A Retirement Planology Client Snapshot
According to our website, Retirement Planology “is a consulting and investment advisory firm that navigates organizations to smart decisions on their employee retirement plan.” But what kind of organizations? Small, medium, or large? For-profit or non-profit? What industry? What are they looking for in a retirement plan advisor? Here’s a snapshot of the Retirement Planology client base - do you fit in?
Who are our clients?
In a nutshell, Retirement Planology works with small to medium-sized businesses. So how do we define small to medium-sized businesses (as opposed to the IRS or business valuators)? By employee count: we work with companies with 5000 employees or less. About 95% of our clients have an employee count of 20 to 1500 - those are our people.
About 40% of our clients are nonprofits; the remaining 60-ish% are for-profit companies, half of which offer services, while the other half sell/manufacture products. We serve a variety of industries, and it’s important for us to have a broad base, since we borrow and cross-pollinate different techniques from one industry or employee type to another, tweaking techniques along the way.
What do we actually do for clients?
Once upon a time, we thought our clients came to us for two main reasons:
They have problems other retirement plan advisors couldn’t solve, and they needed the particular expertise and innovation that we offer
They weren’t getting the attention they needed from other advisors, and were feeling neglected
And that’s still true. However, when we surveyed our clients a couple of years ago, we learned the REAL reasons our clients work with us. There’s basically five problems that we solve for clients:
They need to offer the same high-quality benefits their competitors are so that they can get the talent they need, within their constrained benefits budget. Many of these businesses are in growth mode and can’t attract the top-tier talent they need without a great [cost-effective] benefits program and they need to get maximum impact from their dollars spent. Their plan has a business purpose and can’t needlessly eat up resources.
They want to get the retirement plan off their to-do list so they can manage the overwhelming amount of hiring, recruiting and other things they need to do. In other words, we work with under-resourced HR departments who are continually fighting overwhelm while juggling multiple responsibilities and don’t want to jeopardize their plan in the process.
They want real answers and advice so they can stop getting the runaround or getting a different answer from each person they talk to. Our clients are tired of getting bounced around, getting transferred from department to department, and want someone who will give them straight answers to their questions. They find it difficult to keep on top of all the rules and regulations they must follow; we help guide them through the regulatory maze so that they can focus on their business.
They want advice about warning signs and how to fix them so they can get back to focusing on their other growth problems and have peace of mind. Our clients admit that they don’t know what they don’t know and they need someone else to look out for them. They don’t want to find out that decisions made today severely affect the business later and they don’t want surprises!
They want support for their employees so they can make sure their employees are making wise decisions and getting the education they need. Our clients care about how their employees are using and investing in their retirement plan, their financial wellness, and want to make the plan a meaningful part of their benefits package.
Sure, we provide specialty, service, and support for companies that sponsor a retirement plan by way of plan strategy and provider oversight, investment fiduciary services, fiduciary support to plan sponsors and committees, help navigating regulatory issues, and support and advocacy for employees.
But, listing off our services and sharing our fancy reporting and meeting materials just doesn’t tell the whole story.
Stating that we provide advice and not products doesn’t clue you in either.
Are you part of a business with one of the problems listed above? If so, feel free to reach out to us and see how we can help. If you are a growing organization with less than 5,000 employees, we’ve got your back!