Leadership in Practice

On May 10, PLANADVISER hosted its second annual Industry Leader Awards dinner and celebration. The 2023 Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year winners were announced in six categories at the event, in New York City.

Advisers from around the country submitted applications, and the finalists were announced in April. These advisers submitted profiles of their work and were interviewed by a group of judges that included 2022’s winning advisers and advisory firms. Q&As with this year’s winners, by category, appear on the following pages.

There have been tremendous advancements in the retirement plan industry in recent years, often inspired and driven by visionaries and leaders in the field. Also at the dinner, PLANADVISER presented its 2023 Vision Awards, celebrating industry leaders who have propelled positive change toward retirement saving and security for U.S. workers and retirees. Additionally, we formally recognized this year’s PLANADVISER Adviser Choice winners and Top Retirement Advisers, whom we had announced online, on March 1 and March 29, respectively. 

Vision Awards

This year, the winners of the Vision Award were the Certified Financial Planner Board and Kelli Hueler, CEO and president of Hueler Companies.

Certified Financial Planner Board
The Certified Financial Planner Board has historically been one of the largest financial professional certification bodies in the country, with over 95,000 financial workers, and one of every three U.S. advisers, carrying the CFP certificate. The board’s ongoing commitment to fiduciary best practices, including the evolution of the CFP fiduciary standard—most recently, in 2019, stating that CFP professionals are committed to acting as a fiduciary when advising a client—helps to explain why so many seek out this designation.

The board has also been a driver of diversity, equity and inclusion in the financial space, regularly updating the public about demographic statistics from its certification program, along with championing a broader umbrella for financial services recruiting and education. In 2022, the board began doubling down on its efforts to improve DEI with an organizational restructuring. In a decision driven by leadership, the nonprofit decided to create two entities: one to remain focused on CFP certification and the other to concentrate on advancing financial advisement as a career open to all who might like to pursue it, particularly to groups underrepresented in the sector.

The CFP Board made headlines in January when it announced that new structure. Now the organization is split into two nonprofit entities under one advisory board. One organization, the CFP Board Center for Financial Planning, has a mission of advancing “competent and ethical financial planning and expand[ing] CFP professional diversity for the benefit of the public.” The second, the CFP Board of Standards, focuses on developing and administering CFP certification.

The dual structure was created in part because the board, as a 501(c)(3) entity, was limited in how it could promote financial planning careers, it has explained. The new CFP Board of Standards will be a 501(c)(6), which allows the nonprofit to promote the benefits of a career in financial advisement.

The CFP Board made the announcement shortly after releasing its latest diversity statistics for the CFP profession on January 19. In that release, the nonprofit noted that the CFP designation reached an all-time high for adding women and racially and ethnically diverse financial professionals.

Kelli Hueler, Hueler Companies
Kelli Hueler, CEO and president of Hueler Companies was early in identifying a key dilemma in the dawning era of 401(k) retirement saving: How can account holders ensure themselves a steady paycheck in retirement? Today, after more than two decades of work, her firm’s Income Solutions division stands as a leader in providing a safe and simple platform for advisers and individuals to compare, assess and purchase institutionally priced retirement income annuities.

Hueler began her journey in 1987, with the founding of Hueler Companies, a data, market research and analytical reporting firm that became a retirement industry standard. During those years, her work in researching insurance-backed stable value funds led her to see the need for an affordable solution to the retirement income dilemma for defined contribution retirement plan participants.

In 2004, she launched Income Solutions, a platform designed to empower transitioning employees in need of creating a personal lifetime income stream by providing online access to competitively bid, institutionally priced annuities. The Income Solutions platform was made available directly to plan sponsor clients and through nonexclusive partnerships with financial service firms, fiduciary adviser platforms and nonprofit member organizations. After years of leading analysis on stable value investing, Hueler, in 2020, sold the analytics portion of her business to Morningstar Inc., while continuing to run Income Solutions.

In February 2022, Hueler began a partnership with Morningstar to incorporate guaranteed income products into retirement savers’ personalized advice plan via Morningstar Retirement Manager. Through the partnership, Morningstar’s managed accounts and adviser managed accounts connect to Hueler Income Solutions. If a sponsor or adviser wants to make annuities available for participants, Morningstar’s advice platform can refer them to Hueler Income Solutions to provide “real-time, annuity quotes at institutional prices.”

Hueler has also dedicated her time and energy to educating others about lifetime income creation, having begun well before it was the industry focal point it has become. That work has included testifying before the Department of Labor’s ERISA [Employee Retirement Income Security Act] Advisory Council; presenting at the Pension Research Council of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; and participating on the National Endowment for Financial Education’s think tank on income sufficiency. She is a founding member of the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association and has served on the board of directors for the Stable Value Investment Association.

Top Retirement Plan Advisers  

To be named a PLANADVISER Top Retirement Plan Adviser, applicants had to have a minimum of 50 plans under advisement or $400 million or more of retirement plan assets under advisement. After we crunched the entries, the 2023 Top Retirement Plan Advisers list came in at over 200 impressive advisers who stand out for their service to all types of retirement plan clients. The list includes advisers at the top of their respective peer groups in terms of assets under advisement or number of retirement plan clients—including sponsors of defined contribution, defined benefit, nonqualified and cash balance plans, SIMPLEs [savings incentive match plans for employees] and SEP [simplified employee pension] plans.

PLANADVISER Adviser Choice Awards  

The Adviser Choice Awards are given to firms that stand out in the latest PLANADVISER Retirement Plan Adviser Survey. Annually, more than 300 retirement plan advisers participate in the survey and name their preferred fund families, investment firms and defined contribution providers, as well as their most recommended mutual funds for their defined contribution plan clients. Providers that received top accolades in multiple categories qualified as Adviser Choice winners—with 11 companies winning such awards this year.

Retirement Plan Advisers of the Year  

This year, the Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year Awards recognized changemakers in the retirement plan space in six categories: Plan Sponsor Service; Plan Participant Service; Mentorship; Efforts to Improve Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Closing the Coverage Gap; and Community Impact and Giving Back.