âCasting a wider investment net on asset classes and alternative strategies, especially those that are designed to reduce risk, as increasing a sponsorâs fiduciary liability. That seems to be the misnomer, that the term âalternativesâ assimilates to higher risk or higher cost investments.â
Interviews
For that to work, however, itâs not enough to change the titles brokers use â to make them call their sales representatives âsalespeopleâ and call their services âsales recommendationsâ â youâd also have to completely change the way they market themselves so that their marketing messages are consistent with their regulatory status.
The primary reasons for small businesses that you donât offer 401k plans are cost, complexity, and liability exposure. The traditional 401k plan has a lot of baggage rolled to those areas. It’s complicated. It’s definitely not easy. For local business of 10 to 15 employees that have so many different things they have to deal with, they just aren’t in position to want to have to deal with the baggage with the 401k plan.
Benna expertly explains why small businesses face nearly insurmountable obstacles when it comes to establishing a 401k, Americaâs preferred retirement savings vehicle. He then shows how to re-frame existing retirement plan vehicles in a way that small business owners and employees will find more appealing.
If you want to understand how sophisticated plan sponsors think, you need to talk to sophisticated plan sponsors. For many years, Dale Neibert served as part of a two-man operation that headed one of the nation’s most sophisticated 401k plans. He explains how this plan sponsor incorporated advance behavioral finance techniques, and how it avoided some of today’s most dangerous fads.
âWe have reached a watershed moment for retirement planning and saving.â
“As for as the pre-release discussion of the Trump tax plan, I would just ignore it. Itâs short on details, which raises too many questions.”
The retirement world will change, whether the industry wants it to or not. One thing is for sure, though, âfinancial literacy efforts, while effective for such matters as personal budgeting and proper use of credit, canât overcome the huge knowledge gap that exists between individual investors and those who stand ready to prey upon them.â
Ted Benna says ERISA/PBGC – not the 401k – killed pension plans and that pensions no longer make sense given our current job-hopping demographics. He also says a lot more in this must read interview.
Oft-quoted professor Pfau also says you canât turn back fiduciary, Rule or No Rule, and there’s still no easy way to compare reverse mortgage options.
