2012 PLANSPONSOR Retirement PLAN ADVISER of the Year Finalists

In the last issue of PLANADVISER, we highlighted some of the nation’s most successful retirement plan advisers in the listing of the PLANADVISER Top 100 Advisers. In this issue, we profile the finalists for PLANSPONSOR’s Retirement Plan Adviser and Retirement Plan Adviser Team of the Year.

This is the eighth year that PLANSPONSOR has recognized the efforts of the nation’s best retirement plan advisers and the sixth that we have acknowledged the efforts of retirement plan adviser teams.

The process officially will begin the Tuesday after Labor Day, when the nomination process opens. Nominations are solicited online from retirement plan advisers (self-nominations are not permitted), from their employers and/or broker/dealers and plan sponsors, as well as from working partners of these advisers including investment vendors, accountants, attorneys and pension administrators.

Once advisers are nominated, they are invited to fill out an online form providing various details about their practice. While it is an honor to be nominated, advisers can only be part of the PLANADVISER Top 100 or eligible for the PLANSPONSOR Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year awards if they take the time to provide the information, online. If initial criteria are met, advisers are asked to complete another form, listing client references. From that group, judges select 10 finalists (five in each category) to compete for the award, and from these select a winner, who is named at the PLANSPONSOR/PLANADVISER Awards for Excellence Dinner in March.

On the pages that follow, we introduce you briefly to the men and women who were chosen this year who demonstrated the quality of leadership and commitment to excellence that have been hallmarks of these awards. That commitment is evidenced by the impact these advisers have had on participation rates, deferrals, asset allocation and a better understanding and appreciation of these programs. It is striking how committed they are, as a group, to creatively applying the tools embedded in the Pension Protection Act—automatic enrollment, accelerated deferrals, asset-allocated default funds—and yet how equally committed they are to helping plan sponsors and participants make thoughtful, prudent choices, sometimes with one-on-one counsel.

We are honored to play a role in highlighting this year’s finalists and hope you enjoy getting to know them. 

—Alison Cooke Mintzer 

Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year Judges 

Steff Chalk,CEO, Fiduciary Consulting and Governance Group Inc.

Alison Cooke Mintzer,Global Editor-in-Chief, PLANSPONSOR and PLANADVISER 

Rick Wedge, Northgate Benefits, 2010 PLANSPONSOR Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year

James Worrell, GPS Investment Advisors, 2011 PLANSPONSOR Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year

Retirement Plan Adviser Team of the Year Judges 

Steff Chalk, CEO, Fiduciary Consulting and Governance Group Inc.

Phil Fiore, representing FDG Advisors of UBS, 2011 PLANSPONSOR Retirement Plan Adviser Team of the Year

Ryan Gardner,representing Fiduciary Investment Advisors LLC, 2009 PLANSPONSOR Retirement Plan Adviser Team of the Year

Alison Cooke Mintzer, Global Editor-in-Chief, PLANSPONSOR and PLANADVISER 

Doug Prince, representing The Price Group of Stifel Nicolaus, 2010 PLANSPONSOR Retirement Plan Adviser Team of the Year 

2012 PLANSPONSOR Retirement PLAN ADVISER of the Year Finalist 

Howard Daher
Daher Capital Group LLC
Wellington, Florida  

Howard Daher says that founding Daher Capital Group LLC in 2008, during the financial crisis, only made his firm stronger.

“We went through the pain and we got through it,” he says of his company’s starting out during the economic downturn. “I think there isn’t anything that could come our way, God willing, that could set
us back.”

Since Daher established his firm, his client base has grown to nearly 20, with an average plan size of about $11 million. He says he tries to provide the services typically offered to $50 million-plus plans and customize them for plans under $10 million. His firm’s services include fiduciary oversight, plan design and compliance, employee education, investment due diligence and more. Regarding all services he provides, Daher says keeping his client relationships strong is extremely important. Plans less than $10 million are the standard in South Florida, but Daher says it is still an underserved market.

“The only constant thing that we’ve seen in our industry is change,” Daher says. “That’s why the client relationship trust means more than anything, because the clients look to us to provide guidance in this constantly changing environment.”

During the first meeting with clients, Daher likes to determine what they expect from an adviser, because, he says, most clients do not come in with any service expectations. “So we want to define what they deserve and what they should be getting,” he says.

Having worked across multiple facets of the industry, including at a vendor and a large consulting firm, Daher aimed for a boutique feel when he started planning his new practice.

