2024 Vision Award

PLANADVISER is pleased to announce the 2024 Vision Award Winners, celebrating industry leaders who have propelled positive change in retirement saving and security for U.S. workers and retirees.

This year, we recognize for our organizational award the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association (DCIIA), and for our individual award Jim O’Shaughnessy for his work in creating the Kohler Conference, now known as the Advisor Institute Summit.

VISION WINNER
Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association (DCIIA)

A nonprofit association dedicated to enhancing the retirement security of America’s workers. Membership is company-based and includes more than 180 organizations.

DCIIA was founded in 2010 with the goal of fostering dialogue among the leaders of the defined contribution community who are passionate about improving the retirement security of America’s workers. The organization started with 42 industry firm members and has since grown to more than 180 organizations ranging from some the country’s largest retirement plan advisories and consultants, recordkeepers, asset managers, insurance companies, law firms, plan sponsors and industry leaders.

Led by President and CEO Lew Minsky, DCIIA is run by volunteers from the industry serving on committees, steering groups and task forces that collaborate on research, events, white papers and comment letters. The group’s focus areas are a sign of its mission-oriented drive to improve the retirement system and include diversity, equity and inclusion; investment policy and design; ESG; plan design and administration; communications; public policy; retirement income; and one that takes a global perspective.

For members, the firm provides benefits in four key areas:

• Learning about industry trends, news and public policy developments;
• Discussing retirement issues with academics and policymakers;
• Attending three forums per year: Academic Forum, Public Policy Forum and Innovation Forum; and
• Connecting with local members at regional ambassador events around the country, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Texas (Austin/Dallas/Houston) and Washington, D.C.

Finally, DCIIA’s Retirement Research Center is a leader in rigorous, industry-informed research focused on actionable insights. In its own words, the team is focused on a goal “to serve the industry and stakeholders as a reliable, fact-based, and authoritative research resource supporting improved financial and retirement security through public policy, behavioral factors that affect decision-making, and innovation.” Members get special access to research files, event recordings and raw data from previous projects. The RRC is guided by multiple advisory councils, which help guide the research topics and gather insight and support from across the industry. The organization’s findings are covered in national and trade media outlets and often appear in retirement industry presentations and dialogue.

Over the course of its 14 years, DCIIA has been influential in pushing policy, insights and best practices toward improving retirement outcomes for tens of millions of Americans. At this crucial moment for the industry to continue improving retirement savings access and outcomes for the millions of Americans who are either struggling or left behind, PLANADVISER is pleased to honor DCIIA with this year’s organizational Vision Award.

VISION WINNER
Jim O’Shaughnessy
President of retirement and private wealth at HUB International Retirement and Wealth Management, and founder of the Kohler Conference

Jim O’Shaughnessy is being awarded this year’s individual Vision Award for spearheading the Kohler Conference, an annual meeting of retirement industry leaders and changemakers in Kohler, Wisconsin.

O’Shaughnessy, who launched his own advisory shop, Sheridan Road Financial, in Illinois in 2005, had a deep knowledge of the retirement plan space in part because his father and grandfather worked in the industry, according to an interview he gave PLANADVISER when being named among the finalists for the 2007 PLANSPONSOR Plan Adviser of the Year award.

Not content with just running his own firm, however, O’Shaughnessy saw a need for collaboration in the retirement plan industry. As a third-generation industry member, he understood the importance of “co-opetition” and the value of cross-company idea sharing. Although advisers, recordkeepers, asset managers and others in the space were often in competition for business, they were also working together toward a better and more robust retirement savings for everyone in the U.S.

To that end, O’Shaughnessy started an annual event in Kohler for industry players to get together, share ideas, debate and get to know each other better through rounds of golf, food and late-night drinks and conversation. The Kohler Conference, as it was known, attracted many thought leaders who gladly made the annual Wisconsin trip. Despite the name, it was not a conference as many thought of one—no exhibit hall, for example—but more an intimate gathering of thought leaders.

The Kohler Conference is now known as the Advisor Institute Summit, organized by DCIIA. It still brings together some of the biggest names in the industry to tackle some of its toughest topics. Agenda items at recent events have included personalization, the “war for the participant,” the state of retirement plan adviser consolidation and sessions on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Today, industry collaboration and partnerships are more the norm than the exception, with the Kohler Conference no doubt a catalyst for some of the work and relationships that have transpired since it started.

In 2019, Sheridan Road’s success led to it bringing its $14 billion in assets to HUB International amid the first wave of retirement advisory consolidation. But O’Shaugnessy’s contributions to the retirement plan industry go far beyond his many earned accolades for his retirement plan advisory business. PLANADVISER is pleased to award O’Shaughnessy this year’s individual Vision Award for helping to improve the retirement plan industry as a whole.

For PLANADVISER Industry Leader Awards sponsorship information, please contact Rob Reif. For general information, contact Carol Popkins.