Even when your plan’s investments are top-performers, your employees’ greatest obstacles to success is their own behavior. If the measure of a retirement plan’s success or failure is the ability of its participants to retire with enough money to last them for the rest of their lives, how do most plans measure up?

In the typical 401(k) plan a participant has less than a 20% chance of success (measured by current funding levels and historical ranges or real investment returns).  That means 80% of your participants are going to fail!  Why?  They are not saving enough money, and their real investment returns are consistently suboptimal.  In a nutshell, they are not following any of the time-tested and successful management techniques followed by sophisticated defined benefit plans.

And where are 401(k) advisors, consultants, brokers, vendors, record-keepers, and mutual fund companies in all of this?  Since the inception of 401(k) plans, these players have introduced various features supposedly designed to improve participant success: 

• glossy educational materials and campaigns
• sophisticated web-sites
• an ever-expanding array of investment choices
• Daily valuations
• Participant web-sites
• 24/7 participant access
• Emailed statements
• 800 number participant support
• Lifestyle funds

How have all these features impacted the success rates of the participants?  Shockingly, the 80% failure rate has not improved over the last 2 decades. What can be done to turn your participants’ failure into success? 

You should expect every provider to be good at all things listed above. However, we are different in three ways that significantly raise the success rate of your employees:
We focus on a successful outcome for every single participant.
We offer fiduciary liability protection for the plan sponsor.
We are independent, fee-only, “commission-less” advisors with no conflicts of interest. We never forget that our client is your company and your employees.