401(k) Roundtable

A few years ago, the idea that participants in 401(k) plans were going to keep their money in their retirement plans longer started to gain traction. Today, my guest Sue Walton, a SVP and Senior Retirement Strategist with The Capital Group shares how that idea got started and more. I start with sharing a few of my preconceived notions about how retirement plans work for retirees, Sue responds to a few cynical comments and then get into the meat of how to make your workplace retirement plan more retiree friendly and how that could help your company and employees. With some potential help on the way in the form of legislation, don't miss our conversation on the current state of retirement income and how employers could integrate that into their plans going forward. Finally, I stepped all over Sue's great wrap up, but i think it was worth it.

Quick thought before we get started, next time you are on LInkedIn, be sure to follow the 401(k) Fridays Podcast page. I use that to announce new episodes, give you opportunities to ask questions of future guests and more. And, don't be shy. If you have a question you want me to ask a future guest, leave it in the comments or shoot me an email to [email protected].

Guest Bio

Sue Walton is a senior defined contribution strategist at American Funds, part of Capital Group. She has 21 years of industry experience and has been with Capital Group for two years. Prior to joining Capital, Sue was a director at Towers Watson Investment Services. Before that, she was an investment consultant at Mercer Investment Consulting and Ellwood Associates. She holds an MBA from DePaul University with a concentration in finance and a bachelor's degree in business administration, economics and international business from Marquette University. Sue is based in Chicago.

401(k) Fridays Podcast Overview

Struggling with a fiduciary issue, looking for strategies to improve employee retirement outcomes or curious about the impact of current events on your retirement plan? We've had conversations with retirement industry leaders to address these and other relevant topics! You can easily explore over 150 prior on-demand audio interviews here. Don't forget to subscribe as we release a new episode each Friday!

Disclosure

Investments are not FDIC-insured, nor are they deposits of or guaranteed by a bank or any other entity, so they may lose value. American Funds distributed by American Funds Distributors, Inc.

Thought it might be helpful to discuss a core retirement plan fiduciary concept, the duty to monitor. To lend some muscle to the conversation I was excited to welcome back Jim Scheinberg, the Managing Partner and Founder of North Pier Fiduciary Management. We kick off with one of the best explanations of what it means to be a fiduciary that I have heard and then we delve into the world what the fiduciary duty to monitor means, best practices for plan sponsors to follow and much more. Jim also has some interesting points about how M&A in the retirement industry ties into monitoring, and some important differences between the roles of benchmarking, RFIs and RFPs. Stick around for my wrap up this week to get an interesting story about one thing Jim and I had in common that we didn't realize.

Guest Bio

Born and raised in the North Suburbs of Chicago, Jim Scheinberg came to Southern California in 1987 to pursue his B.A. in Political Science at University of California, Los Angeles. He achieved the Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA®) designation in 2001 from The Investment Management Consultants Association (IMCA®) in conjunction with the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania. He has also earned the Accredited Investment FiduciaryTM (AIF®) and Accredited Investment Fiduciary AnalystTM(AIFA®) designations, awarded by the Center for Fiduciary Studies, which is associated with the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business of the University of Pittsburgh. He also earned the PLANSPONSOR Retirement Professional designation (PRP) from the PLANSPONSOR Institute and sits on the Steering Committee of The Center for Due Diligence. He is a quoted resource to journalists, a regular guest expert on a syndicated radio and a regular speaker at industry conferences. Jim also regularly serves as a consulting expert for U.S. government regulatory agencies and as an expert witness for Federal ERISA litigation.

Jim Scheinberg began his career in venture capital in 1990 moving to general securities with Smith Barney Harris Upham in 1992. He joined Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. in 1994 as an Associate in the Oppenheimer Consulting Group, the firm's institutional investment management consulting department, where he worked with sponsors of trustee-directed plans and other institutional clients. In 2001, Jim founded what would become the Corporate Services Group of Oppenheimer Co., Inc. (CSG), where he eventually held the position of Director and Senior Vice President. CSG was an industry pioneer in providing conflict free, fee-only investment consulting and fiduciary advocacy for institutional, participant-directed plan sponsors. In 2008, Jim and CSG Partner Brant Griffin founded North Pier Fiduciary Management LLC. His tenure in the industry has also included experience in hedging and monetization, corporate executive services, and corporate cash management. 401(k) Fridays Podcast Overview

Struggling with a fiduciary issue, looking for strategies to improve employee retirement outcomes or curious about the impact of current events on your retirement plan? We've had conversations with retirement industry leaders to address these and other relevant topics! You can easily explore over 150 prior on-demand audio interviews here. Don't forget to subscribe as we release a new episode each Friday!

