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How is My Financial Advisor Compensated?

August 26, 2019 by 3 Comments
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Many investors do not understand how their financial advisor is compensated.  It is important that all clients fully understand how their financial advisor is compensated and how much this relationship is truly costing them.

The three basic financial advisor compensation models 

Commissions: The advisor is compensated for the sale of investments, insurance, or other financial products. Compensation is paid by the firm that provides the financial product, usually a mutual fund or an insurance company. This may be in the form of an up-front charge, trailing (ongoing) fees or a combination of both. Other names for commissions include front-end loads (A share mutual funds are an example), 12b-1 fees that serve as trailing commissions on some mutual funds and commissions paid to advisors for the sale of insurance products.

Fee-based: Typically, the advisor will charge a fee for putting together a financial plan for you. If you chose to implement the recommendations in the plan, such as the purchase of insurance, an annuity, or investments, the implementation will typically be done via the sale of commissioned products. Fee-based is often referred to as fee and commission as well.

How is My Financial Advisor Compensated?

Fee-based took on a whole new significance in light of the DOL fiduciary rules implemented a few years ago, then largely repealed by the Trump administration. Many firms have moved clients to fee-based or brokerage wrap accounts. The fee part arises from the wrap fee (typically a percentage of assets) charged to the client. Many of these accounts use mutual funds that throw off 12b-1 fees or other types of revenue sharing to the brokerage firm.

Fee-only: The advisor charges a fee for the services rendered. This can be one-time or ongoing based upon the nature of your relationship and the services rendered. Fees may be hourly, flat or retainer based, or based upon a percentage of the assets under advisement.

Why should you care how your advisor is paid? Because his/her compensation can impact the choice of the products recommended to you and your return from those products.

An advisor who is paid via commissions will likely recommend those products that offer him a commission or sales load. Sales people generally sell what they are compensated to sell. Commissions can therefore result in a huge conflict of interest for your advisor. Does she suggest the very best and lowest cost products, or does she suggest those products that pay her the highest commission?

Fee-only advisors do not have this inherent conflict of interest because they are paid by the client, not the financial product provider. They are free to suggest the best investment vehicles and financial products for each client’s individual situation.

Should compensation be the only metric used to select a financial advisor?

Of course not, but the advisor’s compensation should be made crystal clear to you. When interviewing an advisor ask very direct questions.

Ask them to detail ALL sources of compensation. These might include up-front commissions or sales loads; deferred or trailing commissions; surrender charges if you opt out of the mutual fund or annuity too early; a wrap fee on your overall investment account; or a myriad of other fees and charges in various combinations.

This extends to fee-only advisors as well. Be sure to understand how much you will be paying for their advice and what types of investing costs you can expect to incur.

While you will not be writing a check for any commissions or product-based fees, make no mistake you are paying the freight. Excessive commissions or expenses serve to directly reduce your return on investment.

Approaching retirement and want another opinion on where you stand? Not sure if your investments are right for your situation? Need help getting on track? Check out my Financial Review/Second Opinion for Individuals service for detailed guidance and advice about your situation.

NEW SERVICE – Financial Coaching. Check out this new service to see if it’s right for you. Financial coaching focuses on providing education and mentoring on the financial transition to retirement.

FINANCIAL WRITING. Check out my freelance financial writing services including my ghostwriting services for financial advisors.

Please contact me with any thoughts or suggestions about anything you’ve read here at The Chicago Financial Planner. Don’t miss any future posts, please subscribe via email. Check out our resources page for links to some other great sites and some outstanding products that you might find useful.

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Why Should I Care if My Financial Advisor is a Fiduciary?

January 7, 2019 by 15 Comments
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The Department of Labor released its final draft of their fiduciary rules mandating that financial advisors place their client’s best interests first when offering advice on their retirement accounts in 2016. Here is a post I wrote just before the release. DOL Fiduciary Rules – What Do They Mean For You?

The rules were slated to be fully implementated on January 1, 2018, but the Trump administration’s opposition to these rules scuttled this. The current state of things in the financial advisory world is mixed, as some brokerage firms had gone partially down the path of implementation.

