There's often overlooked opportunity for retirement-plan business in a financial professional’s existing book. Rick Unser, partner and managing director at Creative Planning, shares ideas on how to use existing client relationships to prospect in the 401(k) world.

Rick Unser is not affiliated with Hartford Funds

So, John, if you’re anything like me, I know sometimes it can be really challenging to delve into an arena where you don’t quite feel like you’re an expert status if you don’t know the right terminology or the process or have all the facts or the figures. And again, for me, that creates a lot of anxiety. And sometimes I’m not great at just jumping in and starting to ask questions and picking up the pieces as they unfold. And I’m excited to chat with Rick today about his ideas on how to begin a conversation that you may have never had. I don’t know, John, how do you feel about that?

Well, yeah, I think the fear, Julie, is that we’re going to make a mistake. And believe it or not, mistakes happen. But if you think about it, it’s often in the course of making the mistake, which usually doesn’t turn out as calamitous as you think, that we actually learn a lot. We learn a lot about whatever it is we’re dealing with. We also learn a little bit more about ourselves. And so that’s what I really like about about how Rick Hunter approaches the topic of incorporating 41k planning into your business because he’s got such an easygoing flow and a reassuring kind of attitude that kind of makes me feel like anybody could do it.

I couldn’t agree more. I think the best days are the days where we step back and say, I learned something new today. I have an infusion of knowledge. So I’m really excited to speak with Rick Unser, who’s partner and managing director in Creative Planning’s retirement practice. Creative planning as a registered investment advisory firm that manages or advises on more than 225 billion in assets and serves clients in all 50 states. All opinions expressed by Rick are solely his own and do not represent the opinion of creative planning. Rick has over 20 years of experience working with retirement plans and has a unique depth of knowledge around plan investments, fees, design and employee outcomes. Rick is also the creator and host of the 401k Fridays podcast. He has released over 250 episodes featuring topical interviews with influential guests from around the retirement industry and multiple employers and plan sponsors. When not working or hosting his podcast, he is a proud husband and father of three who tries to squeeze in a round of golf whenever he can.

And you know, I can’t wait for our listeners to hear this conversation, Julie. And I ask that they pay special attention to those questions because he’s got some really great questions to help people think about getting a start on implementing this type of planning into your business. So without further delay, let’s listen in on the conversation we have with Rick Unser. Hi, I’m.

John, and I’m Julie.

We’re the hosts of the Hartford Funds Human Centric Investing Podcast.

Every other week, we’re talking with inspiring thought leaders to hear their best ideas for how you can transform your relationships with your clients.

Let’s go.

Welcome, Rick. Thanks so much for being here with us today on the Human Centric Investing podcast.

Thanks so much. Looking forward to it.

So, Rick, I love the fact that you try to squeeze around a golf in here and there. But, you know, I’ve been in the business a long time. And whenever we talk about the plan business, if you will, institutional business to everyday financial professionals who more or less

focus on individuals, the topic seems a little bit intimidating, but you say it really shouldn’t be. Why is that in your mind?

I don’t think 401K is any more intimidating than than anything else. It’s it’s different muscles. It’s a slightly different set of anachronisms. But what do you come down to? It so

is pretty much anything else if you think about it in the wealth management or personal financial business. I mean, if you sat me down with somebody and try to explain a life insurance program or you know why this isn’t a mek or something of that nature, I get lost right out of the gate. But at the same point of the time, there’s some skills and some things that I know about my client or I know about this company that I’m trying to support that really transcend maybe the language barrier. And I think that’s if nothing else, I think the most important thing for for anybody who’s trying to get into 401K or wants to incorporate 401k a little bit more into their book maybe to focus on is you’ve got a great set of skills. You’re probably a pretty good communicator and the language or the terms or the jargon can come along with this. You don’t have to know that right out of the gate.

So, Rick, it’s interesting. John and I sit down with financial professionals day in and day out. And, you know, oftentimes they share with us a bit about their practice and their team and sort of what the construct of their client base is. And and oftentimes they’ll say, oh, I don’t do anything in the plan arena or the for one arena. You know, I have I haven’t ever done that. And I wouldn’t even know where to start. And I think for those listening today, maybe you could start to walk us through what would a starting place be? Maybe when a financial professionals thinking about his or her current book of business. Is there opportunity there? What would you consider step one in the process?

I think step one is just kind of taking a look at who your clients are and what information you have on them. My guess is that if you’re going through and trying to help someone with general financial planning or trying to help them get on their a track for retirement, you’re probably asking them about, you know, do you have any retirement savings programs at work?

