They say that if you follow the history of baseball that it reflects what’s happening in America.  It’s funny, no one ever says anything like that about the retirement plan industry, but then again, most people don’t even know that retirement plans are an industry! I can make a case that retirement plans do, in fact, have a broader tie in to what’s happening in the country at large. Today, we have more women and minorities working in our space and many industry groups have formed to promote equality in our industry. Similarly, just as Environmental and Social change have become for ..read more

The Pandemic and Your Pension Plan  Why Defined Benefit Pension Plans are more valuable then Ever As entrepreneurs, the pandemic has uniquely impacted every corner of our businesses and our lives.  It has created stress and anxiety, upheaval, loss, new business models, migration from urban centers to suburban and rural locales and in our business, has removed the need for a centralized location.  Just a few weeks back, I had six 'Zoom' calls on the same day in six different states spread out across four separate time zones.  Pre-pandemic, I could never have imagined such ef ..read more

Earlier this spring on June 17th, Maine's House of Representatives and Senate approved legislation that would create a Payroll Deduct IRA plan for Maine-based workers whose companies did not otherwise offer a retirement plan.  Maine is only the latest state to enact such legislation, but almost certainly not the last. Initially, Maine's program will work similarly to other programs of this type in that it will be required to be adopted by any employer with 25 or more eligible employees starting April 1, 2023.  An interesting twist in the Maine program is that it is intended to also g ..read more

HOT TAKE: I prefer to work with Third Party Administrators (TPAs) over writing business bundled.  Whew, there I said it, out loud in a public manner.   BTW, not a very hot take for those who've worked with me as a huge majority of the business I've worked on in my career I've chosen to partner with TPAs, even at the expense of revenue to my firm and commission in my pocket.  Wanna know why?  If not, stop reading.   Before moving on, let's first learn about what TPAs are and do and what bundled vs. unbundled is in the context of retirement plans.  Retirem ..read more

 Environmental, Social and Governance (as in Corporate Governance).  This is only the newest acronym in a very acronym heavy industry.  In the context of retirement plans, this is referring to factors that are being deployed within specific investments, such as mutual funds, in order to restrict those investments from putting money towards certain areas that are deemed to be negatively contributing to society in some way.  As with anything new, clear lines as to what constitutes the criteria to be broadly categorized in this way are about as clear as mud.  So, without ..read more

This title is one of my favorite quotes that is so very wise.  It was originally said by a noted academic, Dr. David Weinberger.  By applying this adage to my professional life, I've almost universally been the better for it.  If it weren't for this philosophy, I never would have tried to write papers, blogs and the like, and thus would never have decided to create this blog.  I've recently realized, that this blog is really the only independent place where I can document all of the work I've done in my career.  So, here are a few of my notable papers in one place, the ..read more

  In the previous 2 posts on this subject, we discussed SECURE 2.0 and highlighted some of my favorite parts.  We're going to wrap up this series with my last two favorite provisions, which interestingly fall on the side of revenue generators.  As a reminder, this is a new piece of proposed bipartisan legislation seeking to improve retirement plans.  While there are more steps to this Act becoming a law, I feel pretty confident that this one has legs, and candidly, that's GREAT news for the retirement plan community and our clients.  I think this will get done in 2021 ..read more

In my previous post, I mentioned that it was the start of a three-part series discussing SECURE 2.0 highlighting some of my favorite parts.  As a reminder, this is a new piece of proposed bipartisan legislation seeking to improve retirement plans.  While there are more steps to this Act becoming a law, I feel pretty confident that this one has legs, and candidly, that's GREAT news for the retirement plan community and our clients.  I think this will get done in 2021 with implementation of many of the provisions in 2022.  For a an amazing summary of all of the new provisions ..read more

Okay folks, I know it's been a while since the last time I wrote on this blog.  Most of the content that I've created over the last 3-4 years ended up published on my employer, Unified Trust's blog and candidly, I'm not sure if this will be a one and done post or if this kick starts a new period of creativity.  But today, something happened that fired me up and I don't believe that the content following would fit over on that blog.  So here goes;  Terrible Plan Sponsor Behavior Still Persists Within the Retirement Plan industry we're always trying to coach practitioners and ..read more

I'd like to apologize for the lack of consistent content on this blog to those who read it often.  It's been an extremely busy time for me professionally, but the blog post ideas haven't gone away, they've just been getting posted elsewhere!  About 18 months ago or so, my firm, Unified Trust launched a blog and I've been one of the authors populating the content.  Below you can find a link to the blog and a link specifically to the content authored by myself.  Thanks for being patient.  I will try to post here more frequently. http://blog.unifiedtrust.com/index.php/au ..read more