While I normally enjoy Jason Zweig’s opinions about wealth management and investing, I take issue with Zweig’s February 10th column, “Forget the 401(k). Let’s Invent a New Retirement Plan”. Zweig’s suggestion of eliminating the current 401(k) system and reinventing it, ignores the incredible successes the system has produced for tens of millions of workers and retirees. In addition, Zweig ignores innovations in plan design, recent regulatory guidance, and the integration of new financial wellness tools into the private retirement system that address many of the shortfalls he sees with the current system.

Welcome to Q4’18! It’s been an amazing year here at Fluent. We started 2018 intending to fully launch our new UtopiaAdvisor™ suite of tools for Retirement Plan Advisors, but the market had a different plan for us: there was strong interest by some of America’s largest plan providers for their own solutions based on UtopiaAdvisor and the industry continued to have growing concerns and demands for security. THE RESULT? 2018 has been a very busy year here at Fluent! This year alone, Fluent signed enterprise contracts to implement proprietary technology…

The National Association of Plan Advisors (NAPA) pulled off yet another impressive annual NAPA 401(k) SUMMIT in Nashville this past April 15 through 17. The conference, which focused on practice management and business development for Plan Advisors, attracted about 1,100 plan advisors and an additional 1,000 vendor and home office attendees at the Nashville Music City Center. Energy, Lots of Energy! This was our first impression. On our way from the hotel to the convention center, we walked by the Bridgestone Arena, home to the Nashville Predators NHL team, during…

At Fluent Technologies, we believe you – the advisor – are the key to plan and participant success. But many of you don’t have the right tools. Introducing UtopiaAdvisor™, a dynamic collaboration tool that helps you, the advisor, demonstrate value and be the G.U.I.D.E. The key features are a goal-setting functionality for critical plan metrics, coupled with an easy-to-use dashboard and practice management tools; giving you a yardstick for instantly measuring plan progress. UtopiaAdvisor™ helps you own the data, demonstrate value and be the G.U.I.D.E. to plan success: Generate plan goals…

Let’s just admit it: automation sometimes makes our lives easier. The “if, then” structure of software code sets processes in motion for everything from our online banking to transportation systems to home automation (if the temperature in my house drops below 68 degrees, my smart thermostat will turn it up before I get home at 6:15 pm). But sometimes, automation doesn’t quite fit our needs. Custom solutions are expensive, time consuming and can be error-prone. They are hard to replicate and consistency is unpredictable. But custom solutions tend to be…

Unfortunately, with all the current discussion about fees, investments, massive disclosures and the fiduciary regulation, there has been a central piece missing from client discussions and how we evaluate success: participant outcomes. It seems that the government and the industry have forgotten the primary reason we have retirement plans in the first place: to provide an employee with enough money to retire. If a plan advisor says that all funds on a platform are low-cost index funds, then often the perception is that nothing else needs be discussed. The focus…

This article appeared in The SPARK Journal, Vol. 27, No. 2. The challenge – Providing advisors efficient access to data. How is our industry’s transformation to be achieved when the resources accessible by an advisor are often limited and scattered in their purpose and can’t comprehensively address plan matters? Simplify – Plan advisors need to interact with client’s data in evaluation tools. In the current state, it is tiresome to assemble participant outcome data and nearly impossible to address the details from a web of limited, complex, and non-standardized plan…

What’s Hot and What’s Not at the NAPA 401K Summit The NAPA 401K Summit, held in Las Vegas March 19th - 21st, was a smorgasbord of Plan Advisor and Defined Contribution industry presentations. While I found some topics to be of value, what was ironically missing was a substantive conversation about how to measure and deliver Plan Health and successful participant outcomes. After all, isn’t this the raison d’être for our industry? What was missing? The closest I came to encountering a dialogue about measuring Plan Health and participant outcomes…

Plan Health: A Dynamic Presentation Tool Have you ever been asked an unexpected question during a plan review meeting? Do you end up rifling through a 100-page plan review and having to tell the Plan Sponsor, I’ll get back to you? Is it hard to access and present plan information in a concise and attractive fashion? If you answered yes to any of the questions above, we have a solution for you: dynamic presentation tools through Fluent’s UtopiaAdvisor Plan Health application. How do the presentation tools of Plan Health work?…

Give Your Plan Review New Life! Everyone’s take on retirement savings and investments is a bit different. I mean, if all advisors agreed on just one way to do things, there would be no need for advisors because plan sponsors could do it themselves. They hire you – their trusted advisor – because of your knowledge and expertise. How do you become the trusted advisor in the eyes of your clients? The plan review is at the core of the relationship between you and your clients. You conduct reviews to…

Get the word on the street from an industry insider and FinTech executive. Michael Zimmer of Fluent Technologies here. I’ve been working in the FinTech space long enough to know that advisors are tasked with a monumental effort to service clients in the best way possible. Over the years, that service has evolved and grown with market demands. Clients have become incredibly knowledgeable about investments, and that has changed the role of the advisor as well as the tools needed to effectively do the job. Now the advisor’s role is…

As a trusted advisor, every year you do your due diligence by calling your clients to discuss how their investment did during the year and determine if they need to make any changes. Sound familiar? As an advisor in the plan sponsor retirement space, however, you know only too well that your duties are much more complicated and need to occur more frequently than only in one annual visit. The problem is that, although the expectations for an “investment review” have matured, the tools haven’t kept pace. At Fluent, we…

Are you a fiduciary? Are you REALLY a fiduciary? Trust is key for plan advisors. Clients entrust their financial future to their advisors, so it stands to reason that advisors should put their clients’ best interests first, ahead of their own interests. Disclosure and transparency of any conflicts of interest, code of ethics, risk and fees should be the cornerstone of every fiduciary’s practice. Recently, the Consumer Federation of America issued a report Financial Advisor or Investment Salesperson? Brokers and Insurers Want to Have it Both Ways. The argument is…

