Why Retirement Plan Specialists May Need to Broaden their Scope
Is being a solely a retirement plan specialist enough anymore, or do specialists today need to broaden the scope of the services they provide in order to thrive?
This question was posed to the audience on several occasions from some high-profile retirement industry leaders during the opening session of the 2026 Viking Cove Institute 100 Summit last Thursday at the Omni La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, Calif.
“The fact of the matter is that a lot of people have a lot more immediate priorities than retirement, said Financial Finesse President Todd Lacey, speaking in the event’s first panel of the day alongside American Retirement Association CEO Brian Graff and Barbara Delaney of fiduciary oversight company SS/RBA.
“I think we need to start looking across industries and integrating the way we approach these things a lot more. Instead of one industry focused on saving more, investing wisely and then another industry focusing on ESAs and health insurance, we need to be smarter about the way we’re addressing these issues through the workplace and beyond,” Lacey said. “Nothing feels better than when you get people to a place where they can really start thinking about retirement, and retiring with dignity and resetting that issue for them.”
Lacey added that if the advisor’s goal is financial wellness for the employee population, you can’t just focus on the 401(k). You need to be helping with adjacent issues such as health care, wealth management, insurance and HSAs. Doing so can make the client “stickier,” more profitable and can also alleviate pressure to bring on more new clients.
“If you’re not equipped to have these conversations with your clients, regardless of your specialty, the door is open for someone else to come in,” Lacey said.
The healthcare conundrum
While there has no doubt been a convergence of wealth and retirement planning in recent years, these days there are increasing calls for retirement plan specialists to utilize their fiduciary expertise to help plan sponsors with another major benefits challenge—health care.
“When we talk about health and wealth, I would say that for the vast majority of Americans, their wealth is in their 401(k) retirement plan and their home—and that’s it. There is no wealth to manage,” said veteran retirement industry leader Barb Delaney. “How do we overlook healthcare as something that we don’t address, because healthcare right now is the highest cost from plan sponsors—even higher than sometimes payroll. So if you look at how much it costs for healthcare, we’ve really got to get it under control.”
She went on to note that healthcare costs have continued to rise while the cost of 401(k)s has gone down 75% over the past 15 years.
ARA’s Graff pointed to the recent Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) proposed regulation. The Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration in late January proposed a rule, Improving Transparency Into Pharmacy Benefit Manager Fee Disclosure, that would impose new disclosure obligations on PBMs serving group health plans covered under ERISA. The rule would require PBMs to provide plan fiduciaries with detailed information about their compensation and financial arrangements, enabling fiduciaries to evaluate the reasonableness of PBM fees and satisfy their ERISA fiduciary duties.
“This is a big deal—it’s game changing,” Graff said. “Think about what 408(b)(2) did for 401(k) plans. It didn’t instantly reduce costs—it took some time to take hold have an impact, have plan sponsors working with their fiduciary advisors to work through the muck. But having that process of evaluating the fees led to a pretty steady reduction in fees in those plans that were arguably higher than were necessary.
“This is very much symmetric to what happened in the 401(k) space in the late 90s/early 2000s,” Graff added. “Don’t sleep on that rule. It’s a big deal.”
‘Uniquely positioned’ to help
The day’s second panel, featuring Pat Moore and Doug Bermudez of Pretekt, Healthcare Rebel Alliance CEO Ann Lewandowski, Healthplan IQ’s Josh Jeffries and Health Rosetta and Nautilus Health Institute’s Sean Schantzen, went on to reiterate that retirement plan specialists are uniquely positioned to help on the healthcare insurance front.
“You are in a position with your knowledge and expertise to have an impact.”
Healthplan IQ’s Josh Jeffries
“We figured out that the best-positioned folks to talk about what’s happening in healthcare is the people in this room—you are the trusted fiduciary. They trust you with their most important asset—their people. They’re going to trust you about this as well,” Bermudez said.
“You’re already doing these things. I can tell you brokers have no idea how to be a fiduciary,” Jeffries said. “You are in a position with your knowledge and expertise to have an impact.”
He gave the example of an HR professional with perhaps a dozen different responsibilities with benefits being only a small part of their role.
“They could be running a $40 million health plan where employees are contributing $10 million of that. And they’re taking advice from a commission-incentivized advisor who does not consider themselves a fiduciary, and whose primary education on the products they’re selling comes from the carrier that creates them.”
SEE ALSO:
• Industry Leaders Converging on Carlsbad for 2026 VCI 100 Summit
Veteran financial services industry journalist Brian Anderson joined 401(k) Specialist as Managing Editor in January 2019. He has led editorial content for a variety of well-known properties including Insurance Forums, Life Insurance Selling, National Underwriter Life & Health, and Senior Market Advisor. He has always maintained a focus on providing readers with timely, useful information intended to help them build their business.