Jake Daly, Newfront Retirement Services

FINALIST

San Francisco, California

Business at a Glance as of 12/31/22

Plan assets under advisement: $173 million
Median plan size (in assets): $5.6 million
Plans under administration: 33
Total participants served: 11,350

PLANADVISER: As a retirement plan adviser, what do you take the most pride in?

Daly: As an adviser, I take most pride in being the backstop for my clients. Oftentimes I find that advisers lost sight of the fact that our clients have full-time jobs which keep them quite busy, with the 401(k) plan only a small component of their daily lives. 401(k) plans present great complexity for our clients at times, and it is not rare that compliance and regulatory-related happenings occur almost daily, when a client needs me and my team to support them on the proper handling of those situations. I often joke with my clients that I am a full-time adviser and a part-time lawyer who didn’t go to law school. While of course there is no truth in this statement, the point is well made that we, as advisers, have big jobs to do, and our clients depend upon us and our teams to support them and help them navigate the never-ending gray matter that exists within our business.

PLANADVISER: How do you grow your business? What changes to your practice or service model are you planning for 2023 or 2024?

Daly: I grow my business typically through referral, whether that is from current and prior clients, other sales professionals in peripheral lines of business (employee benefits / property & casualty) or from my industry partners (ERISA attorneys, auditors, HR consultants, etc.). While I am not expecting great change in my practice or the way in which my team services clients, we have been very focused on continuing to sharpen the knife, so to speak, within our 401(k) audit-related support, financial wellness capabilities and iterating our existing reports that benchmark clients’ plan provisions, plan investments and plan fees to not only our clients, but also to identified peers and competitors.

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

Daly: I do believe that we are starting to see headwinds at a macro level within the economy, which is creating great uncertainty for the participants in our clients’ retirement plans. This uncertainty oftentimes leads to irrational participant behavior, and it is up to us as advisers to ensure we are staying in front of our clients to build a thoughtful and intentional engagement strategy for participants to ensure they have the tools in their tool belt to make informed decisions around their retirement accounts. I also believe that a major gap in our industry today is the ability to create thoughtful and well-designed 401(k)/retirement programs for small business clients. Oftentimes, what solutions do exist today lack flexibility and customization to meet the needs of the business. While the existing solutions provide cost efficiency, I find that as an adviser, I am trying to often fit a square peg in a round hole for my small business clients that are now state-mandated to stand up a retirement program or to adopt the state’s program. We need to challenge ourselves as an industry to drive innovation, particularly with the major enterprise recordkeepers, and to ensure that our small business clients can create well-designed, thoughtful, fee-efficient and technologically advanced retirement programs for their employees without seeking to remove the adviser from the equation.

PLANADVISER: How do you go about moving from words and ideas to action when it comes to addressing the lack of diversity in the financial advisory industry?

Daly: I show up as my unique self, first and foremost. I am proud of the diversity and experience which I bring to our industry, particularly as a veteran and as a member of the LGBTQ+ community (I am a gay man and have been with my husband for 12 years). I have found over the years that showing up and being visible has not only provided a voice to those who do not have the same courage to be visible, but has provided comfort for those same folks to see that it is possible to flourish in this business while being a member of an underrepresented group. I co-founded and currently co-lead Newfront’s LGBTQ+ employee resource group and continue to lead the strategy for our LGBTQ+-centric DE&I efforts internally, as well as our efforts within our surrounding community. I am also currently leading Newfront’s first submission of the Corporate Equality Index, which is led by the Human Rights Campaign, as Newfront strives to be recognized as among LGBTQ+ best places to work. I also take great pride in volunteerism, as well as donating and raising funds for LGBTQ+-centric causes and other DE&I and community-related causes that I am passionate about. I also serve as an associate board member with the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation and am a board member of Stonewall Golfers, the largest LGBTQ+ golf association in the country.

PLANADVISER: What are some of the benefits that an equitable and inclusive culture bring to a firm and its people?

Daly: DE&I represents safety and empowerment in the workplace; when colleagues feel safe in the workplace, they are empowered to be stronger, more confident individuals who are enabled to take control of their own success and do the best work of their lives. Not only does an inclusive culture drive results for the organization, but it also drives results for our clients and their organizations. An inclusive culture also gives us the ability to broaden our search and reach within the financial services talent pool. We are very focused on sourcing talent within areas that have historically been shown to have large populations of underrepresented groups. We want our organization to look like the community and world that surrounds us.