With the proliferation of Pooled Plan Providers or “PPP’s”, planning to sponsor a Pooled Employer Plan (PEP), how will yours be different?
Why a PEP Makes Sense
It’s no secret that employers are faced with many challenges in our current environment. Unfortunately, focusing on retirement complexities, market volatility and investment options just aren’t a high priority. This is why the idea of outsourcing to a high-quality Pooled Plan Provider is extremely compelling. Historically, the burden of cost has been a significant driver in the decision-making process by small and medium-sized companies as to whether or not a retirement plan makes sense. If cost isn’t the primary concern, then it’s fair to imply that outsourcing the responsibility of running and monitoring the plan is driving these decisions.
How to Stand Out
Currently, there are well over 3,500 MEPs in existence and over 3,400 PEPs scheduled to go live in 2021.1 It’s fair to say that many of these Pooled Employer Plans will face significant headwinds while trying to grow and add plans. It begs the question, what differentiates one from another? That’s a hard question for a plan sponsor to answer and an even more challenging question for a Pooled Plan Provider to answer. From the perspective of Financial Fitness for Life, the differentiator is what additional features and services are being provided to help participants take back ownership of their financial future.
After all, the intent of the SECURE Act, as the acronym implies, was to provide a solution for all employees in all communities. With that intent in mind, it’s important that we address “what’s in it for employees” and how we as an industry can provide a solution that meets their needs and objectives? The answer: A feature-rich PEP that includes high-quality investment options such as personalized managed accounts, along with professional advice and holistic employee wellness solutions. We think most would agree that there’s a major challenge with the way we, as an industry, serve all retirement plan participants. The industry has typically focused on only “The Hunted” – those employees that have common financial literacy, and in most cases, have done a great job saving and typically have larger net worths than “The Ignored”. Those employees with lower levels of financial literacy, who’ve struggled with saving and have debt. What if your practice could “democratize” financial wellness coaching and help The Employee, no matter where they are in their financial journey.
We can probably agree that a properly designed plan with the aforementioned additional features will most certainly benefit employees by providing better retirement outcomes and benefit employers by providing a more productive workforce.
Insulate Your Business!
Retirement plans have been a major segment of the financial services industry for years and there’s no shortage of competition from high profile advisory and consulting firms. Not all advisors and consultants sit atop the Mt. Everest of name recognition; that summit is left to a few national and global powerhouses that have been providing retirement plan services for decades. There are hundreds, if not thousands of like-minded retirement plan professionals ascending that same mountain with the hopes of achieving a sliver of greatness and hopefully, summiting that large mountain. Imagine climbing that mountain and every time you took two steps up, you took one step down. That’s what faces you every day you step foot in your office. Your retirement plans and business are being hunted by a relentless group of professionals with a name and national or global presence that’s very difficult to compete with.
How do you protect your business and your relationships? Don’t just provide them with the cheapest and most watered-down version of a retirement plan. Provide them with what they actually need, a retirement plan solution that allows “The Ignored” to be treated as they should’ve been treated all along. It’s not only the right thing to do, but it makes good business sense. After all, if you’re not helping them, someone else will.
The beauty of doing the right thing for your clients is that it insulates you (and them) from the voracious sea of relentless competitors looking to grow their business by shrinking yours!
Let Us Help You.
If you’d like to differentiate your business from the sea of sameness, contact us to find out how we can provide a scalable solution that provides total employee wellness with flexible pricing options.
Who knows, we might just help you ascend that mountain…
Eric Butler
Senior Vice President
[email protected]
Source: 1. https://www.plansponsor.com/news/data-and-research/