Nevin's Data "Points"

I’ve been on the road a lot over the past several weeks – and I’ve noted a remarkably diverse range of prices in gasoline across various locales. I think it’s fair to label gasoline a “commodity [i] ” – what the dictionary describes as “a reasonably interchangeable good or material, bought and sold freely as an article of commerce.” Oh, sure – you may have a preference for one brand or another, you may not care for the political allegiances of their ownership… but when push comes to shove, it usually comes down to price – because, after all, when it comes to gasoline, it’s pretty much the same stuff. For years, recordkeeping services – complex and difficult as they can be to provide accurately and consistently (not to mention profitably) – have been characterized (some might say disparaged) as a “commodity,” while fee compression (and the aforementioned complexities) continue to fuel consolidation in that industry. Honestly, as a former recordkeeper, I’ve never...

By most industry estimates, approximately 10% of plans change providers every year.  Of course, far more consider making a change (without actually acting on it), and many changes are thrust upon plan sponsors, a consequence of poor service, or provider consolidation. Regardless of the motivation for undertaking the change, here are three things that in my experience every advisor (and provider) wishes plan sponsors understood about recordkeeping conversions — before setting them in motion. Your provider search will take longer than you think. Human beings are, generally speaking, poor judges of time requirements, particularly with things with which they don’t have a lot experience (like provider searches) and that require the involvement/input of committees (like provider searches). We tend to assume that we’ll have more time available for such things than actually winds up being the case, and we tend to assume that such things will take less time than they actually d...