Help Is On The Way! Now that the Trump administration has ordered an updated economic and legal analysis of the Fiduciary Regulation, every advisor practice is left wondering what is next. We are waiting anxiously to see what impact regulations, new or revised, will have on the work we have all done preparing for the April effective date. No matter the outcome, at Fluent we have more than 20 years of experience in this area. We’ve seen changes large and small over the years and, if anything, it has allowed…

Interested in “Taming the Fiduciary Reg”? New product offering integrates multiple practice management toolkits into one simple and affordable platform OCTOBER 27, 2016 – WOBURN, MA – Today Fluent Technologies announced that is has developed a new, market-leading solution for complying with the recent DOL (Department of Labor) Conflict of Interest Regulation based on survey results, one-on-one interviews and participation in critical industry-sponsored DOL focused seminars. UtopiaAdvisor offers a one-stop-shop to implement a customer’s practices, plus organize and execute everything in terms of the DOL. UtopiaAdvisor allows clients to take…

Get the word on the street from an industry insider and FinTech executive. Michael Zimmer of Fluent Technologies here. I’ve been working in the FinTech space for long enough to know that advisors are tasked with a monumental effort to service clients in the best way possible. Over the years, that service has evolved and grown with market demands. Clients have become incredibly knowledgeable about investments, and that has changed the role of the advisor as well as the tools needed to effectively do the job. Now the advisor’s role…

Last week, we read an article in Investment News titled "Salesforce adds compliance features to financial services CRM for DOL fiduciary rule." The author, Alessandra Malito, discusses what the CRM community is doing to help advisors comply, or more likely, protect themselves from the new DOL Fiduciary Rule. That got us thinking: CRMs are not the only software tools that are responding to the new ruling. In anticipation of the ruling impact, Fluent Technologies has taken its own initiative to Tame the Fiduciary Regulation. We knew this would be a challenge and…

We can all be forgiven if we have lost track of legal action around the DOL’s fiduciary regulation. As of Monday, June 13th, a total of five lawsuits have now been filed challenging the Department of Labor’s fiduciary regulation. Below is a table giving a snapshot of these initiatives. Overview of Legal Actions Against the DOL Fiduciary Regulation – as of June 13, 2016 Date of Suit Main Plaintiffs Focus of Complaints Venue June 1 USCC, SIFMA, and 7 other organizations Broad, with attack on DOL’s lack of authority in…

Two lawsuits have just been filed to challenge and overturn the DOL’s Fiduciary Regulation. The first suit was filed on Wednesday June 1st, by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (USCC), SIFMA and seven other organizations. The second was filed yesterday on June 2nd, by the National Association for Fixed Annuities. The USCC suit is very broad in scope and would essentially, if successful, gut much of the regulation. The NAFA suit is more narrowly focused on the impacts of the regulation on the sale of fixed index annuities. Will there…

Few things are sure bets in life.  But if anything is certain, it is change.  It’s inherent in most everything we do.   In fact in business, it is the one true constant. Today change in the retirement community is imminent and real.   As policy makers attempt to expand access to qualified investing and provide greater protections, we see new ideas being brought forth by the industry:  expansion of plan availability to the small employer market, the emergence of state sponsored retirement plans, the introduction of the “robo-advisor” and ever expanding…

On March 1st Morningstar announced the release of new Sustainability Ratings for 20,000 mutual and exchange traded funds globally including equity, fixed income and possibly cash equivalent funds. These ratings represent a marketing opportunity for many advisors, asset managers and plan providers. Sustainability Ratings – Why should you care? While many advisors, asset managers and plan providers have resisted a growing trend in sociably responsible investing, the tide is starting to shift. Institutional assets under management for Environment, Social and Governance products, or ESG for short, have increased from $639…

The SEC just established an October 2016 date for a Notice of Proposed Rule Making on the Fiduciary Rule for broker-dealers and investment advisors. Under normal circumstances, the SEC has jurisdiction over IRA rollovers, an area that the Department of Labor has made a part of its Fiduciary rule. Will this cause a collision between the SEC and the DOL? Will this force the DOL to slow down its proposal and work on “harmonization” of the two rules? A quick overview from NAPA Net SEC announcement What are your thoughts…

On November 8- 10, Fluent sponsored and participated in the annual SPARK Forum in Palm Beach, Florida. I have always found the Annual Forum to be a great conference to take the pulse of the industry and dialogue with retirement services leaders across the country about the challenges and opportunities facing Americans workers and our industry as a whole. Our community faces many challenges, but I am continually impressed with the capacity of our industry to transform itself through it’s ability to listen, look inward and evolve. As our national…

Fluent has a busy month ahead! We will be exhibiting at two important industry conferences and I hope we have the opportunity to see you at either one. The first, is the Retirement Communities’ most significant gathering of industry plan providers and leaders, the SPARK Forum on November 8-10 in Palm, Beach Florida. The second, is TSAM, the world’s leading event for developing efficient investment management companies, on November 19th. At TSAM, the Asset Manager Community will gather in Boston, Massachusetts to discuss the pressing challenges facing money management today.…

Fluent’s very name is about movement, motion and change. After several months of planning, we are delighted to announce the launch of our new website. We wanted a new website to better collaborate with our clients, financial industry partners, stakeholders and associates. This site is a reflection of our commitment to our community, our brand and our products. You will now be able to post comments and feedback on our new blog, engage with us on social media, and access the latest product information. Watch for exciting case studies, announcements and news in…