Nevin's Data "Points"

Revenue-sharing has become an integral part of the business of serving retirement plans and, while a growing number of advisors have moved (or are rapidly moving) to a fee-based model, many have clung to the former. And let’s be honest here – a large number of plan sponsors still prefer that model for the simple reason that it is easy (no invoices, no checks to write) and seems, on the surface, anyway – cheap (not physically writing a check always seems less expensive). However, the revenue-sharing model is coming under heightened scrutiny – because it does tend to obscure the actual fees paid from the oversight of plan fiduciaries, because its basis of calculation – plan assets – does not always comport equitably with services rendered in exchange for those revenues (and sometimes that means it undercompensates for the services rendered) and because, when you take money from someone other than the person you are providing services to for providing those services, it can look like a b...

I may come to regret it – but we have decided to pass on the sixth season of the HBO “family” crime drama, The Sopranos. This decision was not taken lightly in our household, where, since its January 10, 1999, debut, my wife and I sent the kids out of the room every Sunday night at 9 p.m. so that we could enjoy the “antics” of the “family” crime drama. I actually still have recordings of the first three seasons on VHS tape – before I realized that it wasn’t really the kind of thing you would watch over and over again (let’s face it, some story lines are more compelling than others). A lot has changed since then (our kids no longer have to be sent out of the room, for one thing). But as season five drew to a close, two things became obvious – our cable bill was out of control (I have long had a fondness for multiple premium channels), and the only real reason we were still paying for all those premium channels was The Sopranos. And the fact was that, as the “sabbaticals” between Sopr...

Last week, a provider was perusing our editorial calendar, saw that we were covering automatic enrollment in our March issue, and volunteered their expertise on the issue. Well, it was too late for that issue – but they sent along a research paper on “quick” enrollment that had some interesting findings (see Plan Design below) – interesting enough that we wrote up a brief news item on it for www.plansponsor.com , and in the NewsDash. Next day, I get e-mails from three different providers – all picking up on the quick enrollment issue – and all, in slightly different ways, sharing their very positive experiences with the concept. What I found particularly interesting was that they all basically said, “Our plan sponsor clients have been slow to adopt auto-enrollment because of fiduciary and cost concerns…” so voila, “quick” enrollment, or “easy” enrollment, had been introduced – and was working quite well, without running afoul of the fiduciary concerns attendant with automatic enrollm...