We break new ground today on the podcast as we talk about FOMO, catching falling knives, Uncle Warren and chewing glass. My guest today is John Allen, CFA the Chief Investment Officer at Aspirant. We also hit on some other great concepts such as why it is important to understand vs. observe what your investment managers are doing, thoughts on the impact of investment bubbles in the short, medium and long term. I also have a new word for my vocabulary, conflate, John makes some insightful observations about how that term applies to risk and return for some people which dovetails nicely into some other thoughts on whether some traditional guidance 401(k) participants get, still makes sense. Finally, John makes some not so rosy predictions for what the next seven to ten years could look like for investors and why that matters to 401(k) plans and participants. Not always fun to consider, but definitely worth the listen.

Before we get started, a lot of the topics John and I cover on the podcast came from the quarterly newsletter John and his firm Aspiriant put out. If you want to check them out or subscribe, the link is below. Click on that and you can figure it out from there. Finally, be sure to catch my post episode wrap up for a few more interesting tidbits on this episode and what we have coming up in future episodes.

http://aspiriant.com/fathom/insight/

Guest Bio

John Allen joined Aspiriant in 2013 as Chief Investment Officer. As CIO, John is primarily responsible for leading the firm's overall Investment Strategy & Research Group, broadly consisting of twelve investment professionals. The group is responsible for asset allocation, portfolio construction, manager selection and risk management. John is also the Chair of the firm's Investment Committee and serves on a number of other committees. He has nearly twenty years of experience in investment management, investment banking, corporate finance advisory and business strategy consulting.

Prior to joining the firm, John was a senior member of the client service team at Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo ("GMO"), which manages approximately $115 Billion across a wide-range of public equities, fixed income, hedge funds and asset allocation funds. In that role, John had primary responsibility for 80 clients and $6.5B in assets under management.

Prior to joining GMO, John was the Head of Investments at a large family office in Los Angeles. There, John had responsibility for managing the firm's overall investment portfolio as well as its direct investments.

John established his career working in the investment banking department at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and in the business consulting practice at Stern Stewart & Co. Throughout his career, John has served on the boards of directors of three private companies.

John earned a Bachelor's of Science degree with high distinction from the Economics Department at the University of Virginia. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation and the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) designation. He is also a member of the CFA Institute and CAIA Association.

401(k) Fridays Podcast Overview

Struggling with a fiduciary issue, looking for strategies to improve employee retirement outcomes or curious about the impact of current events on your retirement plan? We've had conversations with retirement industry leaders to address these and other relevant topics! You can easily explore over 150 prior on-demand audio interviews here. Don't forget to subscribe as we release a new episode each Friday!

This episode is a companion episode to a similar one we released a few weeks about which focussed on the equity side of the conversation. Not require listening, but if this one caught your eye, you should check that one out as well. My guest today, John Bellows, PhD, a Portfolio Manager with Western Asset Management and a member of their US Broad Strategy Committee, the Global Investment Strategy Committee and the Global Portfolios team. We jump into the recent market action right out of the gate to help interpret some recent events and how they could impact fixed income investments in workplace retirement plans. We also hit on some topics that can cause confusion such as do we want inflation which makes things more expensive and want to avoid deflation which makes things less expensive. With the background set, John then shares some great input on evaluating the fixed income portion of investment menus. Be sure to stick around for his comments towards the end about the index vs. active conversation in the fixed income space.

Guest Bio

John L. Bellows, PhD, is a Portfolio Manager with Western Asset Management Company, LLC. Prior to joining the Firm in 2012, Mr. Bellows served at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, most recently as the Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy. At Western Asset, he is a member of the US Broad Strategy Committee and the Global Investment Strategy Committee. In 2018 he took on an elevated role in the Global Portfolios team where he is a leading voice for US and global macro strategies.

Mr. Bellows holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Dartmouth College, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude, and a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He also holds the CFA designation.

401(k) Fridays Podcast Overview

Struggling with a fiduciary issue, looking for strategies to improve employee retirement outcomes or curious about the impact of current events on your retirement plan? We've had conversations with retirement industry leaders to address these and other relevant topics! You can easily explore over 150 prior on-demand audio interviews here. Don't forget to subscribe as we release a new episode each Friday!