You know, do you have a 401k or 403(b) your SEP IRA or something of that nature? And for those people that do, you’re probably also asking them for a statement. And on that statement, there’s there’s a wealth of information that you can find on there. And in addition to just what investments do they have or what their balance might be, which are, you know, probably some pretty common inputs that you would need to put into whatever software you might be using or whatever program you might be using to help them kind of figure out where they are on that journey to retirement. So if you’re looking at that statement that there’s some great information on there about who their employer is, and from that, you can then find out, well, do they have a small retirement plan, a large retirement plan, and that you can find very easily through the Department of Labor website where all of this information is publicly available. So I think if you’re really looking at saying, all right, well. Based on my current book, a business based on my clients that I service or work with today. Kind of take a minute, look through those statements and just kind of get an idea, okay, do a bunch of my clients work for the same really big company? Do I have a bunch of small business owners? Do I have sole proprietors or do I people that work for, you know, local businesses, whatever it might be? And I think just kind of taking that inventory is the first step.

I think, Rick, in that discovery process, we often think about things that, you know, after our initial discovery, we say, well, the client’s doing pretty well in this area, but in this area, maybe they could do a little bit better. What what are the major issues or what problems are we often trying to solve in the 401k plan space? You see a couple of things that are kind of typical.

And I’m going to talk out of both sides of my mouth here for a second because I think if you’re trying to get started in the 401k space, then I think you said a perfectly there, you need to have a problem or you need to have identified something that you’re uniquely

able to solve for that individual or for their business or for their company, whatever it might be. And that, I think, is a great way to kind of go from, well, I don’t have much business. I don’t have a lot of knowledge or experience working in 401k. But, you know, I do hear this commonly from

my clients about their retirement plans at work. And maybe there’s a way that I can bring a different perspective. Maybe there’s something that I can bring from my own personal knowledge, or maybe I work with a lot of individuals that have some commonality to that. Maybe they’re doctors, maybe they’re lawyers, maybe they’re small business owners, maybe they’re people. They’re getting ready to sell their business, whatever it might be. But but I think if you can find some commonality and find a challenge that exists within that world, that you can make an impact in in the retirement plan space. I think that’s an amazing way to sort of make your entry into the retirement plan space and really make an impact versus just being sort of another voice out there that is telling them, you know, do you have the right funds? Do you have the right fees? Are you a fiduciary? And so there’s the other side of my mouth there for a second where I think the common elements that so many people are talking about are the funds fee fiduciary conversation, which is still something that’s very prevalent in our business. And, you know, what does that mean? It’s like, okay, you know, are you investing in appropriate funds, good funds, you have a good mix of investments, whatever it might be. Do are your fees too high or how do they compare against other plans of your size? And is do you have a fiduciary that you work with or do you have someone that is acting in your best interest that’s advising you on the plan? Those are very common. So I think, again, coming back to your your statement a minute ago, I think you said it so well, which is find that problem versus just be one of the chorus out there offering to do a plan review or a benchmarking or a fund review. I mean, again, that’s so that’s what we see so many people try to do, especially people that don’t have much knowledge, is they’re kind of copying and pasting kind of regurgitated lines that they’ve gotten from other people. But again, I think if you really want to get into this and you really want to make an impact, find that problem, see how you can apply your skillset or your knowledge to a unique solution. And then I think you’re really going to be off and running and might be my turn yourself on to something that you didn’t even know was possible.

So, Rick, it’s interesting. So we talk about finding the problem or maybe the enhancements that could be made to a particular plan once the financial professional has identified that. It’s interesting. I also heard you say maybe coupling that with the why. And I think that that’s what’s so interesting about when we talk with financial professionals about why they do what they do, especially if they haven’t focused on this as part of their business or their practice or the conversations in the past. Why now? Why today? What makes this a compelling conversation?

Could you share with us a couple of examples, maybe, of financial professionals that you’ve worked with or had success, success stories on regarding sort of the why I’m talking to you about this today, but I haven’t talked to you about this in the last ten years without a relationship.

