Tackling Cumbersome ‘Bac(k)’ Office Tasks

Shane Hanson launched Freedom Fiduciaries LLC in 2023 with the goal of providing “fiduciary freedom” to plan sponsors while also providing back-office support to plan advisers. On Monday, the company launched a set of capabilities aimed at furthering those goals.

Freedom 360, backed by machine learning, is a proprietary retirement plan management system designed to automate “cumbersome and repetitive tasks that have traditionally undermined efficiency and accuracy in service delivery,” according to an announcement from Freedom Fiduciaries. “This automation enables advisers to focus on strategic decision-making, enhance client service, and boost participant engagement.”

Shane Hanson

Advisers who partner with Freedom Fiduciaries on its Bac(k) Office platform will have access to Freedom 360, including integration of plan participants if the adviser works directly on participant engagement. Fees are based on the “selected options and the scale of business,” according to Hanson. The firm is currently collaborating with more than 24 adviser firms, as well as financial services firms such as banks and credit unions.

Hanson founded Freedom Fiduciaries after stints as a regional sales director at Empower and Voya Financial. Those roles partially shaped his desire to create a firm that would tackle 401(k) back-office tasks so advisers could focus on plan sponsors and participants.

“I have spent nearly 13 years collaborating with thousands of advisers, ranging from specialists to brand new generalists,” Hanson says. “I saw a gap in the market for a solution that could solve real problems. This gap prompted the creation of a solution aimed at addressing the shortage of specialists within the industry.”

A recurring issue, according to Hanson, occurs when generalist advisers bring in a retirement plan wholesaler to sell the plan, often adding an institutional 3(38) provider without “addressing key challenges faced by plan sponsors, such as 3(16) administration, resolution of issues like payroll discrepancies, understanding regulatory updates like SECURE 2.0 and fulfilling fiduciary duties.”

Bac(k) Office, he says, is designed to solve some of the issue, while offering 3(38) services, but not making them mandatory.

Tech-Enabled

The new Freedom 360 comes in a few parts. At its “heart,” according to the release, is Participant (k)onnect, a participant engagement engine that relies on artificial intelligence to assist in areas ranging from personalized communication to a participant’s separation from the plan.

Another part of the offering is Kaleó, a proprietary bot with the goal of reducing administrative workloads related to retirement plan servicing. The bot will automate areas such as “quarterly reporting, investment data compilation, meeting minutes, educational presentations, plan highlights, and the generation of plan sponsor reports,” according to the announcement. It is also designed to both monitor service tasks by client and track service activity according to agreements, as well as schedule benchmarking, trustee and educational meetings.

A third aspect of the offering is the Fiduciary Freedom Center, a central repository for plan sponsors and partner advisers to access documents such as plan agreements, open cases, regulatory reminders, plan details and fiduciary training materials.

“This eliminates the inefficiency of using multiple, uncoordinated portals,” according to the firm. “Additionally, Kaleó integrates with the center, automatically archiving meeting minutes, investment reviews, quarterly reports, benchmarking results, and more, further enhancing the system’s efficiency and ease of use.”

The center also automates comparative tools for the adviser for fee tracking and benchmarking, as well as requests for proposal for service providers, prompting current providers to submit information and then creating a presentation for the client, according to Freedom Fiduciaries.

Finally, the new offering provides a simple, one-click tool for sending educational material to participants, which can also be sent via the Participant (k)onnect tool, according to the firm.

Enhanced Capabilities

Cristina Hansen, vice president of client services, joined the firm after working at advisories including Pensionmark Financial Group LLC.

“With the deployment of Freedom 360, we’re not just enhancing our capabilities; we’re revolutionizing the way we service retirement plans,” Hansen said in a statement with the launch. “By automating routine tasks and integrating cutting-edge technology, we’re now able to focus our energies more on being proactive and solving complex problems for our clients.“

The firm currently serves nearly 100 plans and is in the process of onboarding more books of business and partnerships, according to Hanson. A persistent pain point, however, is “accessing information” from recordkeepers, he notes.

“Most recordkeepers are reluctant to provide an API or disclose email and phone numbers for participants, a matter that requires industry-wide attention,” he says. “To tackle this issue, we have dedicated a full-time individual to manage census information, and we are developing additional tools to streamline the process of data integration from recordkeepers into our system.”