As you begin to think about your goals and objectives for 2025, there are five ‘Bs’ you may want to consider:
1. Bottom-up – Top-down
2. Better Plan Sponsor Training
3. Blockbuster Video vs. Netflix
4. BOTs
5. ‘Brain Rot’ caused by booze, bands, and bogus industry awards
All five ‘Bs’ are interrelated, mutually supportive, and designed to improve retirement outcomes.
Bottom-up – Top-down
As an industry, we have done a particularly excellent job of improving the plan participant experience. We have employed behavioral finance and its ancillary tools such as financial wellness programs, appealing enrollment meetings and communication kits, and better investment options.
However, to improve retirement outcomes, we need to take both a bottom-up and top-down approach. We also need to learn how to use the neuro and behavioral sciences, such as behavioral governance, to inspire and engage the plan sponsor.
Better Plan Sponsor Training
Traditional fiduciary training for plan sponsors often falls flat. There is too much legalese, industry jargon, and regulatory complexity, and not enough relevance to the plan sponsor’s day-to-day responsibilities.
Behavioral governance is designed to overcome these shortcomings by using a universal decision-making framework that is integrated with leadership and stewardship behaviors. It provides the plan sponsor with an engaging process they can use every day…to lead a team, department, division, C-suite, board, or investment committee.
Blockbuster Video vs. Netflix
Open enrollment classroom training is dead…a casualty of the pandemic and the demand for more personal agency (autonomous control – think work from home).
The training industry is experiencing its own Blockbuster Video versus Netflix moment. Professionals are reluctant to commit to training if they are locked into specific travel and time constraints. No one wants to pay late fees or be dinged for failing to rewind a training video!
BOTs
The future of professional development is BOTs—AI Generative closed chatbots.
Neuroscience informs is that the typical adult will forget 90% of what they were taught 3-6 months after a training program. Knowing that, we should be creating micro-courses that provide a solid overview, and then use BOTs to provide the details when the learner is ready. The BOT serves as a coach, teacher, and mentor when the learner needs it most.
One way to accelerate adult learning and improve retention is to integrate a BOT with a MindMap – a heuristic (graphic) designed to summarize key information.
If a picture is worth 1,000 words…a heuristic is worth 10,000.
This MindMap (heuristic) is designed to integrate with a behavioral governance BOT. It can be used for the training of retirement advisors, plan sponsors, directors, senior staff, trustees, and investment committee members.
‘Brain rot’ caused by booze, bands, and bogus industry awards
Oxford Dictionary has selected ‘brain rot’ as the ‘Word of the Year for 2024.’ It is an excellent term to sum up the current state of professional development.
Coming out of the pandemic, we were all ready to party and to let our hair down. But…it is time to start diverting sales and marketing budgets back to their original purpose—training and professional development.
Word on the street is that younger retirement advisors lack a firm understanding of fiduciary best practices and are not able to apply the practices to a plan sponsor’s decision-making framework.
So too, roll-ups are finding that there is a critical need to ensure that every practice shares a common ethos and approach to good governance. Most importantly, the original practice leaders will soon complete their contracts; is the next generation of retirement advisors ready to lead?
If we want to improve retirement outcomes in 2025, we need to make a renewed commitment to professional development. We need to learn to supplement classroom and virtual training with BOTs. And we need to provide plan sponsors and the next generation of retirement practice leaders with training that is both inspiring and engaging.
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