At the end of the day, however, why should you as an investor care if your financial advisor is a fiduciary? Here are some thoughts on this for those looking for a financial advisor or who are already working with one.

Definition of a Fiduciary

fi•du•ci•ar•y – A financial advisor held to a Fiduciary Standard occupies a position of special trust and confidence when working with a client. As a Fiduciary, the financial advisor is required to act with undivided loyalty to the client. This includes disclosure of how the financial advisor is to be compensated and any corresponding conflicts of interest.

This is the definition of Fiduciary used by NAPFA (National Association of Personal Financial Advisors) the largest professional organization of fee-only financial advisors in the United States.

Why should you care if your financial advisor is a fiduciary?

Stock brokers are regulated by FINRA, who required them to make recommendations that are suitable for their clients. I’ve never come across a good definition of what suitable really means. Here is one definition I did find several years ago on the website of Clausen Miller a law firm with offices in major U.S. and international cities:

The suitability rule provides that when a financial representative recommends to an investor the purchase, sale or exchange of any security, a financial representative shall have reasonable grounds for believing that the recommendation is suitable for such investor upon the basis of the facts, if any, disclosed by such investor as to his or her other security holdings and as to his or her financial situation and needs.

This really doesn’t specify anything about loyalty to the client, disclosure or anything else. The word reasonable is quite vague at best.

This brings me to the reason that clients should care if their financial advisor is a fiduciary. As a client I would want to know that my financial advisor is acting with my best interests at heart, that he or she is making recommendations to me that are in my best interest. In fact, as you receive disclosures telling you that your broker, financial advisor or registered rep is now a fiduciary acting in your best interests a logical question is, “Weren’t you doing this in the past?”

Not sure if your financial advisor is a fiduciary? Ask.

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Several years ago Charles Schwab ran an ad depicting a brokerage office pushing the stock of the day and used the phrase “…let’s put lipstick on this pig…” While humorous (and perhaps exaggerated) I fear that it did reflect the mentality of many product-pushing sales people calling themselves financial advisors.

Many investors don’t understand

The worst part is that most of the investing public doesn’t really understand all of this. Many financial advisors who are subject to the suitability rules are competent and concerned with the welfare of their clients. They make recommendations that are in line with the best interests of their clients. Unfortunately, there are others who don’t and are not required to under the vagaries of the suitability rules.

While the new fiduciary rules were largely scuttled, the investing public can and should look for advisors who act in their client’s best interests. Pay attention to any and all disclosures that you might receive from your financial advisor. Ask questions and don’t settle for half-baked answers. Ask your advisor outright if they are a fiduciary and if they act in their client’s best interests. Ask about any potential conflicts of interest they may have in rendering advice to you. Ask them about all sources of compensation from their relationship with you. It’s important that as a client you fully understand all of this. There is no one right or wrong answer, ultimately that is for you to decide as a client or prospective client.

Approaching retirement and want another opinion on where you stand? Not sure if your investments are right for your situation? Concerned about stock market volatility? Check out my Financial Review/Second Opinion for Individuals service for detailed guidance and advice about your situation.

NEW SERVICE – Financial Coaching. Check out this new service to see if it’s right for you. Financial coaching focuses on providing education and mentoring in two areas: the financial transition to retirement or small business financial coaching.

FINANCIAL WRITING. Check out my freelance financial writing services including my ghostwriting services for financial advisors.

Please contact me with any thoughts or suggestions about anything you’ve read here at The Chicago Financial Planner. Don’t miss any future posts, please subscribe via email. Check out our resources page for links to some other great sites and some outstanding products that you might find useful.

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3 Financial Products to Consider Avoiding

September 5, 2016 by 33 Comments
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Before buying ANY financial product make sure that this product is right for you in terms of your unique, personal financial situation.  Financial products are tools and just like your projects around the house you should use the right tool for the job, not the tool that the financial rep wants to sell to you.

Here are three financial products that you should consider avoiding.

Equity-Indexed Annuities 

Equity-Indexed Annuities are an insurance-based product where the returns are tied to some portion of the performance of an underlying market index such as the S&P 500.  They are also called fixed-index insurance products and indexed annuities. Your gains are limited to a portion of what the index gains and there is generally some sort of minimum return to limit (or eliminate) your risk of loss.  As you can imagine these were pitched heavily to Baby Boomers and retirees after the last market downturn and are still being sold based upon fear today.