The title for this episode might seem a little confusing, but after you listen to my conversation with Don Trone, CEO and Co-founder of 3Ethos it will make a lot more sense. This is Don's second visit to the podcast, if you missed his first one, Building a Stronger Retirement Plan Fiduciary, it is a great listen as well. Today we kick off with a quick post mortem on the DOL fiduciary rule and thoughts on the movements within some states to create their own version of a fiduciary rule. We also tackle a bigger question of whether you can regulate or legislate someone into being a good fiduciary, interesting response to an interesting question. Don also shares what he feels the future of fiduciary holds and shares input on robo-fiduciaries and if fee compression is impacting the fiduciary world. Finally, we also discuss how plan sponsors can keep their fiduciary roles in perspective while keeping their important day jobs.

Guest Bio

Don Trone is the CEO and one of the Co-founders of 3ethos, which conducts original research in the new field of Behavioral Governance (BG). BG is the follow-on to Behavioral Finance, except now the focus is on how the behavior of a fiduciary impacts the quality of retirement outcomes.

Don Trone is the CEO and one of the Co-founders of 3ethos, which conducts original research in the new field of Behavioral Governance (BG). BG is the follow-on to Behavioral Finance, except now the focus is on how the behavior of a fiduciary impacts the quality of retirement outcomes.

Don was the founding CEO of fi360; founder and President of the Foundation for Fiduciary Studies; and the first person to direct the Institute for Leadership at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

Over the past three decades, Don has trained more than 10,000 investment fiduciaries on the subject of procedural prudence. In 2015 he was named by Investment Advisor magazine as the "Father of Fiduciary" and one of the 35 most influential people in the financial services industry. In 2003, he was appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Labor to represent the investment counseling industry on the ERISA Advisory Council, and in 2007 he testified before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee on the fiduciary issues associated with the management of retirement plans. He is the author or co-author of ten books on the subject of fiduciary responsibility, portfolio management, and leadership.

Don is a graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, and served for ten years on active duty, most notably as a long-range search and rescue helicopter pilot. He has a Master's from The American College and has completed post-graduate studies in theology from the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and Trinity Episcopal Seminary.

401(k) Fridays Podcast Overview

Struggling with a fiduciary issue, looking for strategies to improve employee retirement outcomes or curious about the impact of current events on your retirement plan? We've had conversations with retirement industry leaders to address these and other relevant topics! You can easily explore over 150 prior on-demand audio interviews here. Don't forget to subscribe as we release a new episode each Friday!

Today I welcome back Marcia Wagner, ERISA Attorney and founder of the Wagner Law Group, to tackle the not so straightforward lifecycle of a 401(k) or workplace retirement plan document. Logically we start at the beginning on what it takes to create a 401(k) plan document, and move through common steps to maintain a document and things that happen along the journey, and close with terminating a retirement plan. With several changes in rules, IRS programs and some general confusion in many of these areas, this was a fun and informative conversation that hopefully helps you as much as it did me!

Guest Bio

Marcia S. Wagner is the founder of The Wagner Law Group, a certified woman-owned and operated business and one of the nation's largest and most highly regarded boutique law firms, specializing in ERISA, employee benefits, executive compensation, employment, labor, human resources, personal law (estate planning, family and immigration) and investment management law.

Ms. Wagner has been practicing employee benefits law for over 32 years. She founded The Wagner Law Group more than 20 years ago and is the Firm's Managing Partner. She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell University and is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

Ms. Wagner is an authority on employee benefits matters, including qualified and non-qualified plans, fiduciary issues, deferred compensation, and welfare benefit arrangements. Her experience in employee benefits includes plan design, drafting and preparation, compliance, tax planning and consultation on all aspects of ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code. She consults with law firms, employee benefits organizations, and corporate and public plan sponsors, and serves as an expert witness in ERISA litigation.

She counsels plan sponsors on qualified plans, 403(b) and 457 plans, multiple employer plans (MEPs), IRAs, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), executive compensation arrangements and retiree medical benefits in matters involving plan operation and maintenance, plan terminations, mergers and acquisitions, tax treatment of plan participants, use of life insurance and annuities, and derisking of pension liabilities.

Ms. Wagner also specializes in Title I of ERISA, and has obtained advisory opinions, information letters and prohibited transaction exemptions from the U.S. Department of Labor. She handles fiduciary matters impacting plan sponsors, investment and other fiduciary committees, investment managers and advisors, recordkeepers, broker-dealers, banks, and other financial services firms. Ms. Wagner advises clients on the avoidance and rectification of prohibited transactions, the development of compliance programs, and investment policies. She is a renowned expert in issues concerning pension plan investments and fiduciary issues, and her opinion has been sought by noted authorities in the employee benefits area, including governmental agencies.

