The Value of a Retirement Plan Advisor
Why Your Retirement Plan Could Benefit
From an Advisor
Many business owners start their retirement plan with a bundled provider, combining recordkeeping, administration, and payroll for convenience. It works early on but leaves you responsible for complex duties like plan design, investment oversight, compliance, and vendor management. As your company grows, these demands can consume time and increase fiduciary and legal risk.
That’s why many successful plan sponsors partner with an independent retirement plan advisor. The right advisor delivers objective fiduciary guidance aligned to your best interests, helping you reduce risk, ease your administrative burden, and hold providers accountable. At the same time, your employees gain access to personalized guidance that helps them achieve better retirement outcomes.
Did you know?
As a retirement plan sponsor, your fiduciary duty includes monitoring the performance of your service providers and serving the best interests of your employees.
A good advisor can support and guide this process, creating more time for you while building a stronger retirement plan.
The Problem with Bundled Solutions
Many smaller plan sponsors mistakenly see their recordkeeper as a one stop-shop. But without an independent advisor, a host of potential issues can arise:
- Lack of guidance. Recordkeepers provide the plan platform and basic information. But with slim margins and marketplace pressure, they can be more focused on efficiency, not customizing a plan for your business and supporting your employees.
- Limited influence. As the sponsor of a single, small retirement plan, resolving any issues with large providers can be challenging and time consuming.
- No legal protection. Most recordkeepers aren’t fiduciaries. With no advisor to shoulder responsibilities for investment selection and monitoring, the plan sponsor takes on full legal liability for plan regulatory compliance.
- Conflicts of interest. Bundled plan providers often generate revenue through proprietary funds, insurance products, or cross-selling other products and services that may not align with your employees’ best interests.
Why it Matters
While nearly all large companies work with a retirement plan advisor, many small businesses assume they can’t afford one. In reality, a competent advisor often delivers enough value to at least offset their fees. This occurs in multiple ways: stronger plan design, lower plan costs, better investment oversight, reduced fiduciary risk, and more informed investment decisions by participants. These contributions combine to create a healthier plan that benefits both your business and your employees.
What does Fisher\SMB do that a recordkeeper doesn’t?
- Helps mitigate conflicts of interest
- Designs and builds a plan tailored to your business needs
- Creates a custom fund lineup from more than 25,000 options
- Monitors investment performance and adjusts as necessary
- Conducts service provider reviews, benchmarks fees, and serves as your advocate to resolve issues
- Runs education meetings and promotes plan participation
- Provides guidance to employees on savings rates, investment mix, and retirement planning
- Regularly reviews plan design to evolve as your business grows
What it means to you:
- Simpler, less time-consuming plan administration
- Compliance/legal protection and peace of mind
- Potential for stronger retirement outcomes for employees
- A valuable tool for recruitment and retention
For most small businesses, the more important consideration isn’t the cost of a retirement plan advisor, but the potential costs of going without one.
Have you outgrown your current provider?
Reach out to Fisher\SMB for a complimentary third-party review of
your plan provider(s). For 15 minutes of your time, you’ll take away
documentation that meets your fiduciary compliance duties for the year. And you may discover opportunities to create a lower-cost, higher-performing retirement plan custom-fit to your company’s needs.
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