PLANADVISER: Tell us about your role at your firm and how you contribute to its growth and progress.
Ramsay: I currently sit in a hybrid role at Lebel & Harriman, serving as both a retirement plan adviser and a retirement counselor on our employer financial services team.
With my adviser hat, I serve as the fiduciary adviser to our small business team. Originally started back in late 2023, the goal when creating our small business team was to offer a solution tailored to smaller businesses and startup retirement plans. Born out of much of the legislation in our industry, including the SECURE 2.0 Act and many of the state-mandated retirement programs, we recognized the need to offer companies in this space the support and assistance they deserve. To date, our small business team book continues to grow, generating new business and an additional service line for our team.
With my retirement counselor hat, I work closely with the employees of the of the plans we service. Much of this is focused on education, engagement and creating positive participant outcomes. Education is a core focus of our service model at Lebel & Harriman and has been a key driver of the success of many of the plans we work on.
PLANADVISER: How did you end up in the retirement advisory industry?
Ramsay: I would say that I did not ever envision myself in the retirement plan industry and that it happened by chance. After graduating college, I was still unsure of my next move and what career path I wanted to take. I had an interest in the financial services industry, but at the time ERISA and corporate retirement plans were a total foreign language. I happened to run into and meet Laurie Reed, a partner here at Lebel & Harriman, at a summer family outing, and we discussed an open position that they were looking to fill. A week later, I came in for an interview, and after that, it was off to the races.
I have been in the retirement advisory industry for three years now, originally acting as retirement plans analyst focusing on our fiduciary reporting and investment due diligence. During my time as an analyst, I worked to get licensed and build my knowledge in our ever-evolving industry, and over the last year or so, I have transitioned into my roles as a retirement plan counselor and adviser.
PLANADVISER: What steps do you think will help improve the retirement industry and participant outcomes in the future (particularly ways in which your firm can help with that progress)?
Ramsay: Two areas I think will continue to help to improve participant outcomes within the retirement plan industry are employee engagement/education and thoughtful plan design.
We recognize that in the world we live in today, reaching and engaging with employees across different industries, generations, personalities, etc. can be challenging. Employee education and engagement is paramount. We believe one of the best ways to improve participant outcomes is by formulating and tailoring employee education programs to meet employees where they are at. Through diversified channels such as workshops, webinars, personalized consultations and digital resources, we believe this will help to drive employees to make informed choices and take full advantage of their retirement plan.
Another way to drive participant outcomes is through thoughtful plan design and automation. Behavioral science will tell you that humans have default bias. A way to guide employees to make the default the right choice is through automation within plan design, features such as automatic enrollment and automatic escalation. One area we hope to be improved and implemented by more recordkeepers in the future is dynamic automatic enrollment, dynamically enrolling employees into pretax or Roth contributions based on certain guidelines outlined by the plan.