Anyone who knows industry personality and entrepreneur Josh Itzoe knows it’s impossible to put time constraints on anything he says. We tried and failed; his passion for what he does takes hold, and he just goes.
“I believe that hiring the right retirement plan advisor is the single most important decision a company will make for itself and its people in terms of driving outcomes over the next 20-30 years. The impact of this decision compounds over time.”
It’s something Itzoe said almost as rote, a clarifying phrase repeated in a number of areas since he announced the launch of FiduciaryRx in early March, “a new, modern fintech platform that empowers retirement advisors to diagnose, prescribe and improve Fiduciary Wellness.”
“I want to be a champion for the retirement plan advisor community,” he explained. “I built the first iteration of this platform a decade ago, and I used it to help grow my practice, so I knew that it worked. I built it because it really redefined, reimagined, and reenergized the whole conversation around Fiduciary.”
Taking issue with those that claim funds, fees, and fiduciary are dead, he argued that fiduciaries make 99% of the decisions for their employees. By using the platform, advisors can deepen their conversations and make them more meaningful and actionable.
“Advisors need to tell a more powerful story, and they need to capture the hearts and the minds of their clients,” Itzoe added. “They need a better way to engage their [plan sponsors] clients and get them to, one, understand how important the job is, and two, what high performance looks like. They need to cast a vision towards aspirational goals.”
“It moves the conversation to actions and outcomes …”
The mechanism to do it is with his Fiduciary Wellness score, which quantifies and gamifies the process much like a credit score.
“It moves the conversation to actions and outcomes because plan sponsors now have a simple but powerful framework to get a sense for how they’re doing. More often than not, they’re not doing great, so they then want to know what they need to do to improve. It gives advisors the ability, literally in five minutes, to be able to generate a clear set of expectations and recommendations to improve that score over time.”
It’s a great retention tool for advisors because advisors always want to understand how to demonstrate their value better. It tracks the score over time, which is a powerful motivator that will “elevate the advisor’s game, but also retirement plan committees. It just leads to better outcomes.”
In addition to FiduciaryRx, he created the Fiduciary U fiduciary training platform, developed in conjunction with high-profile ERISA attorney Fred Reish.
“Plan sponsors have an option of going beyond looking at what benefits the participants or employer,” Reish said. “Meeting minimal objectives of the law is not the goal.”
“What I’m trying to do is build a tribe of advisors that I can invest in, mentor, support, and champion,” Itzoe concluded. “It really combines tech, training, tools, and advice. I want to help more advisors win more business, help more people, and build careers they can be proud of that make a difference.”
FiduciaryRx, Fiduciary U, and the FiduciaryWor(k)s Community are part of an annual membership for advisors.
More information is found HERE.
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.