Latest Perspectives

Distributors across the retirement landscape—broker-dealers and aggregators alike—remain focused on the convergence of retirement and wealth. Most see the sweet spot for wealth clients in the $1M–$3M range and we receive many questions on how firms can profitably serve the “average” participant below this level. More recently, however, aggregators have also been building out capabilities on the opposite end of the spectrum.

Yet another weather event has shutdown most of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast; so, stuck inside and with travel plans canceled, we have some time to think about the big picture a bit. And today our minds are on PEPs, and specifically a quote from a large PPP that we recently talked to who, putting himself in the position of plan sponsors, asked “why do I need an advisor if I’m in a PEP?”

In recent conversations with members, we’ve started hearing more questions about whether trustee consolidation could be on the horizon. The discussion is coming from two angles. First, there’s speculation that smaller trustees that haven’t been able to scale their CIT businesses to the size of a Great Gray could eventually become acquisition targets.

We recently completed our annual survey on retirement services providers’ top opportunities and concerns for 2026. Perhaps not surprisingly, AI, PEPs, private markets, and CITs all scored as top areas of focus in the new year. Equally unsurprising is that lawsuits and cyber threats remain top challenges. What is interesting, however, is that “execution” is an important undercurrent within the data and in many of the conversations we’ve had in the new year. 

With our annual DCIO Forum approaching in late February, we are now about halfway through our interview process. There are a whole host of interesting topics being raised from increasingly intertwined economics with recordkeepers to driving sales teams to use of AI.

Last week, we hosted our Relationship Management Executive Council meeting in Philadelphia (thanks, Transamerica, for hosting!) where the theme was “modernizing” the RM function. The world of relationship management is changing fast. Revenue pressure means that RMs are being asked to sell as well as serve. AI offers opportunity for significant productivity increases. The intermediary landscape continues to consolidate. And, new plan structures (i.e., PEPs) require a rethink of what it means to manage a relationship.

Six years ago, in our 2019 DCIO meeting, the news that Empower intended to launch a partner program led to our first heated debate about the cost of establishing partnerships between recordkeepers and DCIOs. This program was a substantial enough investment that many firms had to go through new levels of sign-off and provide a business case to justify the new line item in their budget.

Last week, we held our annual Sales Executive Forum for senior leaders in the recordkeeping and DCIO businesses.  The theme focused on the rapid changes in the industry and how firms are responding to trends like advisor consolidation, artificial intelligence, and the proliferation of new product solutions (most notably PEPs and private markets).

In October, the RLF hosted our annual Aggregator Forum as well as an event for leading “Next Generation” advisor talent. The combination of these two events provided interesting perspective into the future distribution of defined contribution plans. There are small changes happening across the industry.

Recent DC-related headlines continue to be dominated by private markets related activity. Last month, T. Rowe Price and Goldman Sachs announced a partnership that will, among other things, result in “new, co-branded target-date strategies that leverage T. Rowe Price’s expertise in the retirement blend series while broadening plan participants’ access to private markets.”

Today, the RLF will host its fifth annual Aggregator Executive Forum. After five years of rapid growth, Aggregator firms look dramatically different than they did at our first Forum in January of 2020. In fact, the acceleration of changes over the last few months alone have had a significant impact on the retirement plan distribution landscape.

We are interviewing sales leaders at both recordkeeping and DCIO firms for our upcoming Sales Forum on November 12-13 in Atlanta (thanks to Invesco for hosting!). We’re early in the process, but we’re already starting to get a good sense for the trends and topics that we’ll put on the agenda. Below is a quick preview of what we’re hearing in our research interviews.

As a researcher, it’s easy to get excited about product innovation. Launches of new investment products and recordkeeping services certainly make for great case studies and showcase our smart members. However, lately in conversations with advisors, it seems like there is a desire to get back to the basics.

Private markets in DC plans are getting a lot of attention in the press and on social media lately in the wake of the Executive Order and a number of new product announcements from retirement-focused firms. The topic has generated a lot of debate about their appropriateness (or not) for the typical 401(k) plan participant.

On August 5th, 2025, RLF hosted a virtual event for its DCIO members. Thirty-two firms attended and participated in a robust conversation about the increasingly complicated partnerships and product relationships required to be successful in the DCIO space. In this week’s newsletter, we are sharing the write-up from the event and our supporting resource.

We’ve dedicated a great deal of time and research to the wealth opportunity within retirement plans. The numbers are compelling: the average $5M retirement plan has 14 viable wealth prospects (meaning 14 individuals with more than $400,000 in outside investable assets) that together hold ~$7.4M in outside investable assets. For advisors, the difficulty remains in scaling the approach.

We were at an industry event last week and one of the speakers shared a very simple example of how far AI has to go to be truly “intelligent.” He made a seemingly simple request of ChatGPT: draw a picture of a watch set to 10:30. What you will get is the image to the left. Clearly the watch in the image is not set to 10:30.