Yeah. And I think there’s just a natural conversation around market evolution. I mean, there there’s been a lot of change in this market over the last the last six months. The last two years. The last ten years. You know, I’ve been doing this for a little over 20 years, specifically working with retirement plans in that institutional space, in that corporate space, whatever the whatever the right word is or however people might refer to that. And just the amount of change that I’ve seen over the last 20 years coming from, you know, record keepers that were all based on mutual funds and insurance companies. And, you know, everything was you know, everything was together then everything was separate. And now it’s all kind of trying to come back together again. I mean, just the market has been really evolving and evolving very quickly. And I think also the you know, the idea that you as a as a as a consultant, you as an advisor, you as a planner, the idea that you have to stay static or that, you know, since you haven’t talked about that in the past, doesn’t mean that you can’t talk about it today. I think as companies evolve is as in for is information and services and support evolve. It just becomes natural that hopefully you as a learning animal and as a being who’s trying to be a steward of the business and do the best for your client. I mean, I’ve got to imagine anybody listening to a podcast like this is trying to figure out how do they get better? How do they how do they evolve themselves? How do they better support their client? Well, part of that evolution, part of that education is understanding how some of the skills and resources that you have, working with them as an individual in trying to protect themselves or the families or help them reach their goals, how the corporate side of what they’re doing or how the business side of what they’re doing also plays into that. And I think that’s I think that’s an important conversation. And I don’t think that’s one that as you talk to business owners or

as you talk to some of your key clients, especially if you have great relationships with them, it’s not a big leap for them to say, wow, you know, you have done a lot of good work for us in my family over the years. And yeah, I would be happy to talk to my senior leadership or Hey, yeah, I am. But we do have this retirement plan at work and there are some things were frustrated with or there are some things that aren’t working the way we’d like them to. And if you feel like you have the resources, whether it be internally or through your partnerships, that you have to help us further solve some of these problems. We’re all ears.

So, Rick, let’s talk about the who for a second, because, you know, oftentimes financial professionals are looking for those business owners. And I get it in a in a mom and pop kind of business where relatively few employees, that business owner may be chief cook and bottle washer. But I’m thinking about the business where the business owners like, yeah, yeah, you know, I’d love to have you come in and talk to our 401k person. How important is it to figure out who has the day to day responsibilities for kind of running that plan? Or do we start at the business owner and work our way down there? Like where’s where’s the natural starting point? Or where should the financial professional be trying to have that conversation?

Yeah, I think that’s one that if you’ve had one conversation, you’ve had one conversation, and it varies by company. Honestly, there are some business owners where I know all decisions flow through that individual and that nothing’s going to happen unless you get his or her buy offer, his or her sign off on on any particular change. I know other businesses and this tends to happen as businesses get a little bigger and more sophisticated where they’re not going to make a move unless that day to day contact is comfortable and confident in what this means for them and how this is going to impact their life. And does it make does it make them more effective, more efficient? Whatever the case may be.

Follow up would be is there like are there questions that you ask to try and determine if you’re talking to the right person or not?

Yeah. In the reality of the world of 401k plans is so much of it. This decisions are made by committee. Now again, coming back to small business owner with five employees.

Ten employees, okay. They’re probably not going to have a committee. But if you move up to when you have ten, 20, 50, 100 thousands of employees, then generally speaking, there is going to be a committee that that is making that decision. And and I think a really just easy, good question to ask in the beginning of the process is just tell me a little bit about how you make decisions about your retirement plan. And that could be as easy as, oh, we have a committee in here. The three people that are on that committee or oh, everything flows through the CFO or oh, the business owner has that, you know, handles the 401k and you know, I’m here to support on the day to day and and just like with anything in life, just like on the on the planning side, just like on anything else you’re doing, it just has to do with questions and just ask good questions, open ended questions, ask with the intent to learn, ask with the intent to help. And I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the information that people are willing to share with you, especially if there’s already a warm relationship that exists with with someone at that business.

So if we have someone listening that has decided that they want to take this step and really start having some of these meaningful conversations and and I’m sure they’ll be successful and say they win the business of a of a couple of plans. So they’re part of their practice now in terms of the servicing and the scalability of that. What what does that look like for for a financial professional that doesn’t necessarily have this at the core of their practice? Is it easy to weave in? Is it feasible? Can you give some best practices around the around the servicing after the business is part of the practice?

And I think a lot of this comes down to just making sure you understand going into it what role you want to play because there’s a lot of support out there in the market for

you and whether that be from your record keeper. So the record keeper again is going to be that

