It’s hardly news to note the rapidly increasing pace of change in the 401k and defined contribution space—specifically as it relates to advisors and the manner in which they serve plan sponsors and participants.
The frenzied fiduciary air, in particular, has many lifting their heads and looking around for sources of information that filter the noise.
It’s one reason Nuveen launched next, a thought leadership e-newsletter of timely topics geared to plan fiduciaries.
“We wrote next for plan sponsors, but we aimed it at advisors, so they would have this routine periodical where we hit the top issues and toughest challenges of being a retirement plan fiduciary,” says Brendan McCarthy, DCIO national sales manager with the company. “With all the changes out there, the role of the retirement plan advisor has never been more valuable to the plan sponsor, and next is a way to help advisors ensure that their plan sponsor clients are in front of these issues.”
More succinctly, “it’s tomorrow’s fiduciary challenges that we want the advisors to be able to bring to their plan sponsors today.”
The list includes regulatory changes, increased litigation and the convergence of health, wealth and retirement, to name a few. It’s designed as a guide to help advisors educate their plan sponsors on what’s coming next (get it?) in the ERISA fiduciary world.
The genesis came from plan sponsors, but also from members of Nuveen’s Retirement Outcomes Leadership Council, many of whom were receiving these very questions from clients.
“We wanted to make sure we were able to use next as a tool for them to be able to cut through the noise and focus on what’s most important as a plan fiduciary, and what we think will be coming out quote/unquote next from the DC world,” Christine Stokes, head of DCIO strategy at Nuveen, adds.
With so much attention given to the “3s”—3(38), 3(21) and 3(16)—the educational need is certainly there.
The newsletter is structured in four parts; investments, participant engagement, fiduciary perspectives and emerging trends.
“The content, and what we choose to speak about, within each of those categories will vary from issue to issue, but we really want to make sure that we address those key components of a plan fiduciary’s responsibilities and how they can think about it in the context of fiduciary outcomes,” Stokes explains. “We’re really lucky in the sense that we’re the fourth largest manager of defined contribution assets and our parent is one of largest recordkeepers, so we have an enormous amount of expertise across our enterprise.”
Hot topics
So what hot topics are they currently (or soon) covering?
“One that’s received the most attention was our article on the convergence of health and retirement savings,” Stokes notes, referring to what she says is explosive growth in the HSA market. “We were interested in how advisors are thinking about HSAs in their practice and how plan sponsors are constructing their HSAs; either as savings vehicles or retirement vehicles or a combination of both.”
More importantly, they wondered, how is that impacting their retirement savings?
“We looked across all three of those areas and pulled together this article to educate about these emerging trends and what they mean for this convergence of health and retirement savings. The No. 1 concern on participants’ minds is running out of money in retirement, but No. 2 is not having enough money for health care. They’re increasingly intertwined and we wanted to make sure that we were talking about it in a way that was relevant to all our parties and bringing in all of our clients,” Stokes said.
And, of course, QDIA rates high on their list of topics, with McCarthy mentioning the high number of questions he and his team receive as it relates to the QDIA evaluation.
“We, therefore, wanted to touch on the review process, the factors that we prioritize in looking at a target date QDIA and then slowly evolve into how it should be thought about in the context of the decumulation principles,” Stokes concludes. “Those are just two that were top of mind that were very well received.”
Advisors can sign up for an e-subscription to next that they can download and share at https://www.nuveen.com/dcio-next-subscribe-now. They can also receive hard copies of the publication to share with clients and prospects upon request.
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.