In many ways, he says, his boutique firm was inspired by his time working at employee benefit advisory firm Benefit Management Group. He says he wanted to build a business with the same passion, spirit and culture that he encountered there. In a boutique firm, Daher says, you take ownership of your work, and client satisfaction always comes before sales. “I answer to the client and no one else, and that’s the way it should be. It’s not a conveyer-belt system. We build the service model around [the client].”

A challenge with any small firm is growing the business and keeping clients happy at the same time, while not diluting the services offered. Although Daher is the lead consultant and fiduciary adviser to the plans he serves, he leverages the resources and support offered through LPL Financial. Also, he has partnered with The Centurion Group—and advisers Jim Hageney and Kevin Broderick—in Pennsylvania, for registered investment adviser (RIA) services. Daher says he collaborates with the two of them about technology, analytics and resources and to determine best practices.

Daher adds that he enjoys helping make a complicated subject like retirement easy to understand. Employees today are presented with more retirement choices than ever, so, he says, it is crucial that they make informed decisions. “I try to take a very sophisticated and technical benefit that most Americans have available to them, and I try to keep it simple,” he says.

His firm conducts meetings with participants about what he calls “retirement 101” and gives advice when it is needed or requested. After the meeting, Daher says, participants often will comment about how he
took something very complicated and scary and made it simple so that they feel comfortable.

“I think employee education and advice is critical today, more than ever, and advisers should be held to those fiduciary levels and be accountable to the unbiased advice that they give to employees,” Daher says.

—Corie Russell 

2012 PLANSPONSOR Retirement PLAN ADVISER of the Year Finalist 

Jeb Graham
CapTrust Advisors LLC
Tampa, Florida 

Jeb Graham, now a retirement plan consultant at CapTrust Advisors LLC, started out in the restaurant business but was always intrigued by numbers. He received an undergraduate degree in finance, and in 1984, he decided to take the Series 7 examination.

“I had no clue,” he says. “I spent all my money getting my Series 7.”

His first job in the industry was at Waddell & Reed, an asset management and financial planning firm. It was a sales job, however, and Graham says he lacked sales training and prospecting skills. After two months of “floundering” at that job without sales training, he went to Ogle & Waters, a benefits consulting firm. Graham says he began to learn the “nuts and bolts of retirement plans” and gain specialized knowledge.

From there, he moved to a larger plan-administration firm, J.T. Comer & Associates, and then accepted a position at USF&G Insurance. Eventually, he landed a job at Raymond James, where he became the national director of the Retirement Plan Consulting Group. In February 2005, he joined CapTrust.

That move was necessary because Graham wanted to shift from the technical side of plan-administration to the more macro-level plan-design side of the industry. He enjoys serving the 401(k) market as an adviser more than his previous administrative roles, because of the guidance he can provide clients.

“Plan sponsors and participants really need good advice and guidance, and they don’t always get it,” he says. “If you truly put your clients first and you truly strive to take care of them, you can build a really good business. Because, in the end, that wins out.”

In evaluating clients’ plans and determining the best ways to meet their goals, Graham says he tries to focus on what is best for the client, based on a holistic view of the company—not just the retirement plan needs. For example, if a client is in the midst of a taxing situation—such as a technology integration or merger, or a payroll change—and has concerns about the retirement plan recordkeeper, Graham says it is best to work with the client’s current plan provider and optimize that situation, rather than go through a full request for proposal (RFP) and change providers during a hectic time.

“I think many advisers are in too big of a hurry to change providers, and that’s not always in the client’s best interest,” he says.

Graham’s target market is plans from $20 million to $300 million, focusing in the private sector, nonprofits and higher education. He has 23 ongoing clients, many of whom started with him on a project-level basis. Graham takes on project work, such as fiduciary training, provider search projects, fee analysis and benchmarking. Of his ongoing clients, his average client asset size is $42 million, with a median plan size of $27 million. He works solely with retirement plans, not taking on any individual wealth management business.

To his plan sponsor clients, Graham strongly advocates fiduciary education and has performed training workshops about the subject for approximately one-third of his clients so far. His educational model is part best practices, part investment terminology review, and he has been working with the Plan Sponsor Council of America to combine fiduciary information.

Graham would like to grow his practice by 10% to 15% per year, and one area in which he hopes to add clients is the 403(b) higher-education sector. He says he believes higher education traditionally has been underserved and is a more difficult market than 401(k), because of the nuances one must understand to serve it, but that a great need exists there. He will also continue to work selectively in the private and nonprofit sectors.

