Definiti Launches Adviser-Focused Program

Third-party administrator Definiti LLC announced Wednesday a program exclusively geared toward financial advisers who have retirement plan books of business, offering access to proprietary retirement plan resources, reports and a dedicated account manager to boost efficiency and assistance managing plan sponsor clients.

Through the program, Definiti will review and appoint advisers working with retirement plans as a “distinguished partner.” Once designated, the adviser will be assigned a strategic account manager, who will assist with areas such as book-of-business status reports, priority access to Definiti’s Employee Retirement Income Security Act counsel, referrals to “orphaned” retirement plans and advance notice of product and service launches, events or legislative and regulatory updates.

“We want to have someone on my team to be there to assist and help advisers manage their book of business and ensure that they are not only well taken-care-of [by Definiti], but that we’re doing a lot of the work for them,” says Erika Misenko, Definiti’s director of strategic accounts. “We want to help them be more efficient, and with those efficiencies, they can then focus on expanding their business.”

Misenko points to areas such as submitting plans for testing, filing Form 5500 or payroll or distribution issues as areas in which Definiti can be helpful.

“We want the advisers to be able to be the hero when working with their plan sponsors,” Misenko says.

Misenko, who joined Definiti from Ascensus slightly more than two years ago, says she has seen the industry swing from advisers often using a bundled plan service—or one run via the recordkeeper—to seeking unbundled services, which use a recordkeeper and third-party administrator. That shift, she says, is in part due to more plans coming online via the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 and state mandates, as well as increased compliance and regulatory changes that come with the legislation.

“I know how difficult it is for companies—especially smaller ones—to be able to run retirement plans and keep in compliance,” she says. “In part because of that, we’re getting more advisers than ever looking for that 3(16) fiduciary backing and in need of our services.”

Misenko says Definiti’s adviser program targeting “elite” advisers was created in part due to her time in the industry and her observation of the need for specialized services to this group. The TPA has built out its team of strategic account managers across the country to activate the program through communication, meetings and access to advance resources and referrals.

A key to the effort, Misenko says, is for Definiti account managers to communicate with advisers before communicating with their plan sponsor client, so that adviser is on the same page and can address any questions or needs before messages go out.

“We are really cultivating a culture of the adviser communication being so important,” she says. “We are all about the adviser experience.”

Definiti is the third-largest TPA in the country in terms of plans served after FuturePlan by Ascensus and Nova Associates Group, according to Brightscope, which, like PLANADVISER, is owned by ISS STOXX.