Products October 2, 2020

Ascensus to Launch a Customizable Retirement Digital Sales Experience

The system will be rolled out to advisers in the fourth quarter and to other institutional partners shortly thereafter.

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Ascensus has created a digital, customizable retirement sales experience that it will roll out to advisers in the fourth quarter and to other institutional partners shortly thereafter.

Ascensus says the platform embodies its position as an independent provider, affording advisers the freedom to feature the service model, investments and managed account programs that best serve their clients’ needs. Ascensus says it also builds on the firm’s commitment to bring exceptional technology to its advisers and institutional partners. This includes multiple levels of investment and service customization to satisfy adviser, plan sponsor and broker/dealer (B/D) personalization needs.

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Ascensus also says it has reconfigured the visual design of its system so that it is easier for advisers to sell products virtually. It has also created a new interactive framework with embedded communications and demos so sponsors can preview their own and their employees’ experiences. Advisers can present the plan journey end-to-end or navigate to the topics most relevant to clients.

“We’ve transformed Ascensus’ proposal system to allow advisers to select plan features that suit their clients’ unique needs,” says Jason Crane, head of retirement distribution at Ascensus. “The platform also tracks data analytics and provides reporting to facilitate targeted messaging, yielding more efficient and productive outcomes for advisers and our partners.”

Kevin Cox, president of Ascensus’ retirement line of business, adds: “The soon-to-launch Ascensus digital sales experience will further enhance our ability to track and measure how employers are engaging with our services. These insights will help inform how we continue to enhance our products and technology to meet the evolving needs of the advisers, institutional partners and employers we serve.”

Compliance October 2, 2020

Insurance Services Office Faces ERISA Litigation

The lawsuit suggests the plan sponsor has failed to consider the use of collective investment trusts and attempts to paint this and other actions as fiduciary breaches.

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A new Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) lawsuit has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, naming Insurance Services Office Inc. (ISO) as the defendant, along with the company’s various retirement plan committees.

The suit includes much of the exact same text as the many others filed by the Capozzi Adler law firm, which has emerged recently as a leading filer of ERISA class action litigation. In this case, the firm is representing a proposed class of retirement plan participants who argue that ISO permitted the payment of excessive fees—due to the alleged lack of a prudent process for evaluating investment and administrative fees.

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“In many instances, defendants failed to utilize the lowest cost share class for many of the mutual funds within the plan, and failed to consider certain collective trusts available during the class period as alternatives to the mutual funds in the plan, despite their lower fees and materially similar investment objectives,” the complaint states. “Defendants’ mismanagement of the plan, to the detriment of participants and beneficiaries, constitutes a breach of the fiduciary duties of prudence and loyalty. Their actions were contrary to actions of a reasonable fiduciary and cost the plan and its participants millions of dollars.”

Using language repeated verbatim in many other Capozzi Adler lawsuits, the new complaint states that one indication of the defendants’ alleged failure to prudently monitor the plans’ funds is that the plans have retained several actively managed funds despite the fact that these funds charged “grossly excessive fees compared with comparable or superior alternatives.” The lawsuit also suggests that ISO has failed to use the lowest-cost share classes available to the plan.

“It is not prudent to select higher cost versions of the same fund even if a fiduciary believes fees charged to plan participants by the ‘retail’ class investment were the same as the fees charged by the ‘institutional’ class investment, net of the revenue sharing paid by the funds to defray the plan’s recordkeeping costs,” the complaint states, again using the exact same language as the other lawsuits. “Fiduciaries should not choose otherwise imprudent investments specifically to take advantage of revenue sharing.”

ISO declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing its policy not to discuss matters involving active litigation. The full text of the lawsuit is available here.

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