Stadion Money Management, known for its ETF and alternative investment strategies, recently announced that Ameritas has become the fifth company to add Stadion’s StoryLine small business 401k solution to its retirement platform.
StoryLine made its debut in April 2016, and bills itself as “a next-generation 401k managed account option for participants in the advisor-sold, small-plan market.”
Small-plan 401(k) participants are too often ignored, says Tim McCabe, senior vice president and national retirement sales director with the Georgia-based firm. StoryLine’s approach “recognizes every sponsor and employee as unique.”
“I was sitting in the audience of yet another industry conference when it hit me—a way to cost-effectively reach millennials and other ‘micro’ plan participants,” McCabe explains. “We originally had an informational website that we launched that was free, but we were maybe a bit ahead of the curve. It was before mobile technology was really heavily in use; the content was there, but few people were utilizing it.”
When he heard about younger participants ramping up in their use of phone and tablets and other mobile technology, and how they might not even want to deal with a live person, he realized the company already had done what was needed, and the timing had now caught up.
“We start with a short questionnaire for the plan sponsor,” he adds. “We want to know their average plan participant; is it older, blue collar workers or younger, white collar tech employees. We recognize one 35-year-old worker is different from another 35-year-old worker, so we then have participants take a two minute behavioral questionnaire. We then customize the asset allocation and glide paths for each. It’s all in accordance with DOL regulations and we’re a 3(38) firm.”
StoryLine allows – at the employee’s discretion – the inclusion of outside and spousal assets. The end goal of is to have each participant on a path that is personalized to their own circumstances and needs.
For 401k advisors, the “halo” benefit of StoryLine will be tools available to help deepen their relationships with sponsors and participants as they engage them at the plan level with tailored solutions, and at an individual level with personalized planning that goes beyond typical age- and risk-based investment strategies.
“Before, as an industry, we used to tell plan participants how to invest,” McCabe claims. “Now they tell us how they want to invest.”
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.