Two problems here are generally high internal expenses and surrender charges that keep you locked in the product for years. Worse yet, these internal expenses can be hard to isolate. If you decide to go ahead with the purchase of an Equity-Indexed Annuity be sure that you understand all of the details including the level of index participation, expenses, surrender charges, and the health of the underlying insurance company. Check out FINRA’s Investor Alert regarding Equity-Indexed Annuities for more cautionary information.

Proprietary Mutual Funds

It is not uncommon for registered reps and brokers to suggest mutual funds from the family run by their employer. In many cases they are incentivized or even required to do so. While some of these funds are perfectly fine, all too often in my experience they are not.  Whether via high fees and/or low performance these are often investments to be avoided.

A lawsuit against Ameriprise Financial brought by a group of participants in the company’s retirement plan alleged the company breached its Fiduciary duty by offering a number of the firm’s own funds in the plan and that these funds then paid fees back to Ameriprise and some of its subsidiaries as revenue sharing. The suit was ultimately settled.

JP Morgan also settled a suit by some retail investors over the bank steering clients into their more expensive proprietary funds over those of other families.

Load Mutual Funds

It is important that you understand the ABCs of mutual fund share classes.  In the commissioned/fee-based world reps often sell mutual funds that offer compensation to them and to their broker-dealers.  A shares charge an up-front commission plus a trailing fee (often a 12b-1) of somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.25% or more.

B shares charge no up-front commissions, but carry an additional back-end load as part of the ongoing expense ratio.  This can amount to an addition 0.75% or more added to the fund’s annual expenses.  In addition these shares also contain a surrender charge that typically starts at 5% if your sell the fund before the end of the surrender period.  B shares have been largely phased out by most fund providers.

C shares typically have a permanent 1% level load added to the fund’s expense ratio and carry a one year surrender period.

These sales loads ultimately reduce the amount of your investment and are an expensive form of advice. Nobody expects financial advisors or any other professional to provide financial advice for free. Unless the person to whom you are paying these pricey loads is providing extraordinary advice, this is a very expensive way to go.

The DOL fiduciary rules

The fiduciary rules introduced by the DOL (Department of Labor) in April of 2016 impose a far greater level  of disclosure on financial advisors. The rules require financial advisors to act as fiduciaries when providing advice to clients on their retirement accounts such as IRAs.

The fiduciary rules require advisors to have their client sign a disclosure document for many financial products with sales charges and trailing commissions if used in a retirement account. Load mutual funds and proprietary mutual funds will most likely require a BICE (Best Interest Contract Exemption) disclosure. Additionally Equity-Indexed Annuities were not exempted from these disclosures in the final draft of the rules as they had been in earlier drafts.

It will remain to be seen how the fiduciary rules will impact these three products, both within retirement accounts and overall. As an example, broker Edward Jones recently announced that mutual funds and ETFs will no longer be offered to clients in retirement accounts where commissions are charged.

Before making any financial or investment decision review your specific situation. Consult a fee-only financial advisor if you feel that you need financial advice.

Approaching retirement and want another opinion on where you stand? Not sure if you are invested properly for your situation? Check out my Financial Review/Second Opinion for Individuals service.

Please contact me with any thoughts or suggestions about anything you’ve read here at The Chicago Financial Planner. Don’t miss any future posts, please subscribe via email. Please check out the Hire Me tab to learn more about my freelance financial writing and financial consulting services.  

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Selecting the Right Financial Advisor

July 31, 2016 by 19 Comments
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Several years ago finance blogger extraordinaire Barbara Friedberg wrote this guest post for Happy Simple Living entitled Financial Advisors Who Get Paid To Sell Products Bother Me.  What she said in that post still resonates as true today as it did then.

While there are many excellent financial advisors who are compensated all or in part via commissions, an advisor who is compensated from the sale of financial products has a built-in conflict of interest when providing clients with advice.Finance

Ask a lot of questions

With the introduction of the new Department of Labor Fiduciary rules, financial advisors will be required to put their client’s interests first when providing advice on their retirement accounts.

