October 11, 2017

2016 RPAY – Jania Stout

Reported by

A 20-year veteran of the retirement planning industry, Jania Stout, managing director of Fiduciary Plan Advisors, started in the industry in recordkeeping and administration at ADP and Fidelity Investments. Wanting to have a greater role in engaging with and offering advice to plan sponsors, eight years ago, Stout became an adviser, and two years ago, she founded her practice in order to “truly help our plan sponsor clients.”

“The past eight years working as a plan adviser have been extremely rewarding,” she says. “Anyone who knows me or works for me knows that I am in this business to change lives. It is not just about charts and graphs and market returns. It is about protecting my clients and helping participants get over the finish line.”

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

Stout prides herself on taking a fresh look at retirement planning, starting with a financial wellness program she launched in 2012, well ahead of today’s concentration on financial wellness. “It was important to me that I delivered to my clients in-person financial education and not just rely on the providers,” who, she thought, were not doing as good of a job as she would have liked. So, Stout decided to invest the time and resources to create a well-thought-out financial wellness program.

Stout called the program H.E.R.O., with “H” standing for having a budget, “E” for eliminating debt, “R” for knowing your retirement number, and “O” for owning it. “The feedback I received after rolling that out was amazing,” she says. “That is when I became officially hooked on the idea of financial wellness. If I could help people today with their financial issues, I could get them to focus their resources after paying off debt to save for retirement.” Three years ago, Fiduciary Plan Advisors began offering monthly educational webinars for participants, as well.

The H.E.R.O. financial wellness program is supported by a change in nomenclature for the plans that Stout serves. Rather than call them retirement plans, or 401(k) plans, she is encouraging her clients to refer to them as “life and savings plans” that encompasses more than just retirement savings. In the past 12 months, she has introduced the idea adding post-tax savings to the plans, so that participants can start saving for an emergency fund, pay down debt and, thereby, be better equipped to contribute to their retirement.

With retirement outcomes being paramount to Fiduciary Plan Advisors, Stout has also created a unique position at her practice: the director of participant success. “The biggest impact I have had on improving retirement readiness is creating the role of the director of participant success,” she explains. “This is a salaried position and is someone who works with me and our clients to ensure we deliver the right amount of focus on educating and advising our clients and their participants. We don’t just deliver in-person meetings. We deliver a strategy and spend hours and hours on implementing it.”

The director of participant success is reinforced by a subcommittee for financial wellness that Fiduciary Plan Advisors establishes within every retirement plan committee. Working very closely with the subcommittee, the practice, led by the director of participant success, conducts biweekly calls with the group and reports on progress being made toward the plan’s goals every quarter. “It is probably the most time-consuming aspect of our business model, but it is the most important aspect to helping improve the outcomes for our participants,” Stout says. “It is easy for most advisers to say they do financial education or conduct meetings, but it is the tracking of the outcomes that I think we do a bit differently than most. It is tedious at times, but when you deliver the outcomes and start to see a goal being achieved, it makes it all worth it.”

On the subject of helping participants to save as much as possible, Fiduciary Plan Advisors has also educated one sponsor client about the helpfulness of the post-tax savings to reduce loans. This client has had an ongoing issue with loans, Stout notes. “I am working with the committee now on amending the plan to do away with loans and add a post-tax source for savings. This way, a participant can take money out of the post-tax source, i.e. the emergency fund, and not need to consider a loan. This client has about 3,500 employees, and we are excited to see that if we educate them about having a budget, eliminating debt and making use of the post-tax savings, this will drive better outcomes for them.”

Fiduciary Plan Advisors is as concerned with educating Millennials as it is with other demographic groups about the need to eliminate debt, Stout say:  “Many Baby Boomers, for example, have refinanced their homes several times and are going into retirement with a high percentage of debt and no budget. For the first times in their lives, they will have a big pot of money and not really know how to have that last for their retirement years.” That is why it is as equally important to educate pre-retirees about eliminating debt as it is Millennials, Stout believes.

Better Plan Design
To convince plan sponsor clients to create more robust plan design and embrace financial wellness, Fiduciary Plan Advisors highlights the results of two of its clients that won the PLANSPONSOR Plan Sponsor of the Year awards in 2015 and 2014. Stout’s goal is for 100% of employees to participate in the plan; save an average of 10% a year, including company matches; for 90% of participants to be invested in an asset-allocation solution; and for 90% of participants to be on track for a successful retirement.

The high bar that Stout sets for her plans appears to be working, as 90% of her clients automatically enroll participants, 40% use automatic escalation, 40% have completed a reenrollment, and 100% use an asset-allocation solution.

Fiduciary Plan Services is also working to move all of its clients out of funds with revenue-sharing fees. The firm also clearly states all fees on participant statements.

In addition to these services, Fiduciary Plan Advisors conducts all-day fiduciary training workshops for plan sponsors. For large pension plans, the practice offers outsourced chief investment officer (CIO) searches.

As for what Stout takes the most pride in as a retirement plan adviser, it is “changing the lives of working Americans. It is a big reason why I feel so good about the job I do.”

BUSINESS AT A GLANCE

LOCATION: Phoenix, Maryland
PLAN ASSETS UNDER ADVISEMENT: $1.5 billion
MEDIAN PLAN SIZE (IN ASSETS): $40 million
TOTAL PLANS UNDER ADMINISTRATION: 30
TOTAL PARTICIPANTS IN PLANS SERVED: 25,000
SUPPORT STAFF: 4
October 11, 2017

2017 RPAY – Cammack Retirement Group

Reported by

PLANADVISER: Tell us about your practice and how you and your team members got into advising retirement plans.