—Corie Russell 

2012 PLANSPONSOR Retirement PLAN ADVISER of the Year Finalist 

Stace A. Hilbrant401k Advisors LLC
Willmette, Illinois  

Stace Hilbrant, managing director of 401k Advisors LLC in Willmette, Illinois, takes pride in his business’s face-to-face client service model.

Hilbrant’s firm was one of the original founding firms of 401k Advisors USA, which was later renamed National Retirement Partners before being acquired by LPL Financial in 2010. In 2003, he incorporated in suburban Chicago as 401k Advisors LLC and sold his first 401(k) plan advisory services to D.A. Stuart Company, which makes products for the aluminum manufacturing industry. “I have that first check stapled to my wall,” he says.

Although starting a business was tough, Hilbrant says his firm—which specializes in 401(k), defined benefit (DB) and non-qualified retirement plans—had appeal because of its client service model. Clients enjoy having a one-person contact responsible for creating reports, directing employee meetings, being accessible to the work force and serving as an adjunct to human resources, he says.

“Our business model is built around face-to-face,” he says. “I’m going to be the person here at every quarterly meeting. I’m going to educate; I’m going to answer a question anytime on my cell.”

That one-on-one approach to client service gave Hilbrant’s business the edge it needed to get some traction. After all, he says, the new firm was competing with companies in Chicago that had been around for many years.

“To compete against that existing service model was a huge challenge,” he says, adding that his company’s unique focus on 401(k) during that time was one thing that did differentiate it from other firms. “I’m thrilled doing what I’m doing and how I got started. How I got here, that was quite a challenge.”

Today, Hilbrant’s firm has 42 plans, with a median plan of $20 million and five-year average client tenure. Although he targets plans with assets between $10 million and $50 million, his client base includes some outside that range; the largest plan is $400 million.

In the future, Hilbrant plans to add four or five clients each year, which he says is a manageable number to maintain personal relationships. “I look at each [client] as a new friendship, a new relationship, a new partnership.”

The firm has four advisers, one wealth manager and four support staff, and although he has no current plans to grow personnel, Hilbrant says he is open to expanding the team in the coming years as needed.

The core of Hilbrant’s passion for this industry is helping the average worker retire. Hilbrant’s father was a lineman for a rural electric association in Iowa. When his father passed away from pancreatic cancer in 1988, he says he immediately learned the ramifications of working your entire life and having no pension or 401(k) assets.

“There are lots of people in this country who have this sort of scenario, and there are ways to change that,” he says. “So my passion is really to [help] the average working-class person.” His firm meets with an estimated 75% of plan participants and offers educational group seminars and one-on-one meetings.

As for advising the plan sponsor client, Hilbrant conducts quarterly in-person meetings with his clients, and his firm documents and archives each piece of the retirement plan. “As an adviser, you have to go to those meetings prepared to bring value to the conversation,” which Hilbrant says can include explaining options and performance, making action plans and having studies and research on hand. He likens it to building a court case, with evidence.

As part of a plan to increase technological efficiencies, Hilbrant’s firm has started using iPads for reports to avoid wasting paper, and clients can access these reports electronically.

“Employers appreciate you coming and teaching them something they didn’t know,” he says. “The educational piece of what we do is a huge component of our service model.”

When asked what’s next for 401k advisers, Hilbrant says he foresees working with more defined benefit (DB) plans in the future—his firm currently advises four of them. Hilbrant says he is a big believer in DB plans because they are the best way to help participants get to retirement properly prepared.

—Corie Russell 

2012 PLANSPONSOR Retirement PLAN ADVISER of the Year Finalist 

Jim Sampson
Cornerstone Retirement Advisors LLC
Warwick, Rhode Island 

Jim Sampson, managing principal of Cornerstone Retirement Advisors LLC, says, like many people, he “just kind of stumbled into the 401(k) industry.”

After earning a sports management degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Sampson worked in retail management at a tennis shoe store but had grown tired of retail hours. Opportunity knocked when a close friend from his high school suggested he work at his consulting firm. Sampson had always been good with numbers and decided to try it out.

And so he went to work at George Beram & Company, performing recordkeeping, administration and a bit of consulting for the defined contribution (DC) team.