Conflicts of interests must be disclosed. A financial advisor who already acts in a fiduciary capacity towards their clients likely has a leg up under these new rules.  They already run their practice from the perspective of putting the interests of their clients above all else.

As Barbara indicated in the title of her post, how an advisor is compensated is critical.

In short, selecting the right financial advisor for you involves asking a lot of questions and understanding how they do business.  

  • How are they compensated?
  • Do they have experience working with clients whose situation is similar to yours?
  • Are there conflicts of interest that will impact the quality of the advice they provide?
  • What qualifications does the advisor have?
  • How and how often will they communicate with you?

If the prospective financial advisor can’t or won’t answer these and other questions to your satisfaction ask yourself if this is someone to whom you want entrust your financial future.

Please contact me with any thoughts or suggestions about anything you’ve read here at The Chicago Financial Planner. Don’t miss any future posts, please subscribe via email. Please check out our resources page as well.  

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Don’t Settle for Suitable Financial Advice

September 12, 2013 by Leave a Comment
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Suitable Financial Advice

Revised February 22, 2016

My first blog post  relating to a Fiduciary Standard that many of us had hoped would soon be enacted into law Why Should I Care if My Financial Advisor is a Fiduciary? was written in October, 2009.  It’s now February, 2016 and we are still waiting for a Fiduciary Standard.

Supposedly a proposal by the Department of Labor that especially pertains to new rules for financial advisors who deal with IRAs and other retirement plans is pending and will be signed by the President later this year. Call me skeptical as to both whether this will actually happen and, if it does, how much protection will really be afforded to investors. The financial services lobby is influential and well-funded.

As an investor you should be outraged.  Moreover, in my opinion, you should not have to settle for financial advice that involves selling you financial products that are merely suitable for you.

Suitable for whom?

This definition from the Clausen Miller law firm which I used in my 2009 post is still the best concise definition of the suitability rule that I have found:

The suitability rule provides that when a financial representative recommends to an investor the purchase, sale or exchange of any security, a financial representative shall have reasonable grounds for believing that the recommendation is suitable for such investor upon the basis of the facts, if any, disclosed by such investor as to his or her other security holdings and as to his or her financial situation and needs. 

So what’s the problem?  The rule says nothing about the financial advisor putting the interests of the client above their own.  In fact a registered rep with a broker-dealer owes their first loyalty to the B-D firm.  There is nothing to say the rep should put a client in the best financial product available, just simply a financial product that is suitable for their needs.  As an example, a rep for a given broker-dealer might push a variable annuity product offered by their employer instead of a lower cost VA offered by another firm like Vanguard that might be a better fit for their client.  Among the reasons for this is the fact that there is no way for the rep to be paid for selling the lower cost product.

Why is it taking so long to adopt a fiduciary standard? 

In my opinion this has not happened because the major financial services firms don’t want it to happen.  They have deep pockets and have spent a lot to lobby against doing the right thing for you, the investing public.

Some of the major brokerage firms have said that they will not be able to serve investors with smaller account balances if they have to adhere to a Fiduciary Standard.  Are they serious?  And if they are is this a bad thing for those investors?  Are these firms and their registered reps really doing smaller investors a favor by putting them in high cost, poor performing financial products that often enrich the advisor far more than the client?

Don’t you deserve a financial advisor who puts your interests first?

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Why work with a financial advisor who is a fiduciary? 

Don’t you deserve an advisor who puts your interests first?  Aren’t you entitled to advice that isn’t tied to the sale of financial products?  NAPFA has published this guide to selecting a financial advisor.  There is some great information here and I encourage you to use this as you choose the right financial advisor for your unique situation.

Don’t settle for suitable financial advice.  Insist on a financial advisor who puts your needs first and provides advice based only on helping you to reach your financial goals.

Please contact me with any thoughts or suggestions about anything you’ve read here at The Chicago Financial Planner. Don’t miss any future posts, please subscribe via email. Please check out our resources page as well.

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Your Stockbroker is Not Your Friend

May 23, 2013 by 4 Comments
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This is a guest post from Bob Richards, the publisher of The Retirement Income Blog.

