Window of “Opportunity”
The past year has brought with it an extraordinary amount of change to our industry. And yet, I have yet to meet an adviser—in any setting—who isn’t brimming (some are even bubbling) with enthusiasm for the opportunities they see for their business in all this change. That’s a very different perspective than I hear from their plan sponsor clients. Not that plan sponsors aren’t appreciative of positive change. It’s just that, as a general rule, my experience has been that plan sponsors are significantly more likely to associate change with work, rather than opportunity—and with some justification. Consider the recent finalization of regulations on the qualified default investment alternatives (QDIAs). Plan sponsors finally have some reasonably clear definition of what constitutes an appropriate default investment choice (at least according to the Department of Labor), one that provides a fair amount of flexibility for the sizeable number of plans that previously relied on a stable v...