From there, Sampson worked at Transamerica Retirement Services as the company’s first retirement plans internal wholesaler. Having seen the retirement plan industry from the vendor side, Sampson decided to enter the advisory market. He became the 401(k) specialist at Telamon Insurance & Financial Network, a property, casualty and employee benefits firm, and started building a 401(k) practice that focused on the micro- and small-plan market segment.

During a benefits fair for one of his clients, Sampson met Rob Calise, owner of Cornerstone Group, a benefits advisory service, which at that time, focused on group health insurance. Calise and Sampson decided to form Cornerstone Retirement Advisors in June 2009 and leveraged the current clients from Cornerstone Group, offering them 401(k) services. This has provided ample prospects for Sampson’s growing retirement plan practice, he says, now up to nearly 70 clients.

Sampson’s clients generally fall into the market segment not pursued by many advisers: the micro and small market. “It’s an absolutely underserved market,” Sampson says. His average plan size is $1.2 million, with about 25 participants per plan. His largest plan is $12 million.

In the small-plan market, he gets to meet individuals instead of working with committees and boards, and his clients become almost like family. “I really enjoy that part of the business,” he says. “The relationship part of the business is very important to me.”

Also, Sampson enjoys educational meetings because he can make a complicated subject like retirement fun and accessible. He likes to joke, “If I start using fancy investment terms, throw something at me.”

His passion is helping people understand retirement and what they are saving for. “The biggest rush to me is seeing that light bulb go on over someone’s head when they finally get it,” he says. Educating plan participants is vital, Sampson says, because, no matter what advances the industry makes, none of it matters if participants neglect to save enough. Therefore, he spends about 90% to 95% of enrollment or participant education meetings discussing savings, and the rest talking about investments.

Sampson says participants want to know three things: 1) What is in it for me?; 2) How much should I save? and; 3) Where should I put my money? “If I can answer those three things, we’ve been successful,” he says. “Any time we spend on anything else is almost counterproductive.”

Sampson adds that he uses “goofy stories and analogies” to get his point across. For example, he compares investing to cooking, and asset allocation to driving on a highway. “My whole point is, I want them to take away a concept,” he says. “Whether they remember the details or not is not as important. But if they learn a concept, hopefully it will stop them from making a knee-jerk [response] when something crazy happens in the market.”

Sampson meets with some of his clients more than four times a year, but he says other clients are sometimes resistant to meet on a quarterly basis, because 401(k) plans are low on their list of importance compared with other benefits. Regardless of whether he meets with the plan sponsors or committees in person, one initiative Sampson would like to undertake in the coming year is to use participant metrics data to improve outcomes and focus in educational meetings.

“One of my projects for the year is to really ramp up the data that we have access to and to use it in a more meaningful way,” he says.

—Corie Russell 

2012 PLANSPONSOR Retirement PLAN ADVISER of the Year Finalist 

Henry Yoshida
The Maresh Yoshida 401k Group
Austin, Texas 

Henry Yoshida is a firm believer in the importance of basic savings. When he advises plan sponsor clients and participants, he stresses the importance of basic savings throughout a sustained
time period.

There are three pillars to a successful retirement plan, he says: 1) the money the client contributes; 2) the time the client invests, and; 3) portfolio diversification. “If you aren’t willing to do the first two, it doesn’t matter what your return is,” Yoshida stresses.

When potential clients are searching for a retirement plan adviser and ask him what investments he can offer, Yoshida tells them he can probably offer the same as anyone else. What sets him apart, however, is the education he can provide about basic savings. In 30 years, the participants may not remember him, but it is nice to know he might have a positive impact on their financial future through retirement savings education, he says.

“What’s really neat about it is that you’re in a position to affect people positively,” he says. “What I’ve communicated for years is focusing on what I think the average American person needs.”

Yoshida is a proponent of automatic enrollment and automatic escalation because, he says, the hope is that participants will stop noticing when the money comes out of their paychecks. He says retirement savings should be thought of as a way of life for participants, similar to how most people now accept cell phone payments as a necessary expense.

After a 10-year affiliation with Merrill Lynch/Bank of America Merrill Lynch, in 2010, Yoshida and his partner, Mike Maresh, broke away and formed The Maresh Yoshida 401k Group (MY 401k Group), focusing on defined contribution (DC) plan design, analysis and investment selection. In less than a year and a half, the company rebuilt their 401(k) book of business and now has 17 DC plan clients with about $470 million total in assets under advisement. His target market is plans between $10 million and $250 million.