Cammack Retirement Group: Charlie Cammack, our firm’s founder, began working in the non-profit retirement space with the establishment of the 403(b) regulations in the late 1950s, sowing the seeds to allow Cammack Retirement Group to become one of the largest retirement plan advisors to healthcare providers, educational and research institutions, social service organizations, and cultural and religious institutions.

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

The members of our senior management team have complementary skillsets and backgrounds that help shape our client service culture. Managing Partner Jeff Levy has an actuarial background; Senior Partner Mike Volo’s background is in retirement and investment services; Partner Earle Allen has spent his entire career at the firm, focused on investment advisory and consulting services; and Principal Mike Sanders worked with retirement plan service providers early in his career.

PA: What is your mission statement?

CRG: At Cammack Retirement Group, we are solely focused on serving retirement plan sponsors. Our goal is to help plan sponsors successfully manage fiduciary risk and achieve their objectives in the most efficient, cost-effective manner. We are dedicated to consistently providing our clients with unmatched expertise, objectivity, and creativity in developing pragmatic, customized solutions. We take the time to listen to their needs and work with them in a direct and straightforward manner, so they can be assured that they are making intelligent, fact-based decisions.

We believe in the importance of what we do, and remain steadfast in our mission to ensure that our clients’ plans and their participants obtain the best possible retirement outcomes.

PA: What do you need to be successful? From your team? From your clients?

CRG: Simply put, being successful requires teamwork and dedication.

In terms of our own employees, we have found that a good team dynamic starts with dedicated, well-trained employees with high integrity and strong ethics. While Cammack Retirement has evolved to serve a variety of industries over the years, our company is rooted in non-profit, mission-driven organizations. Our corporate DNA matches this concept; and we employ dedicated and experienced individuals who always keep our clients’ interests top of mind.

From our clients, we need open communication in order to fully understand their organizational needs and priorities to develop a true partnership. By playing on the same team, we can work together to overcome obstacles and achieve the best possible value for their retirement plan participants. 

PA: What do you consider the most significant challenge facing retirement plan participants? Facing retirement plan sponsors? Facing retirement plan advisers?

CRG: Participants are overwhelmed with information and decisions, which makes it challenging to optimize their financial wellness. In a vacuum, making retirement planning decisions is difficult enough for participants. Add in decisions related to healthcare spend, student loan debt, and other financial decisions and it’s not hard to understand why many participants are not saving and investing properly for retirement. 

With a bevy of fiduciary breach lawsuits against plan sponsors, many plan sponsors are focused on fees and garnering the most value for their plan participants. The challenge for plan sponsors is understanding plan fees and the various fee methodologies so that they can make prudent decisions in fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility.

For plan advisers, the challenge is providing distinct value to plan sponsors in order to differentiate themselves, while continually looking for opportunities to more efficiently deliver services.

PA: Describe any particularly initiatives you have led with your customer base in the past 12 months (investment or education or plan design or communication).

CRG: With fees at the nexus of many of the fiduciary breach lawsuits Cammack Retirement Group has spent significant time with retirement plan investment committees to ensure they have a strong understanding of both investment expenses and recordkeeping and administrative fees. This also includes understanding fee methodologies and benchmarking their fees.

Our consultants have worked with many plan sponsor committees to begin implementing a level fee structure for plan administration and recordkeeping costs. Although the more typical model, where plan recordkeeping costs are paid through revenue sharing in the plan investment options with any excess going into a revenue credit account, enables the plan to take advantage of any excess revenue generated by the revenue sharing that exceeds the plan’s recordkeeping fee, the allocation of these administrative fees is not necessarily equitable. Participants using investments with high levels of revenue sharing available are shouldering more of the recordkeeping expense than those using investment with less revenue sharing.

We have led discussions with our plan investment committees to explore and implement mechanisms whereby each participant pays their equitable portion of recordkeeping fees for the plan, and thus an equal proportionate share of the plan costs.

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

CRG: Everything we do is focused on earning our clients’ trust and exceeding their expectations; therefore we are most proud of our industry-leading client satisfaction scores and retention rates. Annually, we conduct a satisfaction and loyalty study to ensure we are delivering on the commitment we make to our clients.

The survey helps us understand what our clients’ value most and identifies opportunities for improvement. The item on which we focus most closely is our clients’ willingness to recommend Cammack Retirement Group to a peer. This is a leading indicator of customer loyalty, as well as growth, because strong relationships and referenceable clients are the lifeblood of our business.

Beyond the work we do for our clients, we understand the significance of our industry and the importance of successful retirement planning. Cammack Retirement strives to serve as a resource for all plan sponsors by providing timely and relevant thought leadership.

With the goal of helping plan sponsors manage fiduciary risk, maximize their retirement plan benefit, and improve participants’ outcomes, our extensive catalog of thought leadership tackles a broad range of topics, in a variety of formats. In the past year, we take pride in the fact that we have helped thousands of plan sponsors through our Staying Ahead of the Curve and Cammack Retirement Brief video series, our Top of Mind blog and newsletter articles.

PA: How do you grow your business? What changes to your practice or service model are you planning for 2017 and beyond?

CRG: With the opening our third office in Lexington, Kentucky, in 2016 (in addition to our offices in New York and Wellesley, Massachusetts), we are excited to continue to build our presence in the Southeast and expand our national footprint.

While Cammack Retirement Group was originally established to serve the non-profit marketplace, including the higher education and healthcare segments, in the past several years, our firm has experienced significant growth in the public sector and corporate retirement segments, including working with several state programs and industry-leading companies. We anticipate continued growth in both our well established markets, as well as developing segments.

 

BUSINESS AT A GLANCE:

Plan assets under advisement: $64 billion

Median plan size (in assets): $92 million

Total plans under administration: 350

Total participants served: 900,000

«