Transform The Way You Evaluate Your Retirement Plan

Evaluate your retirement plan with the same purchasing discipline you apply to every other professional service

The Retirement Plan Purchasing Process is Broken

Retirement plans should be evaluated like every other professional service.

Every employer already knows how to evaluate professional services. Retirement plans should be no different. Employers can apply that same purchasing discipline to provider relationships, compensation, fees, services, and governance to make more informed retirement plan decisions.

Evaluating What Matters Most

Employers make better retirement plan decisions by:

Evaluating Service Providers: Compare record keepers, advisors, and administrators based on their fees, services, technology, and participant support.
Understanding Provider Compensation: Determine who is being paid, how they are being paid, and whether their compensation is commensurate with the services they provide.
Strengthening Plan Governance: Improve the processes used to select, monitor, and negotiate with service providers throughout the life of the plan.
Reviewing Investment Options: Evaluate the investment lineup for diversification, cost, and suitability while supporting participants in making informed investment decisions.
Improving Participant Outcomes: Help employees better understand saving, investing, and retirement planning so they can make decisions that support their long-term financial goals.

Expert Insights You Can Trust

Since 2009, Paul D. Sippil & Associates has analyzed thousands of retirement plans to better understand how provider compensation, services, governance, and participant outcomes intersect. That research, combined with independent analysis and ongoing study of retirement plan design and policy, provides employers with practical, evidence-based guidance for making more informed retirement plan decisions.

Many of these conclusions are shared by Ted Benna, widely recognized as the father of the modern 401(k), who has long questioned the industry's reliance on asset-based compensation and argued that advisors should focus more on helping participants achieve successful retirement outcomes.

“The advisors are getting paid each time they go through the process with an employer to help pick funds as if they're doing an original piece of work. There are more than half a million 401(k) plans, so that's happened over half a million times. The fund menus aren't that much different. But advisors are getting paid as if they're doing an original piece of work. That's just bizarre, extremely inefficient and much too expensive.

They need to get away from asset-driven compensation and be paid a fee for service, the same as accountants or attorneys, who don't get paid a percentage of corporate [client] assets. Their role should shift to helping people focus on how to succeed at retiring successfully, not on investment return. Building a smarter investment mix is pretty much of a commodity now. The focus should be on goals: "I want to retire successful. Help me do that." [So] instead of teaching clients small-cap, large-cap, value vs. growth and that stuff, help participants find ways to save more to do a better job of financial management and focus on the stream of income they'll [need] for their retirement.”