Matthew Compton,
Brio Benefit Consulting, Inc., an Alera Group company

Business at a Glance as of 12/31/23

• Location: New York, New York
• How many plan assets do you have under advisement? $707M
• What is your median plan size (in assets)? $11M
• How many plans do you have under administration? 77
• How many participants in total do you serve? 16,000
• Parent firm: Alera Group

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

Compton: Brio Benefit Consulting Inc. was founded in 2004 as Employee Benefit Consulting Agency. Brio began assisting clients in the oversight of their retirement plans in 2009, but primarily on a reactive basis. In 2019, Brio’s Retirement Solutions Group was formed to focus exclusively on assisting our clients with the oversight of their retirement plan benefits. Over the last five years, we have grown our retirement practice significantly by adding approximately 65 new retirement plan clients and more than $600 million in new assets. Our team of two quickly became a team of five.

I began my career in the retirement business at AXA Equitable, working in the K-through-12 public school district 403(b) market assisting educators and school district employees with saving for retirement through a 403(b) plan. From 2008 to 2019, I worked for one of the retirement plan providers in the industry, which allowed me to become an expert in the defined contribution, defined benefit and nonqualified deferred compensation plan space. During that time, I had the opportunity to work with thousands of different financial professionals. Over time, I felt that there was a lack of specialization in the space and that most advisers were solely focused on a plan’s investment strategies and less so on plan design, process and participant education, so I decided to join Brio to create our retirement solutions group.

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

Compton: Collectively, our team has more than 30 years of experience on the plan provider side of the business. We feel this gives us a competitive advantage over many of our industry peers, as we have unique insight into the plan provider service model and where that model has significant gaps. At Brio, we look to fill those gaps and give our plan sponsors and participants direct access to our team as a starting point for all of their retirement-plan-related questions. We don’t view ourselves as an “investment adviser,” but rather a “plan adviser.” Of course, we serve our clients in a fiduciary capacity and handle the investment process; however, we are involved in all aspects of the plan oversight and participant education and communication strategies.

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

Compton: I think the biggest challenge the retirement industry faces is the race to the bottom in regards to fees. I believe this applies to recordkeeping fees, advisory fees and investment fees. We certainly spend a lot of time analyzing plan fees and the impact those fees have on participants; however, we need to be cognizant of the fact that plan sponsors and participants still need help. If driving down plan costs to a level where service can no longer be supported, that can pose a significant risk to both plan sponsors and participants. Employers need to be sure they have a strong fiduciary process in place to avoid future Department of Labor audits and/or legal challenges on plan operations. Likewise, participants need to get the necessary education and guidance that can result in the best retirement outcomes. If neither of those things are happening because plan fees have been driven down so much that the services needed to accomplish those goals are no longer available, that is a significant risk that we need to be aware of.

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

Compton: At Brio, we firmly believe that in order to impact our participants’ retirement outcomes, we have to be engaged directly with the plan participants. Like most relationships, we believe that the foundation of our relationship with our plan participants comes down to trust. Obviously, developing a level of trust takes time. For this reason, we believe we need to deliver all of our group education sessions and individual one-on-one sessions. We rarely rely on our provider partners to deliver any education directly to the participants. The only exceptions to this would be potentially for bilingual presentations and/or provider technology/tools demonstrations. We have found that by being at the forefront of participant education sessions, our participants know to come to our team first when they have questions or are looking to learn more with regards to their retirement savings. One of our core values at Brio is to be “educators.” We firmly believe that being an educator extends past our investment committees and needs to include our plan participants.

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

Compton: We believe that there are a variety of challenges that plan participants face today. Some of those challenges include:

• App overload – As a holistic employee benefit consulting agency, we see firsthand the amount of information that can be thrown at employees and retirement plan participants during their benefits renewals. While many of these apps, tools and resources are great, it can also lead to an overwhelming amount of information at one time. We believe that multiple conversations and education sessions need to be had throughout the year so participants have the opportunity to really understand the resources that are available to them.
• Changing the discussion from 401(k) balance to future retirement income – The industry has made great strides in trying to change the discussion from things like participation rate and savings rate to future retirement income. That being said, we still have work to do. Additionally, the industry continues to launch retirement income strategies; however, there’s still a lot of work to do in this area before they become widely adopted.
• Lack of education and hands-off advisers – While we’ve certainly seen the move to more of the specialist adviser over the last 10 years, there are still a lot of retirement plans that partner with a generalist adviser. Unfortunately, oftentimes we see with the generalist adviser that they tend to be more hands-off, or rely solely on the plan provider to handle participant education. The issue with that approach is that the meetings are too infrequent and rarely have the same individual as the educator. That typically means that the trust factor does not exist, which can lead to a lack of action on behalf of the participant.