Nevin's Data "Points"

Last week, during our PLANADVISER National Conference , I asked a panel of four plan sponsors if their current adviser was a fiduciary—and if that status mattered to them. It’s not the first time I’ve asked that question; in fact, I have asked it of these plan sponsor panels at each of our four such conferences to date (although the plan sponsors were, of course, different). I ask it for one simple reason: While I sense a certain unanimity of opinion on the matter in retirement plan adviser circles, plan sponsors frequently have a more nuanced view. Sure enough, this year a plan sponsor panelist not only said that his adviser wasn’t a fiduciary, but that he wasn’t at all sure why that mattered. In fact, he wondered aloud why an adviser would want to go to jail with him if something went awry. Now, you could tell that many of the advisers in the room were surprised, perhaps stunned, by that statement. And yet, IMHO, that plan sponsor demonstrated what I felt was a pretty insi...

Last week, the Treasury Department and Department of Labor held two days of joint hearings on the subject of retirement income (see Lifetime Income Hearing Witnesses Demand Fiduciary Shield ). There was discussion about the need for product design enhancement (though much of the focus seemed to be on better explaining what was already available); better (i.e. cheaper) pricing for the kinds of institutional purchases these plans might provide (though I’m hard-pressed to see how you get any kind of aggregation benefit in terms of product just because the buyers all work for the same employer); and the challenges of portability, both when a plan changes providers and a participant changes employers. There was also talk about misunderstandings about annuities that no amount of communication or education seems able to dispel (my guess is the hearings won’t alter that dynamic, either), and there was concern about differences in gender-specific annuity tables (and, let’s be honest, gender-s...

With our PLANADVISER National Conference just one week away, I found myself turning back to my notes from the PLANSPONSOR National Conference in June. Some of these came from presentations, others originated from the audience, and still others arose in the dozens of side conversations at breaks and such in between the official conference sessions. Some, honestly, are something of a synergy among the three. See if they don’t get YOU thinking… You may not be responsible for the outcomes of your retirement plan designs, but someone should be. How you spend your weekend is a microcosm of retirement. “Free money” isn’t. Retirement income is a lot less of a problem when you have saved a pile of money. You can lead a horse to water, after all—but you can’t make him think. No one expects taxes to be lower in retirement any more. Auto-enrollment is still viewed as a very paternalistic type of event. When it comes to fee comparisons, eventually there will be better sources of information, b...