Your broker may seem like he wants to help you make money and odds are he does.  Unfortunately, he works in a system that decreases the possibility he can help you.

Your Broker Does Not Give You the Best Advice

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Your broker has positioned himself as your advisor, someone acting in your interest.  However, this is not always so.  If he works for a large firm, that firm issues his paycheck and he is beholden to that firm.  Say he works for ABC Financial.  Notice that he often recommends the mutual funds or annuities created by ABC Financial.  This allows his firm to not only get a commission when you buy the fund but also fees for managing the fund.  So even though there may be better-performing funds he can recommend, he is under no obligation to do so.  His legal obligation is only to sell you what is suitable, not what is best.  And he often recommends “packaged products” such as mutual funds, annuities, or wrap accounts rather than individual stocks and bonds.  It is much easier for his firm to bury high fees in a packaged product.

You Broker May Not be Competent 

In order to become a broker (now called financial advisors at many firms), one must take a test.  The exam is like most exams—you memorize a bunch of information and then regurgitate it.  The test is multiple-choice.  Any intelligent 12-year-old can pass the exam. In fact, many brokers attend a 40-hour cram course the week prior to the exam as their only preparation. Furthermore, the exam tests knowledge about rules and regulations and almost nothing about what it takes to help you make money.  From my experience as a former branch manager for a major brokerage firm, about 80% of the brokers know very little about the market or the investments they sell. The other 20% may have actually taken investment management, economics and finance classes in school but this is not a prerequisite for becoming a broker.   Alternatively, the 20% who are knowledgeable may have educated themselves.

Your broker sells you offerings he may not understand.  Investments come with a prospectus.  I have never met a broker who read the prospectus of the investments sold. The way he often learns about the investments is by attending a luncheon given by a wholesaler (a sales person to sales people) who provides the sales talking points for the broker to incorporate in his pitch.  Because the broker cannot distinguish between a “good” and “bad” investment, he generally sells what his firm recommends. 

A Better Investment Professional

Very few investors realize that there are two types of professionals in the investment business. I have described so far a registered representative, the technical term for a stockbroker who sells investments and earns commission. There is another type of investment professional called a registered investment advisor. This person has obtained a license that permits him to give investment advice for a fee. He won’t sell you something and earn a commission (though some brokers and registered reps are both sales people and registered investment advisors via their firms). He will give you advice in return for payment. He is also legally responsible to you as a fiduciary. The definition of fiduciary duty:

“A fiduciary duty is the highest standard of care at either equity or law. A fiduciary (abbreviation fid) is expected to be extremely loyal to the person to whom he owes the duty (the “principal”): he must not put his personal interests before the duty, and must not profit from his position as a fiduciary, unless the principal consents.”

The way that most registered investment advisors work is that they manage your investment portfolio for a percentage of the assets for which they are providing advice (e.g. 1% of the portfolio value would be $1,000 annually on a $100,000 portfolio). Because of the way they are compensated, they have no motivation to sell you this stock, that stock, that mutual fund or this bond. Their motivation is to retain you as a client and to make your account grow. Only in this way can they make more money from you by helping you grow a larger investment nest egg from which they can collect their 1%. Yet others simply work hourly much like an accountant or an attorney or via a fixed retainer. Again, they have no incentive to sell you the product-du-jour as does a broker.

Advice for Selecting an Investment Professional

So here’s the advice I’d like to give every investor.

  • Do not buy packaged products because unless you read the 80 page prospectus, you are likely being ripped off in terms of high fees.
  • Buy individual stocks and bonds and no load mutual funds which you must buy on your own because commission brokers don’t sell them.
  • Either deal with a registered investment advisor who will charge you fees and not commissions or you’ll need to learn enough about investing to do it yourself.

This is a guest post from Bob Richards, the publisher of The Retirement Income Blog.

Approaching retirement and want another opinion on where you stand? Not sure if your investments are right for your situation? Need help getting on track? Check out my Financial Review/Second Opinion for Individuals service for detailed guidance and advice about your situation.

