Anticipating an increase in smaller businesses offering retirement plans to their workers as a result of the SECURE Act, PCS Retirement and Envestnet Retirement Solutions are partnering to launch a turnkey planning tool to help advisors serve sponsors and participants while meeting their fiduciary responsibilities.
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The SECURE Act paved the way for small businesses to offer retirement saving benefits to workers through Open Multiple Employer Plans. The act eliminated requirements that employers in open MEPs have common traits, and protects them from liability if another member violates fiduciary rules.
“With the path cleared for more small businesses to sponsor employee retirement savings plans, our industry needs a solution that can make professional wealth management accessible and affordable for retirement plan participants—while also mitigating fiduciary risk for the sponsors,” Mark Klein, CEO of PCS Retirement, said in a statement.
PCS Retirement is integrating its recordkeeping platform with Envestnet’s wealth management platform to create ManagedPlan. PCS will be responsible for plan-level recordkeeping and administrative services. Advisors will also have single sign-on access to PCS’s Advisor Lab 401(k) Toolkit through Envestnet.
“The pooling of experience, innovation and service from ERS and PCS through ManagedPlan disrupts the status quo and creates a powerful tool for advisors to bring a new level of value to plan sponsors and participants alike,” Klein said.
Envestnet will act as the 3(38) investment manager, providing risk- and objective-based model portfolios.
“The managers and models in Envestnet PMC’s Fund Strategist Network, which are well-known and widely used by financial advisors in the wealth management community, are now—for the first time—available to advisors servicing retirement plans sponsored by small businesses,” Jim Patrick, group president of Envestnet | PMC, said in a statement. “This industry milestone can help registered representatives potentially improve retirement outcomes, and help make financial wellness a reality, for employees of small businesses across the country.”
ManagedPlan will initially be available to one of Envestnet’s large broker-dealer clients, before being rolled out to other advisors on Envestnet’s platform.
Danielle Andrus works as an editor for The Financial Planning Association® (FPA®). Over the past 15 years, she has worked in various capacities, including writing and editing. Andrus has worked for several notable publications and outlets and spent more than seven years as the executive managing editor at ALM Media, publisher of Investment Advisor magazine and ThinkAdvisor.com. Before that, she was online editor for Summit Professional Networks, where she oversaw newsletter development for four magazines, including Benefits Selling, Senior Market Advisor, Boomer Market Advisor, and Bank Advisor.