Yoshida says he elected to move away from the wirehouse and start his firm as an independent registered investment adviser (RIA) because he believes it is the only way to be fully aligned with plan sponsors through direct contracts. “The message that we really wanted to send was … it’s a direct contract,” he says. “It’s me aligned with them.”

Yoshida says his firm also made a decision not to accept any project-based work, because he wants to guide his clients through the entire investment process, rather than just with “bits and pieces.”

“It was important for us that each client has the same experience,” he says.

In building his practice, Yoshida’s focus is not on having the most plans under advisement but rather is about a high-touch, dedicated, high-quality service model. His firm meets with clients four times a year: The first two meetings are conducted with the committee to review the fiduciary process, the next is to discuss a participant communication campaign, and the last is an open agenda that depends on the client’s needs.

In the next four to five years, Yoshida says his firm plans to open two more locations. He adds that it is extremely important to maintain the same quality-over-quantity mentality and high-touch service model when expanding. “We are going to carefully examine geographic areas where our model is appropriate,” he says, of expanding the firm.

As the firm grows, Yoshida also says he wants to continue functioning like an adviser rather than a business owner, maintaining his close client relations.

—Corie Russell 

2012 PLANSPONSOR Retirement PLAN ADVISER of the Year Finalist 

The Corpening Group
Charles Corpening,
Rick Simpson
Winston-Salem,
North Carolina 

Charles Corpening and Rick Simpson say their collective experience in the retirement industry is what makes The Corpening Group so strong.

“We come at this business from two separate angles,” says Corpening, director and client adviser. “Mine from an investment side, and [Rick’s] from an administration side. The overlap is fiduciary services.”

Corpening, who has a degree in trust management, worked as a trust officer at RBC Centura from 1986 to 1988, and was vice president of ERISA & Trust Services for First Union (now Wells Fargo) from 1988 to 1993. Simpson, who is a client adviser at The Corpening Group, was previously a relationship manager at INVESCO (1996 to 2006) and head of team administration at Merrill Lynch (2006 to 2008). He is versed in plan design and plan systems, as well as client education. Together, Simpson and Corpening have more than 50 years of industry experience.

At The Corpening Group, formed in 2010, Simpson and Corpening serve as fee-based investment counselors to families of wealth, nonprofits, hospitals and corporations. The Corpening Group is the largest provider of ERISA consulting services within Deutsche Bank and specializes in private wealth management, investment counseling, plan cost/benefit analysis, search services for ERISA plans providers and fiduciary guidance.

The Corpening Group serves more than 20 clients with a mix of defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) plans. The average plan size is about $24 million, with an average of 500 participants per plan. The group’s target market is large plans from about $20 million to $50 million.

“We’re always looking for either new ways or better ways for our clients to manage their retirement plans,” Corpening says. “[With] larger plans, we can really get involved and customize strategies.”

Simpson adds, “We spend a lot of time figuring out which things are and are not applicable to each client.”

As it relates to plan design, Simpson and Corpening say they believe in simplifying investment lineups for their clients. Redundancies in an investment lineup can cause confusion, which can lead to a lack of participation or success with the plan, Corpening says. Therefore, “the simpler you make things for them, the greater the acceptance will be.”

Because of their investment expertise, Corpening and Simpson say they also want to help clients research plan investment options. These include fund types, such as stable-value funds; target-date funds; alternatives; and exchange-traded funds, as well as proprietary versus nonproprietary products. They aim to ensure clients are getting what they think they are buying, Corpening says.

They are also big believers in looking at their business “through a fiduciary lens,” Corpening says. “Finally seeing the DC world lift the curtain on [fees] has been a sermon we preached for many years.”

“What keeps me in the business is the client relationships; making [clients] happy and making them feel important,” Corpening continues.

Although The Corpening Group is a small team—consisting of Simpson, Corpening and Marianne Defoggi, a registered sales assistant—it has access to a multitude of resources at Deutsche Bank, including a team of more than 50 people. “We have incredible access to senior members within our team,” Simpson says of being part of a global bank.

“We’re very pleased to have that nice, stable group as a mother company, if you will,” Corpening adds. “We’re a little boutique attached to a pretty powerful shop.”

—Corie Russell 

2012 PLANSPONSOR Retirement PLAN ADVISER of the Year Finalist 

Graystone Consulting—Danvers, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney
Matthew McLaughlin,
Al Hammond, Pete Ciovacco
Danvers, Massachusetts 

Graystone Consulting in Danvers, Massachusetts, takes a holistic approach to advising retirement plan clients.

