Client Service September 19, 2023

Recruiting a New Generation of Advisers

Junior advisers today may not fit the traditional mold, and firms should adapt to attract and retain talent, according to a panel of advisers.

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Retirement plan advisories, many of which need to cultivate new employees, should look to adapt to a new generation of junior advisers, one diverse in both background and strengths, according to experts at the 2023 PLANADVISER National Conference.

Don’t Scout Only in Obvious Cohorts

Leland Bishop, a senior retirement plan consultant for the Liberty Capitol Group in UBS Private Wealth Management, suggested recruiting new hires who might not come from a purely financial or investing background.

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“When we talked to college graduates, their courses were focused on investment management, and they were focused on sales and trading,” Bishop told an audience of advisers in Scottsdale, Arizona. “Those were the kinds of groups that came through for recruiting.”

However, the job of a retirement plan adviser is more focused on governance, compliance, meeting with clients and educating participants, he said, which does not always align with that group’s interest areas.

“We tend actually to try and look at folks who have more of a management track or somebody who’s interested in psychology,” he said. “We’ve got some good hires out of those areas. The finance folks, you interview them because they’re excited, but we really get more success from other tracks.”

While universities may have financial planning programs, most institutions do not offer specific education on becoming a retirement plan adviser, said Chris Jamail, the chief marketing officer at TCG, a Hub International company. That means considering other attributes in finding new hires.

“Just having folks that show up with the hustle and that are willing to do stuff without you asking, taking on projects,” prove to be significant additions, he said. “You get those more than those who know the technical side. [Employees with hustle are ones] you can very much more easily train.”

Adding to Culture, Rather Than Fitting In

Employers should also be aware that employees entering the industry today are often more diverse than even in the recent past, said Chuck Williams, managing partner and CEO at Finspire and part-time financial planning professor at Northwestern University since 2005.

“My first class was all white males; now they make up less than half [of my students],” Williams said. “There is a far more diverse group of people now, not just male / female, but also ethnic backgrounds and just general backgrounds. They’re also not all in their 20s; sometimes they’re in their 30s, they’re career-changers.”

Williams said he and Finspire colleagues talk about finding “culture adds” to the company instead of “culture fits,” so diversity can be approached as an asset.

Williams said it is important to keep an eye on recruitment trends, so advisories are not just looking for staff with similar backgrounds to themselves.

Williams also recommended resisting the temptation to make a “mini me” of a junior staffer, and to instead encourage employees to carve out their own path. He recounted a time when a young, female employee did a great job on a retirement plan committee review. In response, he offered an example of how he would have done it differently.

“She said, ‘OK, but you told me to do it my way. This was my way.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, you’re absolutely right,’” he told the audience. “I’m really glad we had that kind of relationship where she could feel comfortable saying that to me. [The fact that] I would’ve done it differently doesn’t mean that it was the right way.”
Client Service September 19, 2023

From Value Statements to Cold Calls, Advisers Talk Client Attraction

Retirement plan advisers provide insights on how to purposefully connect with potential clients.

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New business comes in many forms. A social media marketing campaign. A client referral. A cold call that leads to a meeting that leads to a new plan under advisement.

But in a competitive market with high rates of turnover, advisers would be well served to develop a plan for both finding and approaching potential clients, top retirement plan advisers told an audience at the 2023 PLANADVISER National Conference.

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Deena Rini, senior vice president and managing director of retirement plan services at Oswald Financial, said advisers should think about their sales approach in the same way they do with new clients: focusing on the value proposition and what the advisory will bring to the plan sponsor for the months and years ahead.

Rini said her firm made an important pivot several years ago after a ‘eureka’ moment when staffers realized they did not have a standardized process for onboarding new clients.

“Everyone was doing something a little bit different, which operationally made things inefficient, and our clients were all experiencing different types of services from us,” she told fellow advisers in Scottsdale, Arizona. “We took that as an opportunity to develop a welcome kit and an operational onboarding experience.”

The program advanced, however, into a way to approach prospective clients with a full packet of information and details on what Oswald can provide.

“We treat our prospects as if they are already clients,” Rini said. “We believe that’s the first step in the sales process.”

Rini said the firm’s welcome packet includes information on key contacts and their roles, a timeline of what to expect, and answers to frequently asked questions the firm receives, such as, “Am I a fiduciary?” It also highlights areas such as participant education and engagement. “We remind them of all the value and impact we’re having for their participants,” she said.

New Opportunities

Thomas Ming, managing director at Pensionmark Financial Group, noted that advisers should be open to new business areas or paths.

His firm, which had not typically been active in 457 government plans, saw opportunity to bring their specialty to that space and, at times, provide better options for plan sponsors not used to seeing relatively lower fees or additional plan elements such as managed accounts.

After some early success, Ming’s group is now building out that practice area.

“We have the experience now and the plans underneath us,” he said. “We see it as a wide-open space.”

Another area of growth is nonqualified deferred compensation plans, Ming said. The advisers noted that these offerings “go in waves,” but that the market seems to be good for them right now, and Ming said his group is working on a handful of nonqualified plans and executive bonus plans.

Beyond looking for new areas, Ming said it is important to consider what clients need and look to meet them in a simple, efficient way. To that end, the firm recently launched a pooled employer plan, with Pensionmark acting as the 3(38) fiduciary, Pentegra serving as the pooled plan provider and Empower serving as the recordkeeper.

“I think it’s a really good solution for those clients that are looking for that type of oversight,” Ming said.

Seeing the Potential

Neal Stamper, the corporate retirement and financial wellness director at Morgan Stanley’s Graystone Consulting, noted that the pandemic pushed many businesses to focus on general operations, and not retirement plan benefits. He said the time is ripe to establish new relationships with potential clients.

“COVID has thrown us all for a loop, but we’re getting back to a point now where it’s getting back to business as usual,” Stamper said. “We can call [businesses] now and have a conversation that basically starts by saying, ‘Hey, look, we deal with a lot of plans, and we’ve seen over the past three years that companies have not been looking closely at their benefits.’”

Stamper said these calls can lead to conversations about topics such as participant education or SECURE 2.0 developments that can help get a business’s “people to a better place” when it comes to retirement savings and general finances.

Stamper also recommended that advisers not dismiss calling referrals or even cold-calling firms where there might be a lead. He noted one situation in which he called an organization where he noticed turnover in its human resources leadership. After initially getting voicemail, Stamper got a call back from the contact that eventually led to him winning the plan.

“Now, would we have gotten that based on emails?” Stamper asked the audience of advisers. “The catalyst was having [the prospective client’s] cell phone number and me just calling him and saying, ‘Hey, we’d love to talk with you, and here’s why.’”

Stamper also backed the idea of having a ready-made plan to show prospective clients what they will be getting from working with him and the team.

“I think a lot of companies haven’t seen someone’s value proposition or even know what they’re supposed to be getting from a 401(k) adviser,” he said. “I think it makes a lot of sense just to put on page what your value is and what you do for clients.”

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