high as 30% to 40% over the next few years.

PA: Please describe any special education or communication initiatives you’ve undertaken with plan sponsors or participants.

TM: The trend I see throughout the retirement planning process is the lack of financial education provided to individuals ages 50 and older. More often than not, these hardworking employees have been focusing on saving for college, building a career, raising children and juggling all kinds of other major life events that occur. For the past several years, my team and I have introduced “Pre-Retiree Workshops” that target this particular retirement planning sector. We facilitate focused educational meetings that include topics such as budgeting, debt consolidation and attainable retirement readiness strategies. 

Initial meetings involve the employee filling out a budgeting spreadsheet, discussions on debt, and conversations on desired retirement timelines. In our follow-up meetings, we provide a gap analysis for each participant, which we review with them. 

“Retirement readiness” is the scoreboard for our industry’s success or failure. This hands-on approach not only helps plan participants, but it also brings to light the importance of personalized financial attention and the benefit of automatic plan features.

PA: As a retirement plan adviser, what do you take the most pride in?

TM: I take the most pride in building relationships and partnerships with my clients, while working together to help their employees learn healthy spending and saving habits. I’m passionate about my job and compassionate for the people I have the opportunity to educate and help guide toward retirement. 

BUSINESS AT A GLANCE

PLAN ASSETS UNDER ADVISEMENT: $358 million

MEDIAN PLAN SIZE (IN ASSETS): $3.8 million

TOTAL PLANS UNDER ADVISEMENT: 61

TOTAL PARTICIPANTS IN PLANS SERVED: 7,300
October 12, 2017

2015 RPAY – John Ludwig

Reported by

PA: What is your mission statement?

John Ludwig: We seek to provide the answer to retirement—from building to it to enjoying it.

For more stories like this, sign up for the PLANADVISERdash daily newsletter.

PA: What have you done in the past year to improve participants’ retirement readiness?

JL: In an effort to improve participant outcomes, we have reviewed plan designs to incorporate a greater incentive for participants to increase their savings. We have done this by implementing increased use of automatic enrollment and escalation, as well as interweaving demographics-based education as a way to enhance the participant investment experience. These actions have allowed participants to increase their savings and their investing knowledge, which will have a compounding effect as they near retirement.

PA: Describe any particularly noteworthy investment initiatives you have led with your customer base in the past 12 months.

JL: According to various behavioral and psychological studies, too many choices result in indecision and anxiety. As a result of these findings, in the last year we have made a concerted effort to work with our plan sponsors to reduce investment lineup complexity to make it easier for participants to build diverse, actionable portfolios that more accurately reflect their given objectives. To achieve this goal, we have consolidated our fund menus to concentrate on the right number of funds and asset classes a plan should offer employees based on the plan demographics.

PA: What are the most important issues your plan sponsors face with their company retirement plan, and what specific actions do you take to assist them in overcoming those issues?

JL: The most important issue for plan sponsors today is still the procrastination that employees display toward retirement planning. It is human nature for participants to think of today versus trying to envision what retirement will look like years down the road. We challenged our plan sponsors to think differently about their plan designs in order to increase participant engagement and participation. By discussing behavioral finance topics and strategies relating to plan design—such as automatic enrollment, escalation and increased matching—we were able to empower our plan sponsors to architect specific plan designs that drive participant outcomes and objectives.

PA: As a retirement plan adviser, what do you take the most pride in?

JL: We take pride in participants who come to us after years of engagement to let us know we made a difference to them and their ability to retire. Knowing you can have an impact on so many people is very satisfying, and is a responsibility we assume with the utmost care and diligence.

PA: Please describe any special education or communication initiatives you’ve undertaken with plan sponsors or participants.

JL: For a number of plans, we surveyed participants to gauge their financial well-being and retirement readiness. Involvement in the survey was robust and allowed us to compile data to present an informed participant-education design to plan sponsors, which focused on the greatest areas of need based on the survey outcomes. As a result, plan sponsors were edified in a real, functional way that directly impacted their participants’ specific needs.

Additionally, we have taken the initiative to work with plan sponsors to reduce investment lineups and thereby embolden participants to make less complex, objective-based investment decisions while maintaining diversification and investment best practices. By combining this strategy with the educational survey mentioned previously, the end result is an education model and investment menu that is tailored to the demographics of the plan, and is actionable, simple and sophisticated. 

We consider this program of combining demographic statistics and needs with actionable education modules and investment menus a success, and we look forward to continuing the initiative with plan sponsors this year and beyond. 

BUSINESS AT A GLANCE

PLAN ASSETS UNDER ADVISEMENT: $403 million

MEDIAN PLAN SIZE (IN ASSETS): $2.5 million

TOTAL PLANS UNDER ADVISEMENT: 72

TOTAL PARTICIPANTS IN PLANS SERVED: 11,300

«