Ms. Wagner works on Department of Labor, IRS and PBGC audits of plans as well as of financial institutions that service plans, and has negotiated numerous favorable closing agreements.

She was appointed Chair of the Employee Plans subcommittee of the IRS Tax Exempt & Government Entities Advisory Committee and received that agency's highest honor. She is a Fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel and is the recipient of more than 50 professional honors.

Finally, Ms. Wagner has written hundreds of articles and 15 books. She is a highly sought after lecturer, and is widely quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Pension & Investments. She has been a guest on Fox, CNN, Bloomberg, and NBC.

401(k) Fridays Podcast Overview

Struggling with a fiduciary issue, looking for strategies to improve employee retirement outcomes or curious about the impact of current events on your retirement plan? We've had conversations with retirement industry leaders to address these and other relevant topics! You can easily explore over 150 prior on-demand audio interviews here. Don't forget to subscribe as we release a new episode each Friday!

This episode is inspired by some recent conversations I have had with workplace retirement plan or fiduciary committees and some hesitancy they have had in speaking with managers of invests they offer in their plans. My guest today is John Forrest, Head of the Research Practice at Russell Investments, and to say the least, he has a little experience in this area. In my experience, some members of retirement plan committees have avoided speaking with managers as they don't feel equipped to ask questions, or don't feel they would be able to understand what a manager would share. John does a great job sharing why it is valuable to speak with investment managers, questions you can ask, and things to listen for that can shed light on their people, process and perspectives. We also talk about different questions or things to listen for when speaking with an equity vs. a fixed income manager, how the numbers or results are important but not the whole story, and why it might be more important than ever to take time to speak with a manager of investment you are considering replacing or adding to your investment menu.

Guest Bio

John Forrest is head of Russell Investment's global manager research practice. His role is to guideand support the manager research effort to ensure it continues to be an industry standard for identifying and recommending the very best managers globally. His role includes defining andrefining Russell Investments' manager research process, training analysts in the art and science ofmanager research, developing and improving analytical tools and a variety of other activities that support, evaluate and improve the manager research practice.

As part of his tenure at Russell Investments, which began in 1997, John has spent more than a decade researching, interviewing, evaluating and recommending professional money managers forRussell Investments' Funds and clients. He has applied his expertise in a range of asset classes and in multiple geographic regions spanning equity, fixed income, currency and property. John has also managed consulting client relationships and participated in specialist projects for selected clients in his areas of expertise.

Prior to joining Russell Investments, John was a senior analyst managing the BHP Superannuation Fund, a major Australian pension fund. John spent the early part of his career gaining practical experience working as a securities analyst and portfolio manager for a global money manager, specializing in equities, derivatives and property securities.

John has presented lectures to a variety of securities industry forums on topics including the investment process, the art of manager research, applied portfolio management and performance measurement.

401(k) Fridays Podcast Overview

Struggling with a fiduciary issue, looking for strategies to improve employee retirement outcomes or curious about the impact of current events on your retirement plan? We've had conversations with retirement industry leaders to address these and other relevant topics! You can easily explore over 150 prior on-demand audio interviews here. Don't forget to subscribe as we release a new episode each Friday!

This week we take our first glimpse into self directed brokerage or brokerage accounts linked to workplace retirement plans. Historically this has been a confusing and polarizing topic amongst retirement plan sponsors and the retirement industry. To help with the conversation, I have Nathan Voris, Managing Director for Business Strategy of Charles Schwab Retirement Plan Services. During our conversation, we tackle a statement popularized in a movie classic that probably applies to how some people view these accounts, we discuss the basics and mechanics of self-directed brokerage accounts, some creative things that plan sponsors are doing with them and trends to keep an eye out for in the future. This episode focuses mostly on the operational side, my conversation with Nathan also has inspired me to bring back to popular podcast guests to discuss the fiduciary and regulatory side of the conversation in the near future.

Guest Bio

Nathan Voris joined Schwab Retirement Plan Services in 2016. He is responsible for leading the client experience, platform, and product development strategy to help retirement sponsors, consultants, and participants meet their goals.

