A Broker, Cowboy or Consultant: Which Type of 401(k) Advisor Are You Working With?

Employers and Retirement Plan Fiduciaries have the difficult task of selecting retirement plan advisors. The names and titles alone can be incredibly confusing! Of the 100,000 practicing advisors, 3,000 are active in the retirement market and may be considered "DC Specialists" as my guest Robin Green, SVP & Head of Data & Analytics at Ann Schleck & Company | Fi360 would call them.  She breaks down DC specialists into three sub-categories: The Broker, the Cowboy, and the Consultant. 

Additionally, we discuss:

• Three types of fiduciaries and what it means when an advisor claims 3(21), 3(38), and participant level fiduciary status.
• Three important questions to ask your current advisor in light of the new DOL rule.
• Weighing the difference between cost and value, and
• How model portfolios, retirement solutions, fees and expertise should be considered while benchmarking and selecting advisory services. 

Episode Guest

Robin Green is Senior Vice President and head of Data & Analytics at Ann Schleck & Co., an Fi360 company.  She is responsible for the proprietary databases that track on DC Specialist advisor practice management, fee, service and overall business trends.  She is responsible for the Fee Almanac®, Fee Benchmarker®, IRA Fee Evaluator and the FI360 Fiduciary Score.  Robin specializes in developing useful patterns, ideas and insights based on data and more than 20 years of retirement industry experience.  She is a research board member at DCIIA and a frequent speaker at industry conferences.  Robin has a BA from Concordia University where she graduated Summa Cum Laude.

401(k) Fridays Podcast Overview

Struggling with a fiduciary issue, looking for strategies to improve employee retirement outcomes or curious about the impact of current events on your retirement plan? We've had conversations with retirement industry leaders to address these and other relevant topics! You can easily explore over seventy prior on-demand audio interviews here. Don't forget to subscribe as we release a new episode each Friday!