Global Retirement Partners Teams with Financial Finesse

Global Retirement Partners has taken another step to differentiate its adviser network by implementing a full suite of financial wellness and education services from Financial Finesse.

A partnership between Global Retirement Partners (GRP) member firms and Financial Finesse will give advisers working in the GRP Advisor Alliance access to comprehensive financial wellness programs for plan participant clients, driven by content and services from Financial Finesse.

GRP was established last year, when LPL Financial reached a partnership agreement with Financial Telesis and Bill Chetney, former LPL Retirement Partners president, to create a new retirement plan advisory firm, known as Global Retirement Partners (see “LPL and Financial Telesis Create New RIA Firm“). At that time, Chetney became CEO and partner at the new firm, while Jim Williams, Financial Telesis’ founder and CEO, was named president. Since then, Chetney has sold GRP to a group of seven advisory firms, retaining his management role.

For more stories like this, sign up for the PLANADVISERdash daily newsletter.

The current move represents a significant step forward in building out the GRP Advisor Alliance, which Chetney describes as a community of advisers sharing insights and access to helpful tools and client deliverables. Financial Finesse is the first such tool, though Chetney says more deals are in progress.

Chetney tells PLANADVISER GRP signed an enterprise-level seven-figure contract with Financial Finesse, which will provide GRP member firms with full access to Financial Finesse’s Online Financial Learning Center, along with patent-pending financial wellness assessments. Once plan sponsor clients of GRP advisers sign on to the program, their plan participants gain access to “unlimited phone-based financial coaching through Financial Finesse’s team of Certified Financial Planners (CFPs), and access to an extensive library of content, tools, and curriculum to enhance their existing financial education initiatives.” Although the advisers had access to part of Financial Finesse’s offerings in the past though the LPL Worksite Solutions program, LPL did not have the full enterprise contract, meaning this is an improvement upon the prior services and access.

Christopher Giles, president of GRP Advisor Alliance, says the goal of the new partnership with Financial Finesse is to provide helpful advice and education services at “an affordable price point so that plan advisers can gain greater market share in the growing and increasingly competitive retirement plan advisory business.”

Chetney says the wellness services are already available and can be selected by plan sponsors working with GRP and the Advisor Alliance. The services are designed to be affordable, he adds, with expenses assessed as a flat per-participant fee ranging between $1 and $2, depending on the size of the engagement. “The cost is quite nominal compared with the value,” he says.

Liz Davidson, CEO of Financial Finesse, says this deal has the “potential to be a game changer for participants,” who increasingly report a desire for unbiased financial guidance but no avenues to access such a service through their retirement plans.

The Emo Aspect Could Be Hurting Adviser Performance

Over the past five years, packaged portfolios have outperformed adviser-driven portfolios, says new research from Cerulli Associates.

Packaged portfolios now currently represent nearly $900 billion in assets and have become incredibly popular, according to Frederick Pickering, research analyst at Cerulli.

Much of the success of packaged portfolios has been driven by a new business model, with direct platforms gathering significant assets without having a traditional adviser force. 

Want the latest retirement plan adviser news and insights? Sign up for PLANADVISER newsletters.

In “Managed Accounts 2015: Battle for Discretion,” Cerulli analyzes the fee-based managed account marketplace. The report, in its 13th iteration, is the result of ongoing research and quarterly surveys of asset managers, broker/dealers (B/Ds) and third-party vendors, which captures more than 95% of industry assets.

Cerulli believes a key factor in the outperformance of the packaged portfolios is the fact that they remain invested in the markets throughout market pullbacks and recoveries. During market dips, in fact, these portfolios experienced more significant losses than adviser-driven accounts. However, they outperformed adviser-driven accounts following down quarters, likely because the home office stayed fully invested—since it is untouched by any emotional decisionmaking—and was able to capture the entire rebound. “Advisers feel pressure from their clients, and themselves, to act to avoid short-term losses,” Pickering explains.

Where advisers give more weight to brand reputation with clients and wholesaler relationships, home-office teams place more emphasis on quantitative factors, according to Cerulli’s reseach.  

“We believe the outperformance is primarily driven by qualified home-office teams dedicating their time to asset allocation, manager selection and staying invested in the market during downturns,” Pickering says. “Home-office teams are more quantitative in their approach to manager selection and are not as swayed by qualitative factors such as fund company’s reputation or wholesaler relationships.”

Advisers have a lot of hats to wear, but they must remember that portfolio construction is not a part-time job, Pickering says. On average, advisers spend 60% of their time on client-facing activities, 18% on administrative activities and only 17% on investment management. 

More information about “Managed Accounts 2015: Battle for Discretion” is on Cerulli’s website.

«