On September 12th, a press release announced the launch of the NAPA Advisor Research Institute (NARI), a joint venture between NAPA and the Retirement Leadership Forum. From a researcher’s point of view, the thousands of NAPA members are an incredible, yet untapped, source of insight for the retirement industry. Through surveys, focus groups, and one-on-one interviews, NARI will develop research that will help advisors improve their practices while providing a new level of understanding to the recordkeepers, asset managers, and other service providers that work with them.
We will continue to produce our research for DCIOs, recordkeepers, and the distributor home offices (i.e., aggregators and broker-dealers) as we have since 2017. That membership remains separate and unchanged.
However, we’ve long believed that ongoing, in-depth research on retirement advisors is an important “third leg of the stool” that is critical to a holistic understanding of the retirement business. By partnering with the association that represents 95% of all retirement advisors, we will be able to produce research with a comprehensiveness that has heretofore been unavailable in the market.
As the press release indicates, access to NARI’s research will be available as a subscription through NAPA. Please feel free to reach out with any questions or contact Tom Connolly to participate.