This year, for the first time, we are putting together detailed “profiles” of recordkeepers’ sales teams. Since 2022, we’ve published profiles of DCIO sales teams and given all the consolidation among recordkeepers and within their key sales channels, there’s growing interest in how they are structuring and compensating their sales teams in this new environment.

On Thursday, we will host sales leadership from recordkeepers with large (50M+) and small market (<$50M) breakout sessions. According to the numbers, 2025 is off to a good start. Eight out of 9 small market RKs reported an increase in YOY sales for Q1, with half of those firms reporting an increase of more than 10%. In the large market, more than 70% of responding firms have seen a YOY increase in RFPs received and finals presentations completed.

We recently completed our mid-year RM leadership survey and roundtable event for top recordkeepers and found that “while some things stay the same,” other areas of the business are changing rapidly. Looking first at what’s the same, in the small market, executives expect retention to remain steady in 2025 at around 96%. Large market executives held a similar view with expected retention in the 98% range.

Last week, the RLF attended the NAPA 401(k) Summit. As in past years, the attendee and speaker lists were impressive. We spent three days catching up with colleagues and friends and gleaning new insights. We also had the opportunity to share some of our own insights from our recent NAPA Advisor Research Institute (NARI) survey, which looked at advisor perspectives on PEPs, managed accounts, and retirement income.

Next week, we’ll be at the NAPA Summit in Las Vegas presenting the latest insights from the NAPA Advisor Research Institute (NARI), a joint venture between RLF and the American Retirement Association. This year’s session will focus on advisors’ uptake of key recent product innovations and is based on a survey of almost 200 top advisors.

At our annual DCIO event in late February, members engaged in a lively conversation about the rising expense of partnerships in 2025. Across the last 5+ years, we’ve seen a significant rise in the number and cost of partner programs with both recordkeepers and advisory firms. Empower was the first recordkeeper to put a significant ask in front of DCIO firms and faced some early questions about whether they could deliver value to justify the cost.

We asked about our members’ top areas of interest for 2025 in a survey late last year, and AI was a big vote receiver. With that in mind, we’ve started our research into the topic—interviewing our members and scouring the internet for AI-related articles—and wanted to share a few early findings.

On February 26th and 27th, the RLF hosted its annual in-person DCIO Executive Forum, where we spent two days digging into the 2025 investment landscape. Leading DCIO firms are pursuing two parallel paths to growth this year. First, asset managers continue catering to the top players or partners in the industry. Partnership with the aggregators and top-tier recordkeepers remain paramount.

As we prepare to participate in another PEPs panel, it’s clear that the momentum behind PEPs in 2024 is continuing full tilt in 2025. Our recent PEPs report found that, across the next three years, 88% of recordkeepers believe that PEPs will experience significant growth. Meanwhile, more recordkeepers are entering the PEPs space, Equitable’s Retirement Access being the latest example.

Last week, we published our 2025 aggregator profiles. For this research, we interviewed multiple national account managers (NAMs) from more than 20 different asset managers to provide perspective into the top aggregator firms (thanks to all who participated!). While retirement acquisitions have slowed for many firms, based on the number of updates we made, it’s safe to say that pace of change at these firms has not slowed.

On January 21st, we hosted our annual “Kicking Off” webinar, a session we hold every January to summarize our members’ outlook for the coming year. It’s based on a survey of dozens of executives from our member firms and covers not only their expected business results, but also the issues and trends that they believe will have the largest impact on the DC business.

Last year, we welcomed Apollo into our membership and published a case study highlighting their early innovations in incorporating Private Investments into the DC plan. Along with a few other members like Franklin Templeton, they are already live with CITs that contain private investments. Building on that momentum, at the start of the new year, the topic of Private Equity in DC plans is popping up in headlines everywhere.

As we do at the end of every year, we are currently in the process of surveying our members about the trends that they will watch most closely and the topics they’d most like to see covered in our research in 2025. We are early in the survey process, but some clear trends are emerging.

In an industry where we typically see small, incremental changes that happen at a glacial pace, 2025 has the potential to be different kind of year. Some of the changes on the horizon may not only happen quickly but have wide-reaching and long-term impacts. As we build our research agenda for next year, we want to hear from you. How different do you think 2025 will be? What “trends” do you think will make the biggest impact? What changes are you most excited about?

On October 29 and 30, we held our third-annual Sales Executive Forum where we hosted 80 sales leaders from nearly 40 of the top firms. In speaking with recordkeepers leading up to the event, analyzing our pre-meeting survey data, and listening to discussions at the event, it’s clear they are focused on two strategic initiatives in 2025.

Just over a week ago, High Tower announced its strategic investment in NEPC, which has more than $540B in retirement assets under advisement. The deal was a big topic of conversation at our Sales Executive Forum – another wealth management firm buying into the retirement plan business likely to pursue the participant relationship (similar to Creative Planning’s purchase of Lockton or even Mariner’s purchase of AndCo).

We are in the final stages of preparations for our 2024 Sales Executive Forum, an event we’ll hold on October 29-30 in Boston (special thanks to our hosts at John Hancock). As we look through the data from surveys filled out by 40 firms, several key trends about the current and future sales environment have stood out.