The approach involves a combination of plan management, investment management and participant services, says Matthew McLaughlin, senior institutional consultant at Graystone in Danvers, a business of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC.

“All three of those levers have to work together to have an optimum plan, optimum outcomes,” he says.

According to McLaughlin, Graystone in Danvers sets the stage for the participant experience by educating clients about automatic features, fiduciary responsibilities, vendors and plan administrators.

There are approximately 45 Graystone teams across the country, but the Danvers location’s specialty is plan advisers who focus on defined contribution (DC) plans, McLaughlin says. Graystone Consulting was founded in 2009 to provide high-level investment consulting advice to institutional investors and the upper-tier private wealth market.

The Graystone team in Danvers comprises seven members: McLaughlin, who co-founded the team and specializes in investment management; Al Hammond, co-founder who focuses on plan management, trends in plan design and legislative issues; Pete Ciovacco, junior partner specializing in participant services and education; Daniel O’Shea, analyst; Jeffrey Gray, financial adviser; and Nicole Somers and Melissa Mulloy-Mecozzi, client services administrators.

The team has 40 DC plan clients and four defined benefit (DB) plan clients, with plan sizes ranging
from $15 million to more than $1 billion in plan assets. “If we look at [the] marketplace and our team, the larger plans do require a lot more service,” McLaughlin says. “The benefit is you’re affecting that many more participants.”

McLaughlin says one of the things clients like best about the Graystone Danvers team is its client advocacy and proactive attitude in helping them. “The 401(k) market, in our minds, is the critical piece for Americans,” McLaughlin says.

He also says the team’s approach to client education is unique. Team members work to keep clients organized and provide them with relevant, easy-to-understand information about trends in the industry, fiduciary responsibilities and more. The firm organizes a fiduciary presentation for each new plan sponsor client and reviews it with them every couple of years, as a refresher.

“We feel it’s very important for the people running the plan to be educated about the markets and their different investment managers,” McLaughlin says. To that end, the Graystone Danvers team also often invites guest speakers to talk to the clients, such as managers who discuss their investment philosophies and reasons underperformance can occur.

The team’s holistic approach and concentration on plan sponsor education keeps clients happy, McLaughlin says. “I think having clients stick with you for a long time, you can’t ask for more than that,” he explains. “We’ve had relationships go back 15 years, and we’ve … grown with a lot of these relationships, so I think that’s probably the most enjoyable, rewarding part of the business.”

Going forward, the firm plans to focus on stable value, custom asset allocation strategies, alternative investments and whether they will be worked into the plan menu, as well as focus on automatic enrollment and automatic escalation. “I think [auto-enrollment and auto-escalation] will continue to be something that companies are going to have to get more and more behind,” McLaughlin says.

The team is also spending more time educating clients about guaranteed income solutions. “The market for this is just starting to ripen, and these products are starting to be portable and a little more viable,” McLaughlin adds.

—Corie Russell 

2012 PLANSPONSOR Retirement PLAN ADVISER of the Year Finalist 

Institutional Investment Consulting
Michael Kozemchak,
Tony Ciocca, Barry
Stoey, Paul Stephens,
Greg Cimmino
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan 

In 2003, Michael Kozemchak formed Institutional Investment Consulting (IIC) to capitalize on and address the market needs surrounding employer-sponsored retirement plans.

“We all grew up in the wirehouses,” he says of the team’s industry background. “I realized early on that most Wall Street firms viewed retirement plans only as a conduit to rollovers and cross-sell opportunities. After a short period of time, I also recognized that these big Wall Street firms had very limited knowledge of the complexities that surround defined contribution, defined benefit and nonqualified deferred compensation plans.”

He adds, “That observation was the catalyst for me to establish [IIC].”

IIC works with corporations, nonprofits and governmental agencies on all types of retirement plans. The team offers plan design and document support, oversight of plan communications, corporate governance support, vendor management and investment analytics. Although the group’s traditional focus has been retirement-related, Kozemchak notes he has seen an uptick in requests for the company to oversee health and welfare recordkeeping searches, as well as searches for online total rewards service providers.

IIC’s focus is mostly in the large market, generally with publicly traded companies that have multiple plans. Kozemchak likens its model to the Mercers and Callan-type shops, although the team also has a number of small- and mid-sized clients. The plans have between 2,500 and 200,000 participants and the plan assets range from $100 million to $10 billion.

