Sometimes it’s just words

So much of any industry is dedicated to marketing, because marketing can help a company sell a product or service just based on how it’s marketed. Whoever sold the pet rock is still probably laughing all the way to the bank.

In the retirement plan industry, there are quite a few marketers who can take a normal product or service that most providers offer, but make it sound more important than it really is. Sort of like Big Mac’s special sauce, which we all know to be Russian Dressing.

I remember a few years back of a third party administrator that I work with who developed this special professional services pension plan which was geared towards professional service companies that offered a pension with participant direction. All it really was, was a cash balance plan with participant direction (before PPA 2006 made participant direction in a cash balance plan impossible).

Look at the folks who offer fiduciary warranties where the provider neither serves as a fiduciary nor offers a warranty that will ever be used. As a friend of mine pointed out, the insurance providers who offers these warranties make money by insuring risk, so what does it say about those fiduciary warranties if they are free?

I can’t wait for the ERISA 3(16) or 3(38) fiduciary to call themselves a retirement plan concierge or butler to make what they do sound better for the masses.

The point is that as a retirement plan sponsor to make sure what you are getting in plan services, because a euphemism is a euphemism and that doesn’t protect you more than what contractually is being offered.

 

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