Nevin's Data "Points"

Today PLANSPONSOR opens nominations for our Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year awards. Each year we receive a number of inquiries from advisers and plan sponsors about the awards, and many of these fall into a category I tend to think of as “exploratory”—feelers as to what we are looking for. At its core, what we hope to acknowledge—and, thus, what we are looking for—hasn’t changed from when we first launched the award in 2005: advisers who make a difference by enhancing the nation’s retirement security, through their support of plan sponsor and plan participant information, support, and education. Since its inception, we’ve focused on advisers who do so through quantifiable measures: increased participation, higher deferral rates, better plan and participant asset allocation, and delivering expanded service and/or better expense management. A Different World The world has, of course, undergone much change since we first launched those awards, and advisers now have an expanded...

Those who try to figure out when certain trends reach a tipping point—who try to figure out when things have crested, the beginning of the end of the beginning—should note that we may have reached that point about three weeks ago—when I started “tweeting.” And, no, I wasn’t commemorating the arrival of spring by making bird calls. “Tweeting,” if you haven’t heard, is reportedly now all the rage as a means of communication. Well, sort of. See, you “tweet” by establishing an account on twitter.com (it’s free). And, once there, you can keep everybody up to date on what you’re doing. Well, sort of. What you actually do is update everybody who has signed up for your updates (“followers”). And, by update, what I mean is that you can tell those following your activities what you’re doing…in 140 characters (or less). Not 140 words…140 CHARACTERS. About half the length of this paragraph…. Now, I’ve been aware of Twitter and its capabilities for some time now. But, for a guy who long ...