The team works with 34 clients, Kozemchak says, which are served by the IIC team of five managing directors. “Everyone does everything,” Kozemchak says; “there is no concentration of responsibilities.”

First to come on board was Tony Ciocca, and over the years, Greg Cimmino, Barry Stoey and Paul Stephens followed. Kozemchak says he is happy with the group’s size, but expects to add at least one team member within the next five years as the company’s client list grows.

“As a group, we share a common vision,” Kozemchak says. “We have adopted the same methodology to accomplish key client objectives.

“It’s a great feeling to be able to efficiently assess the complicated; distill the circumstances into an easy-to-understand fact pattern; create an actionable plan with detailed parameters around the likely outcome; [and] execute and deliver exactly as promised,” he adds. IIC typically holds four meetings per year with each plan sponsor client, plus intra-quarter calls. One or two of the meetings are in person, and the others are virtual.

Plan design options IIC frequently uses to help reach those outcomes outlined in the action plan include automatic enrollment and automatic escalation, from which team members see positive results. “The retention rate or stick rate [of automatic enrollment and automatic escalation] is very, very high,” Kozemchak says, with a retention rate of 95% or more.

He adds, “I think we’re very effective in connecting the dots of the benefit of the plan [to] the participants.”

For most of IIC’s large-market DC plans, Kozemchak says on-site participant meetings are impractical because of the large group of employees and geographic diversity, so most communication is delivered using multimedia.

As for the future of IIC, Kozemchak says he anticipates further success as well as growth, which has been approximately 20% or more per year. He says he wants IIC to continue to secure more Fortune 1000 clients and help them update their programs to improve participant retirement readiness.

Kozemchak says the biggest reward is the growth of the practice. “As we get bigger, we help more participants, and more individuals are ready for retirement.”

—Corie Russell 

2012 PLANSPONSOR Retirement PLAN ADVISER of the Year Finalist 

Plan Sponsor Advisors
Angelo Auriemma,
Jennifer Flodin, Don Stone
Chicago, Illinois 

Jennifer Flodin describes Plan Sponsor Advisors (PSA) as a company that is “always evolving.”

Flodin and Don Stone founded PSA in 2002 after the duo met through a cold call from Stone. They were a fitting team, with Stone’s background in running a trust and custody division of a large national bank, and Flodin’s experience with investments from owning a financial services practice. After managing the company together for years, Stone and Flodin recently named Angelo Auriemma, who is responsible for Plan Sponsor Advisor’s investment research, as a partner.

Today, the company has grown to include a dozen team members. “We all have a passion for helping improve participants’ retirements, we have fun together, we all bring different strengths individually, which makes us a stronger cohesive unit,” Flodin says.

Plan Sponsor Advisors started at a time when there were many defined benefit (DB) consulting firms, but not many that catered to defined contribution (DC) plans in the mid-market, Flodin says. In the beginning, the target market was small- to mid-sized companies. As PSA grew, its market segment did, too.

The boutique firm now has 32 clients—mostly DC—with an average asset size of $300 million, and the average number of participants per client is 4,892. However, clients span a significant range; Flodin says each client’s plan assets range from $10 million to $3.5 billion, and many clients offer multiple retirement benefits (DC, DB and 457).

Clients are located throughout the country, from Rhode Island to Washington state, although most are in the greater Chicago area.

PSA’s clients represent both publicly traded and privately held companies, including family-owned businesses, global corporations and major health care systems. About 35% of the firm’s business is with the nonprofit sector, in areas such as health care, higher education and associations.

As the firm grows, Flodin says she wants to retain a boutique focus on retirement plan consulting. The PSA team provides solutions for every facet of clients’ retirement plans, including investments, plan design, communication strategy and operational compliance. “Being a boutique allows us to create customized solutions for clients that larger firms may not have the ability to do,” Flodin says.

A boutique style grants a broader relationship, so the PSA team can spread its knowledge and help participants be in a better position for retirement, she adds. “There’s not much that we do that doesn’t touch the participant,” Flodin says. “Everybody here is so passionate about helping plan sponsors improve their plans to ultimately benefit the participants.”

In the summer of 2011, PSA launched a multiyear initiative it calls R21, or “Re-engineering your retirement plan for the 21st century.” The process is designed to assist plan sponsors with addressing plan design, investments, communication strategy, compliance and overall governance. R21 utilizes behavioral finance to improve participant decisionmaking, remove obstacles to participant engagement and maximize outcomes.