Mr. Voris previously worked at Morningstar, where he held several roles within Morningstar Investment Management, including portfolio management and asset allocation responsibilities. His most recent focus there was on product development and strategy for the retirement solutions, including wellness, advice and managed accounts, and target date solutions. He was also a consultant with R.V. Kuhns & Associates, where he worked with defined contribution plan sponsors to help improve asset allocation and solve other needs of plan participants. In that role, Mr. Voris was responsible for all aspects of portfolio construction, including asset allocation and manager selection/due diligence for plan sponsors, retirement plan providers, and asset managers. He began his career working for defined contribution plans, including Wal-Mart and the Ohio Public Employees' Retirement System.

Mr. Voris has earned a bachelor's in education from the Ohio State University.

401(k) Fridays Podcast Overview

Struggling with a fiduciary issue, looking for strategies to improve employee retirement outcomes or curious about the impact of current events on your retirement plan? We've had conversations with retirement industry leaders to address these and other relevant topics! You can easily explore over 150 prior on-demand audio interviews here. Don't forget to subscribe as we release a new episode each Friday!

Numerous guests have hinted at the capital market forecasts they or others have made with the common theme of anticipating lower returns than we had in the last decade. I thought it might be timely and helpful to steer into this and talk about what that could mean for workplace retirement plan investment menus. With me today, I have Andy Pyne, Executive Vice President and Equity Strategist at PIMCO to dive into the equity piece of the conversation. We start with a quick discussion on the go forward predictions about growth and what that means for the markets, what late cycle means, address some of the challenges active managers had in the last decade and what the next decade could mean for them and whether plan sponsors as well as participants are performance chasers. Andy also shares some specific investment concepts workplace retirement plans should consider going forward.

Guest Bio

Mr. Pyne is an executive vice president and strategist in the Newport Beach office, focusing on PIMCO's equity strategies. Prior to joining PIMCO in 2011, he was a managing director and client portfolio manager for fundamental equity at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, serving as a member of the growth team investment committee. Before joining Goldman Sachs in 1997, Mr. Pyne was responsible for product management at Van Kampen Investments. He has 26 years of investment experience and holds an undergraduate degree in business/economics from Wheaton College in Illinois.

401(k) Fridays Podcast Overview

Struggling with a fiduciary issue, looking for strategies to improve employee retirement outcomes or curious about the impact of current events on your retirement plan? We've had conversations with retirement industry leaders to address these and other relevant topics! You can easily explore over one hundred and fifty prior on-demand audio interviews here. Don't forget to subscribe as we release a new episode each Friday!

Today we explore the changing landscape of Third Party Administrators, better known as TPAs. With me, I am excited to have Jerry Bramlett, Head of TPA Solutions for Acensus. During our wide ranging and insightful conversion we cover the current realities and challenges of TPAs, why consolidation wave has begun and how will the business and service models of TPAs either change or stay the same going forward. We also hit on a few questions I received from listeners such as the impact of fee compression on TPAs, whether their will be any local TPAs going forward and how do things like ERISA 3(16) fiduciary services and payroll integration evolve. Fun stuff!

Guest Bio

Jerry Bramlett was the Founder, President and CEO of The 401(k) Company (1983), which was sold to Charles Schwab in 2007. At the time of the sale, The 401(k) Company had 350 employees and served over 100 clients with approximately $25 billion in plan assets and more than 425,000 plan participants.

After the sale of The 401(k) Company Mr. Bramlett assumed the role of President and CEO of BenefitStreet, a financially troubled firm with 7,000 retirement plans under administration, over 400 employees and 10 subsidiaries. After taking BenefitStreet through a restructuring process, Mr. Bramlett and Peter Lynch, Vice Chairman of Fidelity Investments, acquired the assets of BenefitStreet and founded a new firm, NextStep, which was sold to The Newport Group in 2010. Between 2010 and 2018, Mr. Bramlett has been engaged in industry consulting with some of the largest defined contribution investment advisory and asset management firms in the country.

In 2018, Mr. Bramlett became head of Ascensus TPA Solutions, which has acquired over 20 TPA firms since 2016. These firms, which offer services through 41 locations across the country, administer over 34,000 retirement plans. Mr. Bramlett holds a bachelor's degree in Sociology from Southern Methodist University

401(k) Fridays Podcast Overview

Struggling with a fiduciary issue, looking for strategies to improve employee retirement outcomes or curious about the impact of current events on your retirement plan? We've had conversations with retirement industry leaders to address these and other relevant topics! You can easily explore over one hundred prior on-demand audio interviews here. Don't forget to subscribe as we release a new episode each Friday!