Last Monday, it was announced that TPG Capital acquired a minority stake in Creative Planning. A Citywire article reported that Creative Planning was valued at $16B, an impressive 23x EBITDA. While little has been revealed about what Creative Planning will do with the influx of capital, additional acquisitions and further investment in the convergence of retirement and wealth seem likely.

Two major developments in the recordkeeping space have dominated the 401(k) news cycle over the last few weeks: TIAA’s partnership with Accenture and Voya’s agreement to acquire OneAmerica’s recordkeeping business. While the steps that TIAA and OneAmerica took are different, both developments seem driven by the enormous cost of maintaining a competitive recordkeeping platform. And, not surprisingly, our member conversations have been peppered with the inevitable questions of “who’s next?”

As we prepare for our 2024 Sales Executive Forum, TPAs continue to pop up as an agenda item. TPAs have long been a critical partner for all of our small market recordkeepers and have been, like many other providers in the retirement plan space, going through significant consolidation. Private equity firms have also had a hand in the growth and consolidation of some TPAs.

We are wrapping up our research that takes a deep dive into pooled solutions and wanted to share a few highlights in advance of our PEPs webinar next month. By way of background, the research examines the current state and expected future growth of recordkeepers’ pooled plan solutions. Our goal is to get a much more detailed understanding of the size of the opportunity.

In March, we published our big DCIO strategic research study called Operating in a New Oligopoly. This 2024 research highlighted the concentration of power amongst centers of influence in the DCIO space. A select set of recordkeepers are controlling more of the business as well as a select group of distributors.

We’ve spent a lot of time in recent months talking to recordkeepers, advisors, and DCIOs about more “forward-looking“ topics: their expectations in areas like PEPs, retirement income, and the convergence of retirement to wealth. What strikes us as we pull back and look at the bigger picture is that, depending on the direction these trends take, the industry could look very different a decade from now…but then again, it might look pretty much the same.

Across the last three years, we’ve dedicated a lot of time and research real estate to the convergence of retirement and wealth. The opportunity for advisors that move beyond a 3Fs conversation and initiate a broader financial conversation with participants presents a significant opportunity for differentiation and revenue growth.

We are midway through a deep dive on the pooled plan market, and as with any of our research projects, some facts are becoming clear while others are still a bit fuzzy. And, perhaps most interestingly, some initial beliefs about the benefits of PEPs aren’t proving true whatsoever. As we work on the research, we wanted to share some early insights from our interviews with recordkeepers.

According to Cerulli, CITs have surpassed mutual funds as the top investment vehicle for DCIO assets last year. The two main drivers of this growth have been cost (RLF research finds that the typical CIT is 15% cheaper than your cheapest mutual fund share class) and the ability to offer even deeper pricing discounts to sizable plans and partners (e.g., relationship pricing for both distributors and recordkeepers).

Tomorrow, we will hold our semi-annual virtual roundtable for relationship management leaders at the top recordkeeping firms. As we analyze the pre-meeting survey results, one trend stands out: for most firms, RFP activity in the large market is up and pricing is down. Thirty percent of recordkeepers report that RFP activity is significantly higher in the first half of 2024 compared to the same time last year, and another 30% say it’s somewhat higher.

Retirement income continues to dominate industry headlines this year. There have been countless new innovations launched, middleware companies rising up to solve for connectivity issues, and major recordkeepers like Empower and Fidelity live or going live with suites of in-plan income products. Firms have worked hard to simplify retirement income by wrapping it within a target date fund or managed account offering.

Financial Wellness and Managed Accounts are often talked about as separate offerings, but interestingly, the current trend is to combine them into a single, integrated participant experience. The most recent example of this trend comes from Morningstar, that revealed that they are launching “Personal Financial Builder,” a financial wellness solution that tackles participant issues such as dept reduction and student loan repayment.

As part of our joint venture with NAPA, we shared early results from our first NAPA Advisor Research Institute (NARI) survey at the NAPA 401(k) Summit in Nashville. The session was packed with advisors that actively engaged in sharing their thoughts on the survey results and areas where they think the data can help them most.

On March 13-14, we held our annual DCIO Executive Forum in Boston. We hosted 40 executives to discuss how they are operating their DCIO businesses in an environment that increasingly looks like an “oligopoly.” That is, with consolidation of recordkeepers and advisor firms, DCIOs are faced with selling through a smaller number of extremely large and influential players.

On Wednesday, the RLF will host its 2024 DCIO Executive Forum. This marks our 8th annual DCIO event since founding the firm and it comes at an interesting time for the DCIO business. We’ve titled the research “Operating in an Oligopoly” as we continue to see a small set of partners wielding more power over the retirement plan space (and investment decisions).

It’s still only February, but it looks like 2024 might be “the year of the PEP.” Recent retirement-related headlines have featured a flood of new PEP offerings from the likes of HUB, JULY, Ascensus/American Funds, and others. Meanwhile, PEP assets at Ascensus and The Standard recently surpassed the $1 billion threshold, joining other significant PEP players like Transamerica, Empower, Voya, and Principal.