NEW SERVICE – Financial Coaching. Check out this new service to see if it’s right for you. Financial coaching focuses on providing education and mentoring on the financial transition to retirement.

FINANCIAL WRITING. Check out my freelance financial writing services including my ghostwriting services for financial advisors.

Please contact me with any thoughts or suggestions about anything you’ve read here at The Chicago Financial Planner. Don’t miss any future posts, please subscribe via email. Check out our resources page for links to some other great sites and some outstanding products that you might find useful.

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My Thoughts on PBS Frontline The Retirement Gamble

April 29, 2013 by
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The PBS show Frontline recently aired The Retirement Gamble, an investigative documentary on the state of retirement savings and the problems with 401(k) and similar retirement plans.  The show did a great job of highlighting a number of issues and was pretty scathing in its treatment of the financial services industry and workplace retirement savings plans.

The Retirement Gamble

As a professional who serves as a financial advisor to a number of 401(k) plan sponsors as well as to individual clients (most of whom are either close to retirement or in retirement) I watched this broadcast with great interest.  Here are my reactions to what I saw.

Key issues highlighted by The Retirement Gamble

  • The high fees imbedded in some retirement plans, often these fees are next to impossible for the average participant to uncover.
  • Poor investment choices offered in some plans.
  • There are a lot of lousy 401(k) plans out there.
  • The confusion and frustration that many retirement savers in 401(k) and other defined contribution plans feel due to the fact that they are responsible for accumulating enough for retirement.  This is in contrast to the era when many folks were covered by a defined benefit pension plan where the investment risks and responsibilities for funding the plan were on the employer’s shoulders.
  • While the issues highlighted were not new to me nor to many of us in the industry, I think this documentary was a bit of an eye-opener to many in the general public.  I say this as there have been several surveys taken over the years where a shocking number of investors responded that they had no idea that there were fees charged by their 401(k) plan.

Where the documentary fell a bit short in my opinion 

As regular readers of this blog and those who follow me on Twitter and other social media outlets know, I am highly in favor of lower retirement plan fees and anything that increases transparency for investors.  That said I thought The Retirement Gamble had a very decided bias against the financial services industry and almost felt as though they had come to their conclusions before they started on the project.

  • The show did not highlight a single good 401(k) plan and there are many out there.
  • The show did not highlight a single person who had used the 401(k) to accumulate a significant nest egg. I have the privilege to serve as advisor to a number of folks who have done just that.
  • While I am an admirer of Vanguard founder John Bogle and use index funds extensively in the 401(k) plans that I advise and in the portfolios of all clients, I disagree that there are no actively managed funds worthy of investor’s dollars.  That’s not to say that these are the majority of active funds, but they do exist.  Finding them and determining if they are an appropriate investment choice for a plan sponsor to offer is what plan investment consultants are paid to do.
  • While the program did mention advisors who act as Fiduciaries in passing, the focus was on those advisors, reps, and brokers who sell plans and/or suggest investment options that serve to line their pockets sometimes at the expense of the plan’s participants.  Why not interview some advisors who do the right thing for their plan sponsor clients and the participants of those plans?
  • The worst part of The Retirement Gamble was that while many problems and issues were brought to light, there was little in the way of advice or suggestions for plan participants on what to do to improve their situation.

I do have to say that the most amazing part of the show was the interview with the head of Prudential Retirement Christine Marcks.  She insisted that she was unaware of any of the research showing the advantages of low cost index investing over high cost active management.  While she may or may agree with the findings, the fact that she insisted that she was unaware of this research was jaw-dropping in my opinion.  I think Ms. Marcks should have been coached prior to her appearance by someone at Prudential.

Approaching retirement and want another opinion on where you stand? Not sure if your investments are right for your situation? Need help getting on track? Check out my Financial Review/Second Opinion for Individuals service for detailed guidance and advice about your situation.

NEW SERVICE – Financial Coaching. Check out this new service to see if it’s right for you. Financial coaching focuses on providing education and mentoring on the financial transition to retirement.

FINANCIAL WRITING. Check out my freelance financial writing services including my ghostwriting services for financial advisors.

