A New Approach

Art by Ryan Peltier

As we enter the new decade, our editors and designers felt it was time to give PLANADVISER a facelift and, on several fronts, change our content format, approach and look. You’ll notice the magazine contains many more adviser voices from across the industry.

Winners’ Circle stems from our annual Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year Awards. To celebrate the 15th anniversary of this recognition program, in these next six issues, we’ll connect with different past winners to learn what they think about key industry matters—this time, they discuss corporate social responsibility (CSR). Also throughout the year, on planadviser.com, you can read interviews with these advisers to discover how their practices have evolved since their award recognition.

In Practice presents a series of common adviser challenges and how some creative firms are solving them—from the perspective of the advisers themselves. In this issue, these experts tackle participant engagement.

Servicing Strategies now focuses on how advisers’ roles are changing, as firms offer an increasing variety of plan types or do “special circumstance” advising. In our first installment, we address how and why advisers may consider helping sponsors with equity compensation plans and discuss best practices for doing so.

The new section Outreach will feature sales and marketing techniques for attracting and winning new clients. A recent study indicates that 72% of advisers use LinkedIn—making it by far the most popular social media platform for conducting advisory business. Get some ideas for how you can use it.

Melissa Cowan, head of service for retirement plan solutions at Morgan Stanley and past president of the Women in Pensions Network (WiPN) writes our first Voices column on the important issue of employing more women in finance—and why men play an important role.

As to our cover story, “Ever Vigilant,” we discuss the very timely topic of keeping your plans cyber-secure—and give you three actions for how. As one adviser says, hacking a plan can be like robbing a bank—a lucrative reason for fraudsters to try.

Advisers need not attempt an information technology (IT) affiliation, but they should have IT resources available, plus ask recordkeepers the right questions, distilling this information for clients’ understanding. The 2020 PLANADVISER Micro Plan Survey adds to a very full issue. Happy reading!