The PSA team uses the R21 process to help plan sponsors define success for their plans, and for themselves as plan fiduciaries, Flodin says. It also helps plan sponsors measure progress, determine whether participants are on track for a successful retirement and tailor communication to improve the success rate over time. In addition, the process has changed the way investments are presented to participants.

Flodin says R21 has been well-received by clients and prospects, particularly the redesign of investment options. “Rethinking how you’re packaging solutions for your participants has probably garnered the most discussion and activity this year,” she says.

The company is also beta testing a “fiduciary file cabinet” for clients, Flodin says, which will act as a portal to store relevant documents and reports that they can access online. It will be another feature of the company’s redesigned website, which Plan Sponsor Advisors launched in January.

“It’s about educating [clients],” Flodin says. “We’re just looking to help committee members to be good stewards and understand the fiduciary implications of everything they do.”

2012 PLANSPONSOR Retirement PLAN ADVISER of the Year Finalist 

The Willhite Institutional Consulting Group at UBS
Jon Willhite, Robert Vaughan, Armando Wood
The Woodlands, Texas 

Being versed in both defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) plans is a great strength of The Willhite Institutional Consulting Group at UBS, according to Jon Willhite, senior vice president of investments at UBS.

The consulting group, based out of The Woodlands, Texas, works with clients to create an institutionalized process for their retirement plans. Originally working with DB plans only, the team took that institutional focus with them in 2009, when the group moved to UBS and expanded its services to include DC plans.

The Willhite Institutional Consulting Group is made up of six members, including Willhite; Wood, financial adviser; and Vaughan, retirement plan consultant and financial adviser. Karen Sotallaro, senior wealth strategy associate; Brenda Paulson, registered client service associate; and Taylor Willhite, team administrator, round out the team. Although the group is small, they have access to UBS’s global resources.

The group now works with about 35 clients, servicing between 17 and 20 DB plans and about 15 DC plans. Some of the DB clients, Willhite adds, have been with them since 1985. The team’s “sweet spot” is the $20 million to $200 million market, with about 2,000 to 10,000 employees per plan, he says.

Willhite says clients appreciate the team’s knowledge of both the DB and DC environments. Coming from a DB background, Willhite says educating the client is important, but good plan design is also critical. “You can’t do one without the other,” he says. “A person cannot retire with dignity without including both of those components.”

For example, the group works with some clients who have bifurcated plans, in which their DB plans are frozen and converted to DC plans. Risk tolerances with this type of client are significantly different from a client with only a DC plan, Willhite notes.

The company believes in the “DB-ization” of the 401(k). “All of that thought process from the DB world has been very, very helpful,” Willhite says. The advisers use their knowledge of the DB world with DC plans to provide complete transparency and accountability in their business structure, he says. For instance, about two years ago the team began utilizing an “Investment Fee Schedule” that it attaches as an appendix to each client’s investment policy statement (IPS).

A good plan design is also important to “help plan sponsors retain their best and brightest employees,” says Vaughan. He adds that the team is a strong believer in automatic enrollment and automatic escalation, which are in place at approximately two-thirds of their plans.

At the end of the day, Willhite says, it is nice to know the team helped create a “world-class retirement plan” for the plan sponsor and their participants. Willhite finds it particularly rewarding to see the client experience “ah-ha!” moments as the plan and processes are constructed. “It’s a good feeling to know when it’s all done right and the plan sponsor gets it,” he adds.

The team takes a holistic approach to plan design and governance by using three pillars: 1) corporate governance, or constructing policies and procedures in best practices; 2) the investment lineup, and; 3) retirement readiness. “We’re trying to make sure all of these things work together in harmony,” Willhite says.

In regard to pillars one and two, team members generally conduct in-person quarterly meetings with clients, although Willhite notes that some clients are not accustomed to meeting regularly with a consultant and prefer to meet less often.

When it comes to retirement readiness and participant education, Willhite says his team approaches client education in a simplified manner because the industry is sometimes guilty of making retirement difficult for clients to understand by using industry jargon. The team is mindful that levels of education and understanding vary from client to client, and always offers its cell phone numbers to those who have difficulty grasping a concept.

Therefore, Willhite says, the team never goes into a client meeting acting like “[they’re] the smartest guys in the room with cuff links.”

—Corie Russell