2024 RPAY – Emmett G. Dupas III, Bienville Capital Group – Northwestern Mutual

Business at a Glance as of 12/31/23

• Location: Metairie, Louisiana
• How many plan assets do you have under advisement? $408M
• What is your median plan size (in assets)? $7.3M
• How many plans do you have under administration? 126
• How many participants in total do you serve? 8,000
• Parent firm: Northwestern Mutual

PLANADVISER: Tell us about your practice and how you got into advising retirement plans.

Dupas: I was recruited to Northwestern Mutual in 2003 as an Investment Specialist. Many of the agents employed here at the time had corporate clients, but not the knowledge of what direction to give them. Partnering with TPAs and CPAs allowed my retirement plan business to grow as our focus was on participant engagement, not just business owners and the highly compensated, like some firms. Over the years our service model of enrollment meetings, market review meetings with participants, and plan review meetings has grown, but has always remained focused on employee outcomes. Building a team focused on service has allowed our practice to grow both in the number and size of qualified plans as well as our wealth management business. Having team members with long tenure keeps familiarity and fosters trust with our clients. Client focused events and “field trips” allow HR managers and trustees to put a face to a name. My practice is focused on building relationships not only with business owners and trustees, but also with their employees.

PLANADVISER: How is your team unique/competitive in the marketplace?

Dupas: With over 90 years of combined individual experience, our team is comprised of experienced professionals. Our retirement plan process is focused on a hands-on service model. We as a team are always striving to create positive plan outcomes for both plan sponsors and participants. We started a program called Outreach. It was to aid those participants who are pre-retirement age, 56-67. We proactively reach out to those participants annually to set up a time with us to discuss their risk tolerance and asset allocation. By being proactive with participants, we are engaging with them on a one-on-one basis to discuss all aspects of their planning if they wish. Our goal is for each of them to have a successful retirement outcome. In addition, we provide a program called Out(k)omes. Our team will compile a scenario for participants using their current deferrals, the company match and their date of birth and extrapolate those numbers out to 65-67 years old. We then show what happens if they increase their deferral rate by 3%. We are trying to nudge them into reviewing and monitoring their process while building relationships with them for future planning.

PLANADVISER: What challenges do you think the retirement plan industry faces, and what role do you have in addressing and confronting those challenges?

Dupas: Our industry, like most, faces challenges daily. I look at it as an evolution with service models, pricing, regulations and litigation. All these things have changed dramatically over the 20 years that I have been involved in the retirement plan market. From bundled to unbundled, to open architecture, to specific fund performance and certain funding options, to new lifetime income options in and out of plans.

Those of us who are actual retirement plan advisers have a responsibility to ensure our clients have the most up to date knowledge and information. Employers know their employees better than we ever will, so the advisers need to engage with the trustees and decision makers and provide our education and knowledge to forge forward. Forcing a square peg into a round hole does not work in any world and it shouldn’t for our clients. Either the advisers proactively working in the retirement field solve the pressing issues or the state and federal government will do so for us.

PLANADVISER: Why do you feel it is important to work individually with plan participants?

Dupas: A successful retirement starts with a participant taking action to have a better understanding of where they are financially and what they want to achieve. Since finance is not taught in most high school and college curriculums, our focus and responsibility to plan participants is to help those who do not have the financial experience make the right decisions so they can have a successful retirement outcome. Every employee of every group we oversee can be a success story, so we gear our employee education to the masses. We believe in our process, from enrollment meetings to market review meetings where we provide profile questionnaires and online access demos. We have an Out(k)omes program where we provide projected balances at retirement while showing the participants the errors in waiting to save.

We also have our Outreach program which helps 56–67-year-olds reassess their risk tolerance, balances, and deferral rates with a continual engaging discussion annually. Participants appreciate the ongoing relationship which builds a rapport with them and in some cases, their spouses. We have chosen not to just focus on the plan at the top, but to ensure that all employees of our clients have access to our team and resources to further educate themselves.

PLANADVISER: What are three of the biggest challenges that plan participants face today? How are you helping to address them?

Dupas: The first challenge is the possibility of outliving income in retirement. I often get asked by participants how much will they need. I respond by asking if they know exactly how long they will live, which of course no one knows. We would need that information to back into that number. We provide pre-retirement clients SSA analysis and a budget form to figure out expenditures. We create a spend down analysis using Monte Carlo scenarios for success.

The second challenge is health care costs. Future expenditures on healthcare and Medicare unknowns always come into planning. Much of it comes from a lack of understanding and knowledge of all the options. We consider long-term care policies as some insurance on investment dollars. People insure their homes with homeowners’ insurance, their lives with life insurance and their income with disability insurance.

Finally, inflation has proven to be a big challenge for plan participants today. The cost of goods, food, energy, etc., have gone up dramatically in recent years. When most participants plan their budgets, they use today’s costs without factoring in future costs. We can run an analysis of current savings, savings rates, etc., to project future amounts. We use a client’s risk tolerance objectives to show where they stand now and run Monte Carlo scenarios to show potential success or failure to reach their goals. The 4% rule on distributions rates does not always work with market volatility and unplanned expenses, so it’s our responsibility to show participants the potential pitfalls that may arise.