T. Rowe Price Champions Co-Branding With Adviser Firms

Retirement plan recordkeeper T. Rowe Price Group Inc. is aligning itself with advisories through co-branding on the participant experience, integration of financial wellness platforms and lead generation such as pop-ups, says Mike Shamburger, the company’s head of core markets and retirement plan services.

“There’s a branding and messaging element there that can be really powerful,” Shamburger said during an interview at PLANADVISER’s offices. “Firms are really excited that we’re willing to step in and do that, because a lot of our competitors won’t do that.”

Availability to retirement plan participants as a trusted source to manage wealth, both in- and out-of-plan, is a key push for those with wealth management capabilities in a defined contribution retirement plan market that currently has $9.8 trillion in assets, according to the latest data from the Investment Company Institute.

But Shamburger said T. Rowe Price, rather than pushing out advisers, is working with them when it makes the most sense for participants.

For example, he notes that T. Rowe Price has worked with UBS on a digital integration for its participant login via the recordkeeping platform. In the past, the participant would log on and only identify T. Rowe Price branding; now, a participant also sees UBS.

“If I were UBS, wouldn’t it be great if every time that participant logged in … they saw T. Rowe Price, but also UBS branded there?” he says. “Then they begin, mentally, over time, to think of UBS as their financial adviser.”

Another avenue on which T. Rowe Price is collaborating with advisers is the integration of financial wellness platforms. Continuing with UBS as an example, Shamburger says T. Rowe Price can suppress its own financial wellness tools and bring on UBS items such as a loan optimizer, calculator and education tools.

“If you’re with a larger distributor, they’ve built their own suite,” says Shamburger. “Their own suite of financial wellness and all their education content is theirs proprietarily, and they want to drive participants to that. Why can’t we integrate that?”

Through that integration, the user is passed through a single sign-on straight into UBS sites. Users know they are headed to a new site in a “really smooth, easy transition.”

The final way T. Rowe Price assists advisers is through lead generation, helping those who have recordkeeping plans with T. Rowe Price to identify and drive wealth opportunities, according to Shamburger. Once the referral is made, advisers can then apply the appropriate services.

“An example would be a pop-up,” he says. “Someone’s trying to study, get information on a certain topic. We may have a pop-up that can say, ‘Hey, would you like to speak to a licensed financial adviser about this and get a personalized financial plan?’ They click, ‘Yes.’ They go to the website, you can scroll down, open up a public calendar, schedule your meeting right there on the spot.”

T. Rowe Price is the seventh largest 401(k) recordkeeper in the country by assets, according to the most recent ranking by PLANSPONSOR, a sister publication of PLANADVISER. It is also the fourth-largest defined contribution-only investment manager by assets, according to the most recent data from PLANADVISER, and a financial wellness provider for participants.