Ben Duckett,
Morgan Stanley

Business at a Glance as of 12/31/23

• Location: Beverly Hills, California
• How many plan assets do you have under advisement? $663M
• What is your median plan size (in assets)? $25M
• How many plans do you have under administration? 85
• How many participants in total do you serve? 35,000
• Parent firm: Morgan Stanley Graystone

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

Duckett: I am a part of a seven-person team with Morgan Stanley Graystone. We serve our clients in the capacity of investment fiduciary and plan consultants, and we absolutely love what we do. I have three partners and three support professionals, and everyone on the team shares the same passion, care, diligence and integrity to serve our clients and plan participants to the highest standard.

My focus has always been on helping others, as my background before joining Morgan Stanley was as a combat search-and-rescue helicopter crew chief with the U.S. Air Force. As I began to embark on starting a family, I assessed my career path and decided to shift from military service to retirement plan consulting. I had seen through my time at the military that general financial education for the average person was lacking and that there was a service I could provide to others. At the time, my father was also a financial adviser at Morgan Stanley, which is how I began my financial career with Morgan Stanley. I had the privilege of working with and learning from my father, and I found that through retirement plan consulting, I was able to provide the largest impact to as many people as possible. My passion and interest for this career grew as I saw the difference that my team and I are able to make, and I feel lucky to be in the position to continue making a positive impact on others.

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

Duckett: We feel that we are unique in that we have an age-, gender- and specialty-diversified team. The age of our partners ranges from 33 to 52, which is important for several reasons. One reason is that we can relate to plan participants at almost any age. This is especially important when speaking with younger individuals about the importance of saving for retirement. When it comes to retirement savings, often the time you have to save before retirement is one of the most important factors. We often say, ‘A plan is only as good as participants understand it to be,’ which is why we put a significant emphasis on participant support. Additionally, our age diversification allows us to have a succession plan for our business to ensure that our team will always be able to serve our clients. My partners and I consciously have differing specialties, as we have a CIMA, CFP, QPFC and CRPS, all within our team. This ensures that no matter what we need to address or solve for a client, we have the knowledge within our team to get it done. In addition to this, we have the backing and robust resources of Morgan Stanley. Our offering is unique in that we do not provide a retirement plan platform, nor do we implement any Morgan Stanley/proprietary funds within a retirement plan; we only provide top-tier consultative value and support.

PLANADVISER: Are you connected to a wealth management division? If so, please explain how you work for them and your goals for coordination. If not, please explain whether you plan to be in the future, or not, and why.

Duckett: As Graystone advisers within Morgan Stanley, we are connected with a wealth management division. This is an incredible value add to the clients that we serve in that our team operates as plan specialist to ensure the retirement plan is effective and efficient, and we coordinate with the best wealth managers in the world at Morgan Stanley to provide direct support to participants. We recognize that the 401(k) plan is just one slice of any person’s financial world and that to provide effective well-rounded support, we must be able to speak to the other areas of a participant’s finances. Our wealth management division and team of wealth management colleagues are able to work with participants to construct financial plans, conduct on-site financial education meetings and offer the best solutions and services that could benefit the participant. We also provide ongoing communication, access to our digital Retirement Learning Center and the ability to connect with an adviser via the click of a button. Last but not least, we host a financial education webinar almost every Wednesday, which we refer to as “Wellness Wednesdays,” that every participant of each plan we support can attend. We cover a wide range of financial topics to ensure that we and our wealth management colleagues are able to provide a wide spectrum of support and guidance. Our goal is to help as many people feel financially confident and secure as possible, which in turn only helps to improve a person’s retirement readiness.

PLANADVISER: Why do you feel that retirement plan advisers should get involved in the expansion of the DC retirement plan system to cover more employers and, in doing so, more employees?

Duckett: Providing high quality support and service to DC retirement plans is one of the most effective ways to deliver a positive impact to the most amount of people. When a retirement plan is well-run, effective and efficient, you provide value to every participant who is a part of that plan. In turn, those participants utilize the plan and better their own retirement readiness through increased contributions, benefitting from lower plan expenses, better investment solutions, etc. Additionally, if a participant leaves a company with a well-run and effective 401(k), that participant can then become an advocate for well-run plans and encourage their next employer to focus on their own company’s 401(k). The positive impact across the workforce is exponential. As we are seeing with recent legislation (SECURE 2.0 Act), employer-sponsored retirement plans are essential in every industry and company. The burden of saving for retirement is almost entirely the responsibility of the individual participant, and proper guidance on how to save, invest and plan for retirement is invaluable, as everyone should have the ability to retire, or at least provide themselves the option to.

PLANADVISER: What are the biggest stumbling blocks to adding more tax-advantaged retirement savings opportunities in the workforce? What are you doing to try and overcome them?

Duckett: The biggest stumbling blocks that we see are proper education, bandwidth to address retirement savings and lack of a financial plan. When it comes to education, many plan sponsors and participants are not retirement plan experts. Understanding the importance of retirement savings and the essentials of how to utilize a retirement plan most effectively are not everyone’s area of expertise—or area of interest, for that matter. We do our best to address this by providing educational material, webinars, meetings and information to the participants and plan sponsors. Through our network of wealth managers at Morgan Stanley, we are able to meet with participants in person almost anywhere in the country. We have also found, as mentioned in my prior answer, that when a participant has a financial plan, they feel more confident and assured of their finances and budget and are much more likely to allocate a deferral percentage, even if it just a start, to their 401(k) account. We will work with any participant to build a financial plan for them, as we feel that having a plan is integral to anyone’s financial strategy.