Please contact me with any thoughts or suggestions about anything you’ve read here at The Chicago Financial Planner. Don’t miss any future posts, please subscribe via email. Check out our resources page for links to some other great sites and some outstanding products that you might find useful.

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The Ameriprise 401(k) Lawsuit – What Does it Mean to You?

February 13, 2013 by 8 Comments
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Update: In March of 2015 Ameriprise settled this suit for $27.5 million before the case was to go to trial. Kudos to St. Louis attorney Jerome Schlichter for his work on behalf of these 24,000 current and former plan participants.

A lawsuit brought by a group of current and former employees of financial services firm Ameriprise has been allowed to proceed.  The suit alleges that Ameriprise violated their fiduciary obligations as the sponsor of the 401(k) plan it offers to employees.  The main issue is that Ameriprise offered a number of its proprietary mutual funds as options in the plan; these funds were allegedly expensive compared to other non-proprietary options that could have been utilized.  Further it is alleged that these funds paid revenue sharing and other fees to Ameriprise and several of its subsidiaries.

Ameriprise 401(k) lawsuit

What does this mean to you as a 401(k) participant? 

The implications of this suit are pretty clear.  If Ameriprise is found to be guilty of breaching its Fiduciary duty by stocking their 401(k) plan with sub-par, expensive proprietary funds this moves us further along the path of accountability by retirement plan sponsors for the retirement plans offered to their employees in my opinion.

During 2012 your company (generally via its retirement plan provider) provided several disclosures regarding your 401(k) plan.  While some of these disclosures were not all that revealing (and others may have been downright cryptic) these disclosures began to “open the curtain” a bit.  In anticipation of these disclosures I am aware of several providers who improved their plan offerings as well as activity on the part of a number of plan sponsors who started to look at other platforms and providers for their organization’s 40(k) plan.

The temptation among many employees is to ignore information received about your 401(k).  Hard to blame them, much of this information is poorly written and hard to understand.  However, you would be wise to review the disclosures received and any future disclosure materials.  Do your best to become an informed plan participant.  Review the mutual funds (or other investments) offered.  Are they typically at least in the top half of their category in terms of investment performance?  Are the expenses low relative to other funds in the same fund peer group?  Could less expensive share classes of the funds offered that be considered?  This last point includes even low cost index funds that may be offered.  For example, low cost Vanguard has several share classes that are lower in cost than their basic Investor share class.

I’m not necessarily advocating that you sue your employer for offering lousy investments or for sponsoring a plan that is sub-par, but there is nothing wrong with joining together with other co-workers and presenting your concerns about the plan to your employer.  By definition a 401(k) plan and other defined contribution plans put the onus on you to save and invest for your own retirement.

What does this mean to organizations that sponsor 401(k) plans? 

To say that companies who offer 401(k) plans, consultants and advisors (like yours truly), and ERISA attorneys are watching this suit with a great deal of interest is an understatement.  Essentially this suit could say to employers that if you offer a crappy, high cost 401(k) plan with lousy investment choices it could cost you.  And you know what, with the number of lousy 401(k) plans that I’ve seen offered over the course of my career this advisor would have no sympathy for Ameriprise and those involved with their plan should they lose the suit.  Offering your own funds and receiving revenue sharing from them to boot, really?  What’s OK about that?  I wonder how much of their own money senior Ameriprise executives have in these proprietary funds.

My hope is that this suit will help motivate employers who don’t already focus on offering the best 401(k) plan possible to look at ways to improve their plan.  I am fortunate to have a group of 401(k) sponsor clients whose main concern is doing the best that they can for their employees.  Don’t get me wrong, these companies are concerned with meeting their Fiduciary obligations and managing their Fiduciary liability as a plan sponsor.  I view these goals as being very consistent with offering a top-notch plan for their employees.  From my experience a sound process to choose and monitor investments based upon an Investment Policy Statement generally results in a better result for the plan participants.  Add to this a regular review of the plan providers (record keeper, custodian, etc.) and you have the ingredients of a solidly run plan.

I wonder what Tommy Lee Jones would say to the employees if he was used as a spokesperson to “sell” the 401(k) plan internally?  

Please contact me with any thoughts or suggestions about anything you’ve read here at The Chicago Financial Planner. Don’t miss any future posts, please subscribe via email. Please check out our resources page as well.  