sort of think about the participant facing side of the equation here. So that’s the you know, the Fidelity, the Vanguard, the Schwab, just to throw a couple of names out there so that that you going to rely on the record keeper or partner with the rector keeper to do a lot of that servicing or do a lot of that that work with the decision makers or with the committee. There’s also in a lot of plans, especially smaller plans, third party administrators, which are excellent resources. They’re often local when the market they’re the ones are doing all the the compliance work, the plan document work, the you know, they’re really that sort of technical expertize that is involved in making sure the plan stays on the rails and is doing all their filings and testing on on an annual basis. And then again, your role sort of as that advisor can look and feel very different. I mean, there’s some people that they want to be the point person for everything and everything is going to flow through them. And they’re sort of the quarterback of the of the plan. And they want to be in the position of being on every phone call in, in every meeting. And then and then there’s other people that are like, listen, I’m your strategy. I’m not the day to day expertize on the person that you talk to when you’re trying to figure out how to fix a bigger problem or the business is going in a different direction, or you personally are going in a different direction and you’re trying to figure out how that ties back to the plan. And again, you’re just there for that, those big strategic elements and then everything else is really left to the record keeper or the third party administrator. So again, it’s really all over the spectrum, but I think it comes down to where do you want to fit in, how do you want to be part of the ongoing servicing? If I had to default to like what is kind of the most common thing we see? Well, the most common thing is people are going to say, well, I want to be part of the investment conversation or I want to be I want to be available to your employees if they have questions about their their individual finances or if they’re concerned about what’s going on in the market or they’re not sure where to invest or how much to save, or how does their spouses retirement plan fit into what they’re doing here with this retirement plan. So again, there’s all sorts of different entry points for you. And again, really just based on support that’s in the market, you can sort of create your own destiny based on how you feel you’re going to be able to add the most value.

And Rick, I guess it goes without saying then that as the financial professional and the scope of my business, I may not even want to do participant education. Right. Is that something that one of those partners that you mentioned may make available if if I’m not equipped to provide it myself?

Yeah. And that talk about an evolving conversation over the last several years so being that resource for participant education and being that. Person on the other end of the line when somebody is concerned about the market or somebody wants help with a rollover or whatever it might be. There are there’s a numerous places they can provide that support. The record keeper, you know, those groups that I mentioned previously, they’re certainly available and are happy to help. But also that’s where we see a lot of advisors coming in and saying, no, that’s really where I want to be. And whether it be for new employees or younger employees, you know, we’ve we have a great millennial program that we offer that adds a lot of value and can help people understand investing or insurance or whatever it might be or I want to be there for when someone in the executive team or the C-suite retires. And I want to be there to help them with that rollover and make sure I capture that capture of those assets and make sure they’re investing in the right way. As I’m sure you’ve talked about over the years, it’s kind of that decision that somebody makes when they leave. The plan is probably one of the more consequential decisions they’re going to make in their financial life. So, again, if you want to be involved, you can be there’s very easy ways to define where you want to be involved. Most of the record keepers out there will say, okay, when would you want to get a phone call? Is it at a certain level of assets? Is it a certain, certain request, like a rollover? So you can really customize a lot of that in their system so that you’re getting the calls that you want. And if you don’t want to be there for every single phone call or question, they can kind of help you filter through that too, to get to what’s important to you and works the best where you can have the most value.

Well, you know, Rick, we talked earlier about the importance of asking good questions. And since we’re on the Human Centric Investing podcast, it’s time for Julie and I to ask you a few good questions of our own. So we’re going to participate what we call our lightning round. So what we’re looking for is top of head responses to the easy questions. We’re going to throw your way. So you ready to play?

Let’s do it.

Well, let’s get started. On a scale of 1 to 10, how good of a driver are you?

I’m an eight. Yes, my wife. That’s a different number. But I like an eight.

We’ll take eight. What’s your favorite kind of cereal?

Oh, it’s been a while on the cereal front, but I was I was a plain Raisin Bran guy back in the day.

Cake or pie?

Pie, for sure. Apple pie.

Morning person or night owl?

I’d say more morning person nights getting a little rough these days as the as the age creeps up.

Yeah, I know that feeling. What’s your ideal outdoor temperature?

Let’s go. 78. Low humidity.

Right there with.

You. Perfect soccer weather.

Dark chocolate or milk? Chocolate.

Dark chocolate. More specifically, dark chocolate with sea salt and caramel.

Good choice. How about read a book or listen to Audible?

Listen to Audible. The I wish it was read a book. My my wife, my daughters are big into books. But in this day and age, it’s listen, listen. In the car, on the way to meetings, on the way to work, whatever it might be.

Well, Rick, it sounds like being willing to be open minded and try some new approaches in one’s practice really can lend itself to incorporating 401k planning into the current book of business. So we can’t thank you enough for joining us today on our Human Centric Investing podcast. And to learn more from Rick and to hear other industry experts check out Rick’s podcast at 401k Fridays. Thank you again, Rick. It was great to have you with us today.

Thank you. It’s great being here.

Thanks for listening to The Hartford Funds Human Centric Investing podcast. If you’d like to tune in for more episodes, don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or YouTube.

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