A New Era

Photo by Silver Orchid Photogrpaphy

The retirement plan advisory industry is evolving, in ways we at PLANADVISER write about every day—and it’s time that the awards we present to advisers evolve as well.
For years, advisers have competed for our annual PLANSPONSOR Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year Awards, which we have presented to 15 individual advisers and 24 teams, of various sizes, since the program’s inception in 2005.

As we had to put the awards on pause during the pandemic, we had time to think about what we could do better. Our team at PLANSPONSOR and PLANADVISER has been able to reflect on how we want to recognize the advisers in the industry and what the PLANADVISER brand should represent.

In 2022, the brand sponsoring the awards will change: The program will now be known as the PLANADVISER Retirement Plan Advisers of the Year. Recipients will be recognized in six categories, representing excellence in: Plan Sponsor Service; Participant Service; Mentorship; Efforts to Improve Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I); Community Impact and Giving Back; and Closing the Coverage Gap.

The first two award categories will be open for nominations from plan sponsors only, while adviser partners across the industry—including recordkeepers, asset managers, advisers, product providers and more—may submit nominations in the other four; self-nomination will continue to be prohibited.

These new award categories, we believe, provide more context for advisers looking to compete and be recognized, instead of their just being fitted into a category based on the number of people in their office, with no set metrics about what makes one adviser rise above another in firms of the same size. We will continue to lean on some of our past winners as part of our judging panels, as we believe they provide invaluable insight.

The other recognition we have given out is the annual PLANADVISER Top 100 Retirement Plan Advisers of the Year. This has been awarded to the top 100 retirement plan advisers and teams based on quantitative measures such as the most plans and assets under advisement (AUA). This year we made a significant change, limiting how large a team we’d consider—eliminating national-type firms that traditionally had met the eligibility for a Mega Team. However, having reviewed responses and gathered feedback, we are going to continue to change this quantitative recognition.

Next year, there will no longer be the recognition of teams on this list. We will instead limit entries to individual advisers. Team members should supply their entry statistics as a fraction of their team’s figures. For example, an adviser on a five-adviser team that collectively advises on $1 billion might claim $200 million in AUA.

This will, of course, also mean that we likely cannot limit the list to just 100 advisers—when we included teams, the “Top 100” represented more than 340 advisers—and we don’t have a set number-target quite yet. For the 2022 what we are now calling PLANADVISER Top Retirement Plan Adviser list, we will still be reviewing quantitative metrics, including AUA, percentage of revenue from retirement plan assets/types, and number of plans under advisement. We encourage all advisers interested in competing to submit information, and we’ll determine the final number after reviewing the entries.

As you read this, nominations are now open for both sets of awards. I encourage you to spread the word. We will recognize the PLANADVISER Top Retirement Plan Advisers and announce the winners of the PLANADVISER Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year Awards early this coming May at an entirely new PLANADVISER awards dinner in New York City! I look forward to celebrating with many of you there!