PLANADVISER - Spring 2023 - 16

Cover Story
If the independent adviser has a business-owner
client and is not working as a plan adviser,
that person is " leaving money on the table. "
ADELINE WONG
advice, digital tools and group meetings within their plan,
while they may purchase broader wealth management
services outside the plan if interested.
Kerry Woods, SageView vice president of participant
education and engagement, in Denver, says the firm minimizes
potential conflict by offering no in-house annuities
or funds. " We're acutely aware of living up to all of our fiduciary
responsibilities, " Woods says. " If that means folks who
have made a recent job change are better off staying in the
plan, that's an easy solution for us. We have always truly
believed in doing the right thing by the participant, and
that has served us well in the form of both organic growth
and inorganic-growth. Additional firms-including wealth
management firms-join SageView. "
A FOCUS ON THE C-SUITE
Fiducient Advisors has also expanded its wealth management
offerings but concentrates primarily on C-suite
executives and firm owners potentially looking to exit the
business. However, Fiducient also makes basic financial
planning tools and advice available to all plan participants.
" We offer that as just part of the plan features, and
we've seen a lot of demand for it, " says Michael Goss,
managing partner, in Fiducient's Hartford, Connecticut,
office. " We've seen a lot of demand for it from human
resources professionals and companies that want a solution
that goes beyond retirement planning, and they want
to talk to employees about HSAs [health savings accounts]
and college planning. "
Higher-level, out-of-plan wealth management services
are offered through a direct, contractual relationship
outside of the plan. Fiducient had previously broken away
from UBS to become a registered-investment-adviser-only
firm, but, a year ago March, the firm joined NFP, which
recently reorganized to better connect its retirement and
wealth businesses.
Goss says Fiducient believes it differentiates itself from
competitors and minimizes potential conflicts of interest
by not targeting rollovers. " Often, we've done a great job
with the plan and fees, and that participant is better off
staying in it, " he says. " When we work with participants
on the wealth side, we're looking at non-retirement assets,
like stock options or other wealth. If [this is done] outside
of the plan we're advising, we've eliminated that conflict
of interest. "
At Cetera Financial Group, a network of independent
advisers-including many who work with wealthy business
owners-the focus is on expanding offerings in the opposite
direction, helping those business owners implement
and put retirement plans in place for their businesses and
employees. Such services allow existing wealth advisers
to provide more services and connect with " HENRYs " -i.e.,
employees who are " high-earners not rich yet " -who could
use more tools and platforms to improve their retirement
security, says Adeline Wong, Cetera senior vice president,
head of retirement plan programs and strategy, in San
Diego, California.
If the independent adviser has a business-owner client
and is not working as a plan adviser, that person is " leaving
money on the table, " Wong says. This is especially true amid
new governmental pushes, she says, citing the SECURE-
for Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement
- 2.0 Act and state mandates for retirement plans.
" The opportunity is in enabling advisers who might not
even be doing plans today to do one, and, from that point
forward, they can springboard into connecting with individual
employees to offer wealth services, " she says. " Independent
advisers such as ours are in an ideal position to
help both business owners and individual employees. The
programs we have are very beneficial and key to that bridge
between the plan and the individual. "
Cetera advisers minimize potential conflict with a focus
on transparency at both firm and individual levels. That
means making sure the relationship is at the plan level with
a clearly identified scope and services, and that any individual
relationships have a separate agreement.
AVOIDING CONFLICT ALTOGETHER
Other firms have leaned away from wealth management,
finding that serving as a fiduciary to the plan and its
participants-without offering wealth management at all-
becomes a differentiator for their offerings. That is the case
at Francis Investment Counsel LLC in Brookfield, Wisconsin,
which charges all clients on a retainer or hourly basis and
accepts no asset-based fees or remuneration from investment
managers, recordkeepers, trustees or custodians.
" Our clients know they can put us in a room full of
their employees, or in a conference room one-on-one
with a 40-year employee who's saved hard and built up a
$1 million account balance-and we won't have a conflict
answering their questions about what they should do with
their money, " says Michael Francis, the firm's president and
chief investment officer.
When asked why his firm is structured this way, Francis
points to a recent Pew Trusts study, which found that retail
investors lost out on, in aggregate, over $45 billion in savings
by rolling retirement funds from their 401(k) accounts
into higher-priced retail individual retirement accounts.
" It doesn't take a rocket scientist and a bunch of independent
studies to recognize that a conflicted adviser
will tend to have incentives, built into [his] compensation,
that point customers in certain directions that
16 planadviser.com | Spring 2023 | Participants
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PLANADVISER - Spring 2023

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