Photo credit:  Wikipedia

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A Look Back

December 10, 2012 by 4 Comments
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I have been blogging for a bit over three years now.  This has been a great outlet for my love of writing.  Working as a

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financial advisor is about the best “job” one could have and I feel fortunate to be able to share what I’ve learned over the years with you.

Just as I often review the assumptions that I use in choosing investments to recommend to my clients, I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at a few of the prior posts on this blog and to update the underlying situations.

2010 The Year of the Fiduciary? 

Well 2010; 2011; and 2012 have come and will soon all be in the books without a uniform Fiduciary Standard that must be followed by all financial advisors dealing with the investing public.  I’ve read that this will be a top item for consideration among the regulators in 2013.  I hope this is the case.  One definition of Fiduciary:

fi•du•ci•ar•y – A financial advisor held to a Fiduciary Standard occupies a position of special trust and confidence when working with a client. As a Fiduciary, the financial advisor is required to act with undivided loyalty to the client. This includes disclosure of how the financial advisor is to be compensated and any corresponding conflicts of interest. 

I think this is the right way for all financial advisors to treat their clients; some very deep pockets in the financial services industry disagree.  

Is Your Financial Advisor Like a Replacement Ref?

I wrote this on September 26th of this year two days after the infamous Monday night game where the replacement refs robbed my beloved Green Bay Packers on a blown call at the end of the game in Seattle.  This was the game that brought the NFL referee lockout to an end.  Since then the Packers have won 7 of their last 8 games and stand atop the NFC North, Seattle has also had a good season and stands a 8-5 and are in the playoff hunt.  Nothing in this update about finance but I have been a lifelong NFL and Green Bay Packer fan.

Lessons From the Groupon and Facebook IPOs

Since writing this shares of Facebook have risen to over $27 per share from just under $18 when I wrote this post in early September of this year.  This is still far below the $38 IPO price in May, but the stock appears to be in the midst of a rally.  Time will tell how the company fares as a publically traded entity.

Groupon went public at $20 per share in late 2011.  The stock currently sits around $4.25 per share almost the same price as when I wrote this post in September.  Since then there has been some excitement as at least one hedge fund has purchased shares and the Board retained founder Andrew Mason as the company’s CEO amid speculation that they had considered replacing him.  Lastly there were some rumors that Google, a former suitor, was once again interested in acquiring the company at what would be a bargain price compared to their last offer.  I fail to understand the economics of the daily deal “industry” and view this IPO as nothing more than a payday for the founders and the investment bankers.

That Nice Man at Church Wants to Sell Me a ….

Since writing this post in January of 2011, Bernard Madoff remains in jail, one of his sons committed suicide by hanging himself in his apartment, and four years after Madoff’s arrest the trustee assigned to try to recover assets has recovered about half of the $17.5 billion that investors lost.

In the interim another famous Ponzi schemer Alan Stanford has been convicted and imprisoned.  Sadly financial fraud, including affinity fraud, is still rampant and all investors need to protect themselves.

Risk, Reward, and Peyton Manning

When I wrote this post in March the Colts had just waived Manning rather than pay him the $28 million due him at the time.  Seemed like a reasonable bet at the time given that he was coming off of neck surgery and had missed the entire 2011 season.

Peyton ended up in Denver and has the Broncos on the cusp of the playoffs with 10 wins as I write this.

Meanwhile the Colts took Stanford’s Andrew Luck as the first overall pick in the draft and he has performed beyond expectations.  He has the Colts in the playoff hunt after the team won only 2 games during 2011.  Further the team has rallied in the face of adversity with their coach being forced off the sidelines to battle leukemia.  Thankfully he is in remission.

Overall a win-win for both teams, both teams are so far being rewarded for the investments they made in Manning and Luck.

Just as with these blog posts, it’s a good idea to revisit your reasons for making financial and investment decisions to see if things panned out as you had thought at the time.  This is not to second guess yourself, but rather to reexamine your assumptions to see if you need to adjust your decision making process in the future. 

As always please feel free to contact me with your financial planning questions.

Photo credit:  Wikipedia

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