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Sounds like something I would use! Few questions that came to mind for me: - What's the incentive on the advisor to offer the add-on service? Is it to eventual
by charleyma 11y ago
Sounds like something I would use!
Few questions that came to mind for me:
- What's the incentive on the advisor to offer the add-on service? Is it to eventually increase AUM and encourage more 401k savings from the users? Would be curious to learn if there are any numbers around this or users taking loans out, etc
- What does the platform look like? White-labeled self-hosted? What does an integration look like for the advisor
- What would be the general distribution plan and target market for getting advisors on board?
- wj 11y agoThanks for the questions, Charley! The incentive for the advisor would be to gain new business (increase AUM) by being more competitive with their array of services in proposals (not to mention hopefully having some great metrics from WorkPlay401(k) to include) as well as maintaining current business by rolling out our financial wellness platform as a new service for existing clients. I think the latter is just as important as companies are constantly courted by advisors to switch their 401(k) provider. Here is a very quick video that gives an overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C-FmUImG3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C-FmUImG3U Basically it is a series of questions (kind of modeled off of how TaxAct works) for the participant after which a financial plan is created for them. Then can continue to use it with any transactions or information they enter modifying their goal progress, outstanding to dos, financial plan, and budget. They also receive emails that let them know how much is left in their monthly budget, account balances, the next steps they need to take, and content based on their goals, age, and personal financial situation. I'd like to get a little farther in my sales process before making a full decision on this but I'm thinking it will be more co-labled (ABC Advisor powered by WorkPlay401(k) than a complete white-label situation. No self-hosting as I cannot even imagine the support needed to roll out to everybody from banks down to one man RIA shops. I know some compliance managers would prefer self-hosted but I have found that they are changing their tunes as their advisors are demanding to use cloud-based software and their I.T. departments are starting to use cloud based Exchange and whatnot. The advisor has a dashboard they can access and then we will tie in with the most commonly used service desk software that the larger or more technologically advanced ones use. For compliance purposes we can also set it up to BCC them on any email sent to their participants. Right now I have a list of 1844 advisors (though lots of firms have multiple advisors under them) that I have imported into Close.io and have begun reaching out to. I'm getting some nibbles and am learning a lot about what message to use, the kind of materials they require, and the most common objections. The target market to begin with are advisors that do provide some level of participant education rather than the advisors that only pick investments and hand everything else off to Fidelity. If you have any other questions please ask them here or email me at will at the domain.