What’s considered business casual for a 61-year-old child of the 1970s?
A vintage Stevie Nicks t-shirt and jean jacket, which is COVID-chic for Brad Arends, CEO of Minnesota-based intellicents.
Arends is far out in front of the convergence of retirement saving, personal financial planning and health care, and he joins Ross Marino, CEO of Advisor2X, for a relaxed (yet fascinating) inaugural episode of the OUTCOMES podcast.
“The personal wealth industry wants to deliver planning services to the C suite—the 1% of Americans as determined by income,” he tells Marino. “They openly acknowledge that there’s a market there for what they refer to as ‘the 99%’ (or more commonly they call them “the underserved”). Those are our 401k participants. At intellicents, we believe that the 99% needs financial planning as badly as the 1%.”
LISTEN TO MARINO AND ARENDS HERE
While intellicents started as an advisory firm for qualified retirement plans soon after the passage of ERISA (with a heavy emphasis on fiduciary consulting services), the firm now has four major business lines:
- Retirement
- Group insurance
- Private wealth management
- Worksite financial wellness (the glue that binds the others together)
“You’re not someone who does employer-sponsored plans and then said, ‘Hey, we really need to add financial planning,” Marino remarks to Arends. “Or you’re not the financial planner that said, ‘A lot of my clients have businesses, so I need to add 401ks.’ That’s how a lot of us enter this business. We may come from one side or the other, but you really did get the top-down view and have a background in all of them and understand the needs in each of those lines of business.”
GO HERE COMPLIMENTARY REGISTRATION FOR THE EXCEL 401(K) 2020 DIGITAL SERIES
To kicks things off, Arends relates a fascinating experience with his biggest and best client that “changed everything,” and it gets better from there.
What one thing must advisors do to add wealth management to a 401k practice? What has the pandemic exposed about American household money? What does wealth management look like for the average employee who does not require a full-blown, complex financial plan? Is it possible for holistic participant wellness to be delivered via an app?
Arends answers these questions and more. If you have a 401k firm and you’re thinking about how to manage participant decumulation, this podcast is a must-listen.
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.
