Finally, other reasonable voices to share
I'm not the only one saying these things...
Did you know, there are an estimated $37 Trillion in self-directed U.S. retirement plans? The importance of any and all decisions relating to this money cannot be over-stated.
I seldom share other people’s content. However, when something is clearly written and helpful, it’s worth sharing constructive content in someone else’s voice… if for no other reason than to liven things up.
On June 4, 2025 a group that I’d not heard of called “Retirement Planology” published an article that was picked up by the 401khelpcenter titled Why Your Retirement Plan Committee Needs Quality Fiduciary Training (And How to Know If You’re Getting It). It’s good enough, and important enough, that I’m providing links to the article (link here).
A few notes before you read the article:
Retirement Planology is a direct competitor, and I like it.
Years ago I formed a company called Plan Partners. It evolved out of FeeBased401k.com and FeeBased403b.com, which I still own. Both sites now redirect to Plan Partners. Recognized nationally as a revolutionary “disruptor” company, Plan Partners shook up the marketplace by stripping out conflicts of interest, eliminating cross-selling, and going fee-only. This ushered in a new era of transparency and objectivity. I’ve encouraged others to copy our model. Few did. Most had grown to enjoy the extra profits that can be derived from hiding conflicts of interest and catering to corporate balance sheets rather than investor interests.
I liked this particular article enough that I found a phone number and spoke with a gentleman there to extend my gratitude for having published it. He tells me it was written by their founder, Courtenay Shipley. I’ll send her a message as well, encouraging her, and providing her with the below commentary.
The following is not a recommendation. Retirement Planology is a competitor to my company Plan Partners (likely a very good competitor) and I’ve no knowledge of them beyond this article. If you or someone you know utilizes such services, I encourage you to look at both companies and/or search for any others like them in order to compare. Having this type of objective mission focus is rare and extremely beneficial.
Now for the article:
General comments:
If you’ve not already heard my three-part livestreamed series on workplace retirement plans “Behind the Veil”, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, they create background context for the things that can (and often do) go wrong with workplace retirement plans, along with suggestions to help do better.
Comments on Ms. Shepley’s article:
The very first set of bullet-points (highlighting mine) points to a glaring, massive pitfall in today’s workplace retirement plans.
Ms. Shepley doesn’t address the current over-consolidation crisis, but we have at UnWoke.Academy. Watch Parade of Woke Sameness:
And read up on the Globalist Bubble:
Next, who are the specialists suited to help address these and related issues?
Finding people who specialize in providing objective advice can be critical. This is especially true where money is concerned. Yet many financial, banking, and insurance companies work hand-in-glove with politicians to create a veneer of objectivity where it is unlikely to be found. This is perhaps doubly true of workplace retirement plans. This is because they are frequently both a) large pools of money that b) lack proper oversight, sometimes parked for decades without evaluation or negotiations. Finding informed people operating outside the gravitational pull of product sales is both good and rare.
Having good, trained, and objective people overseeing workplace retirement plans is as critical as it is uncommon.
I asked Grok what Retirement Plans Specialists are called at financial firm UBS. We’ll use them as an example…
All major financial firms that I’m aware of have some sort of designated title applied to a person or group that’s permitted to work on the administration of workplace retirement plans. I was such a person, which led to me creating an independent version (Plan Partners), that is NOT in any way connected to any bank, insurance company, investment manager, payroll provider, accountant, or other products or services.
UBS is an example of a company with all sorts of ancillary services to provide. Gaining a corporate client, via the retirement plan, banking, insurance, payroll or other service, is typically viewed as cross-selling opportunity - whatever the first line of business, the assumption is that other lines of business can be added. Where your company 401(k) and fellow employees are concerned, that’s a lot of potential cross-selling, and the big pool of money in the plan - often in the tens or hundreds of millions, or billions - is frequently viewed as a fee-rich environment.
UBS is far from alone in this approach. Many companies have a broad spectrum of products for which a workplace retirement plan might prove to be a good launching point.
Pro-Tip: our internet sleuth friends may be interested in doing searches online for tax form 5500. You can look up most any employer offering benefits, like 401(k) Plans. It’s public information. You’ll find an area that lists fees, often expressed as hard to decipher formulas, that subtract from retirement savings accounts. Add in additional profits from things like banking, insurance, credit lines, payroll, software, and others, and you end up with the proverbial “fox guarding the henhouse.”
That murky world, and the need for transparency, is exactly why Plan Partners was formed, and appears to also be the mission of Retirement Planology.
Unfortunately, all sorts of people “sell” 401(k) Plans. Brokers, Insurance Agents, Accountants, Payroll Companies, Financial Advisors & Planners, Bank Reps, but very few of them service 401(k) Plans. Most are taught to be Relationship Managers only, taking problems, questions, or issues back to a Retirement Plans Specialist. In fact, most major financial services firms that I’m aware of REQUIRE a specialist be involved. This dynamic actually defines my career and directly led to FeeBased401k and Plan Partners. I was and am that specialist for all sorts of companies and people, from law firms and accounting firms, to banks, payroll, and brokers and many in between.
The number of people no longer willing to “sell” workplace retirement plans in order to cross-sell while also collecting fees is growing, but not fast enough. Many hope to stay under the radar for as long as possible. Those who do work with a dedicated and independent Retirement Plan Advisor are champions, leading frequently to much lower fees with better services.
I hope you enjoy the article, along with my perspective. If you know people who work in Human Resources or business leadership, share this with them.
Jonathan Broadbent is the Founding Partner of Plan Partners and is Chief UnWoke Capitalist at UnWoke.Academy
P.S.: Here’s a little more on 401khelpcenter…
401khelpcenter, in case you find things like retirement plan administration interesting, is a service that frequently aggregates articles relating to U.S. retirement plans and then emails lists to people like me. They send me emails that look like this:
