Nationwide Fund Window & Plan Advisor Tools Review

[0:00] JD: Foreign. [0:09] Chad: Three. [0:10] JD: One, two, three. All right, everybody out there. Welcome to the tireholics episode number five, cinco. We are here in San Clemente, California at the southern California retirement invitational golf event. We're at our sponsored hole, the plan design consultant sponsored hole. And hundreds of advisors will be coming our way. Right, but first, thousands, we're gonna film episode 5. Today we'll be talking about retire planadvisortools.com which is a really neat website that's available for advisors out there. We're going to talk about products specific tool at nationwide financial called the fund window. [1:01] Chad: Yeah, good job. [1:02] JD: Call it the mutual fund window, but it's the fun window. There's gonna be a wheel of ice involving mark, but stay tuned because it won't be ice. It's gonna be something else. [1:13] Mark: I'm not losing this time. Oh, you won't lose this time. [1:15] Chad: We'll see. We'll see. [1:16] Mark: If I lose again, I'll wear a really strange helmet just to protect myself in the case of the mercury. [1:24] JD: Thanks again for. For tuning in. We've a lot of people have watched episodes one through four. Like I mentioned before, I think we were kind of getting really good and we kind of flatlined a bit, and now we're on our way back up. We are indeed getting bigger and better. So let's dive right into ww.planadvisortools.com Sorry. [1:48] Justin: The beer. [1:48] Chad: Oh, Jesus. Come on. Second most important part of the show. Number one's being here. [1:52] JD: My bad. I'm too serious. I shouldn't. [1:54] Justin: So, Chad, what do we got here? [1:55] Chad: Beer of the show is going to be the retireholics beer, in case you haven't had this. It's full of energy, sarcasm, and hilariousness. [2:05] JD: Retirement plan knowledge and retirement plan knowledge. [2:07] Chad: Intellectual capital you've ever said. [2:09] JD: Let's see how it tastes. [2:10] Chad: Intellectual. It's a light beer, little frothy. Should go down relatively smooth like water. The mountain's blue, so it's cold. [2:18] JD: Tastes just like Coors light. [2:21] Chad: Imagine that. It does. [2:23] JD: Pretty much like Coors light. [2:25] Mark: You know, it tastes like a safe harbor plant. [2:29] Chad: Good thing. It's a good thing. [2:31] JD: All right. We've got a retireholics beers and we are going to dive into what I think is really neat. And again, what we're trying to do for our viewers is give you some guidance. Some things that you may not know that exist out there that we think are valuable to your practice. And this one's pretty cool. PlanAdvisorTools.com put on by the mutual fund company Ridgeworth and it's got a whole plethora of things and I know you guys have spent the last week researching [3:00] Mark: it, so you said it was cool, but it's like, it is, it is incredible. [3:05] JD: Do you know what my daughter says that it's fleek. [3:09] Mark: I don't even know what that means. [3:11] JD: What is that on fleek? [3:12] Chad: On fleek. [3:13] Mark: Is that like on. [3:14] Chad: Thanks for chiming in on that one. [3:15] Mark: Totally legit. Like is that a new way of saying that? The same thing. [3:19] JD: So let's dive into it. [3:21] Justin: One of the coolest parts I thought were was a plan benchmark. You know, it allows a plan sponsor to see, you know, where they stack up with, you know, the rest of every other plan sponsor and every plan out there, whether it's comparing to micro or you know, a macro plan itself. It'll give you, you know, looking at your safe harbor match, you know, where [3:43] JD: you stack up, where you provision stuff. [3:44] Justin: Yeah, exactly. It'll. It'll also take a peek at things like your actual plan design, you know, what other companies are actually doing within your same market. It's actually pretty, pretty unique tool and [3:57] Chad: something that you have to input data. [3:59] JD: Right, right. [4:00] Chad: I mean so the advisor goes on, he logs in, he inputs some data regarding the client or prospect or even if you're using it generically, you know, a generic prospect, you can pump out this result. [4:11] Mark: You put in what the math questionnaire [4:13] JD: that you go through the vesting. [4:14] Justin: It's going to ask you, I don't [4:15] JD: know, do you have auto enroll. Yeah, Roth, that type of job. [4:19] Chad: And it comes back and gives you a nice comparative of what similar companies in your segment size, same number of employees are doing regarding structure. [4:28] Justin: Right, exactly. [4:30] Mark: The output is something you typically see during an annual fiduciary review. [4:34] JD: Meaning our plan sponsors want to know [4:36] Mark: that type of data. But now you get it up front so you can actually leverage it in different ways. Right. You can take it on, on point of sales, you could take it, do fact finding with it. [4:46] Justin: And one of the things that I liked so much about it was that it ties into our SmartEasy Osman so much. The fact that you know, from a plan sponsor's point of view, it's easy to read, easy to understand, very straight point. The whole layout of it is very clean and right there in front of you. [5:02] JD: And this is one of many things that are on that website. So that's one that you highlight. [5:07] Chad: We get asked all the time as we're talking with advisors, how are different providers Stacking up with what's the cost of the different programs, who's out there really competitive from a cost perspective, they have a cost benchmarking as well. [5:21] JD: In addition to the design, there's a [5:22] Chad: cost and again they simplified it, they made it rather easy. So they'll break it down by what your record keeping costs are, what your investment management costs are, what your consultant or advisor costs are. And instead of just saying what the industry average is, they put it in a structure that shows what the higher side of fees are for that one type of service. [5:39] JD: But again, you're inputting in your plans. [5:41] Chad: Yeah, you got to go in, but in my mind that's cool. I'm not ripping on that back to marketing side of things. If you're taking this in on a fact finding and you're saying you already know the size of the client, so it's a micro market plan, it's a three million dollar plan and you're walking in and you're saying, hey, this is what 1 to 5 looks like with a company of your demographics, geographical location, [6:00] JD: you're towards the high end or it's fantastic. [6:03] Chad: And so you can go in armed to not only fact plan, but also get a feel for where they stack up, what it might look like if you're trying to win this business. [6:12] JD: Those are two tools to summarize on this site that you could use not only in fiduciary reviews with your own clients, but you could use in your sales game. [6:20] Mark: In terms of point of sale, those are good sort of output type content, things that are useful out in the marketplace, but really something I thought was cool and again kind of nerdy. But this is what we're all about is you just go on and utilize it as a portal or a hub for just general information. [6:39] JD: There's all kinds of stuff. [6:40] Mark: Yeah, really straight to the point. What you need, it's not no fluff, no nothing. It's what you need and what we use every day. So there's websites, there's a part in there where it's free. Erisa, aspa, all the different ones that we all go to daily or weekly that you can leverage and use. [6:55] JD: And Mark, to clarify, when you say hub, what you mean is it's a place that people can repeat, go to advisors on a consistent basis. [7:02] Mark: Yeah, it's like going somewhere and say grabbing a cup of coffee and reading front page of news. [7:06] Chad: Right. [7:06] Mark: If you're in the industry, you want something quick, they have a great blog. It's right when you log in now it's, they're really pushing that and I clicked on it to look at it and it's really good topics. It's quick, it's easy, it's to the point. [7:17] JD: It's the same site. They had the Fred Reich podcast. I know it's dated, which they need to update that if Ridgeworth pays. [7:24] Chad: I doubt Ridgeworth watches. Are you kidding me? [7:26] JD: There are number one subscribers, so there's Fred Reich podcasts there, but they're a little dated. But a lot of the other stuff's brand new. [7:31] Mark: Yeah, I think one was written just like, I don't know, in September. But yeah, it was. I just like that you could go there, have a cup of coffee, read an article and you're gonna get some content. [7:41] Chad: What I realized as I started to poke through the blog and some of the materials is it really is what we do when we communicate in mornings as a team and as someone who focuses in the industries. We chat about what we're seeing out there. And that's what this blog is all about. It's live industry topics by real industry people. They're not trying to necessarily give you any fluff. They're telling you this is what you should know in a quick one stop shop. [8:04] JD: I want to add one more application you can use it for. And by the way, we've only scratched the surface, right? Yeah, a couple of things that are there. I saw tons of white papers, podcasts, blogs, videos, stuff on improving your brand, like how to make your brand better. [8:19] Chad: Private label too. You notice that? Yeah, private label, most of this stuff, [8:22] JD: tons of stuff there. But one of the things I liked was the, those, those white papers. Which sounds boring, white papers, right. But advisors are always asking us, hey, can you give me content that I could drip on my prospects? You know, something that I could show them, hey, I'm still here. And here's something I think is interesting for you to read. There it is. It's right there for you@planadvisortools.com I think [8:45] Chad: I've talked to JD briefly about this and I don't think could mention that to you guys, but I'd like to link that site to our Academy site. So many of these of our followers, people watching the shows are going to the Academy site to pull materials. Look at Advisor Hub to gather some of the stuff that we as a team have put out there. I think if we link this on there, it's just another step of support, [9:06] Justin: more tools there, Advisor support, it's huge. [9:08] Chad: And let's be Honest. We're out there running hard. They've got a team of people updating [9:11] Mark: this stuff real time. [9:13] JD: Yeah, you just get a good plug there. So most people probably don't know. If you go to 401kacademy.com there's actually. There's a bunch of information there but then there's an advisor Hunter hub. Hey, you're still our word, pun intended. And in that hub there are breakdowns of different areas like sales prospecting, client retention and we try to keep it up and there's great stuff there. Go check it out. You know, but we're not Ridgeworth. [9:37] Chad: Right. [9:37] JD: We don't have the resources. [9:38] Mark: We'll try to get a little more sexy if you. It's got some moving things. It's flashy. [9:44] JD: Don't make me cry about foreign K Academy. [9:47] Mark: You need to cry. Crying's good. [9:49] JD: Check them both out. But probably go to Plan Advisor Tools first. [9:52] Mark: We'll start with us then get in. [9:54] Chad: Yeah, there you go. [9:56] JD: We will add the Plan Advisor tools link to 401k academy.com coming soon. [10:03] Mark: Okay, but you can go there without [10:04] Chad: it and reach out with questions. You know Ridgeworth's running around. We're running around. I'm telling you. I'm gonna start using it. It's been a week but I. I see a number of applications of what they're producing there that we can use. [10:14] JD: We'll try to come to future retire hog shows with similar types of things that are out there. So check it out. We only scratch the surface. There's a ton of. Of valuable tools and pieces and education on that on that site. So right here comes. [10:28] Mark: Look at the size of this thing of ice. [10:33] JD: Every. [10:34] Mark: Every show just bigger and bigger. [10:36] JD: By the time we get to episode [10:38] Chad: 15 it's going to be like is [10:39] Justin: it really a wheel of ice balloon? [10:41] JD: Yeah, it's the wheel of ice. But okay, it's. What's it going to be today? [10:46] Justin: The wheel of delicious and sure I [10:49] Chad: probably should have had your Mark beverage for consumption. Oh, I'm sorry. Mark hasn't lost yet. We'll see how this works out. But I see we got Marky the Riveter Miami. Mark, Mo. Mark. [11:00] JD: Mark. [11:00] Chad: Marky. [11:01] JD: Mark. Just in case I lose. It's lukewarm and it's nasty chicken scratches. I pray I don't. [11:09] Mark: What is the Spin that wheel, sir. [11:11] JD: Give it a. [11:12] Justin: Give it a. Oh yeah, that works. [11:15] JD: Except for your things getting knocked. I don't have to go. I didn't lose. [11:21] Chad: Here comes the hand. The magical Hand. [11:25] Mark: It's Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. [11:29] JD: We got Mark. Why don't you slide right? [11:30] Chad: I need to know how terrible this is gonna be. [11:34] Mark: Give me one moment. [11:35] JD: Not a problem. [11:37] Mark: Oh, my gosh. [11:38] JD: I put on his insure hat. [11:40] Chad: This is part of our sponsored hole. Today there will be many advisors chugging this through sippy cups as they race [11:46] Justin: each other on little kitty bikes. [11:49] Mark: You guys know that I. I love you all for doing. This is ridiculous. [11:54] Justin: You're a trooper, Mark. [11:55] JD: This is the one time. [11:56] Mark: This is for complete balanced nutrition. Since I had Del Taco this morning. This is probably a good thing. [12:00] JD: This is the one time that I don't want this sped up. Let's just enjoy it at its normal time. Elapse. You're getting a lot of calories and some protein, I'm assuming. [12:15] Justin: Can we get a thumbs up? Like a thumbs down? [12:17] Mark: How is it? [12:20] Chad: Keep it down, Keep it down. [12:22] Mark: You know, when you finish a milkshake, at the very end, it's just all kind of watery and whatever. That's what it tastes like. That was good. That was delicious. Thank you. This versus Smirnoff Ice. I'll drink this any day. [12:35] JD: Next show smeared off ice. [12:37] Chad: We should all know that I stood up and moved the camera as I stood up. So Mark's got to do it again because I screwed up the recording. [12:43] Mark: I'll do it. [12:44] Justin: Well, it's a great thing that that camera is. [12:45] JD: I'm sure getting that. [12:47] Mark: Okay, when people come back here later, I'm gonna say you should do insurance. [12:50] Chad: So is that what we should be drinking today instead of retire Holics beer? [12:54] Mark: Probably not A lot of things. I think that's good for you. [12:56] JD: Not like continuing on our theme of valuable content and healthy beverages. What we'd like to do today is highlight a specific product and a specific feature of a product. And as I mentioned earlier, Nationwide Financial has something called the fun Window. And they've had it for quite some time. I mean, at least the last decade. As far as I know, it started with the Resource product and has continued on from Resource to Innovator to Clear Advantage to Flex Advantage. [13:30] Chad: Innovator Advantage. [13:32] JD: What? There's a. Jeez, you're better than I am. Here's another one. [13:36] Chad: Yeah. [13:36] JD: Innovator Advantage. [13:38] Chad: Yes, sir. [13:38] JD: Those are some creative marketing Nationwide, but. So this tool is awesome. I mean, it really is. We're gonna talk about it today. We're gonna explain it, but. And I think our producer can link it in our deal. There's a video that they've done that, I think is really well done. And we'll talk a bit about the video too. But tell me about the product. [13:58] Chad: It's almost beyond a tool. It is part of their product and that's it. So we all know when you're working with a client and you're setting up the core menu for the plan, you're gonna pick a diversified core menu covering all asset classes, making sure that you have each style box covered. You have a large cap, you've got your larger mid, you've got your international exposure. So for. And that's what your participants see. That's what these employees see. That's what they have at their fingertips to invest in. Fund window. See, I almost went back to mutual fund. The fund window is a component of the Nationwide platform that says, hey, you've selected this core menu and this is what the employees will see. But for those who are a little more adventurous, perhaps savvy, who want to be a little more hands on in investing their retirement dollars, you can click a disclosure, you can go out of the go out of your core menu, and you can have access to the other thousand plus institutional funds that Nationwide is doing the scrubbing on, but the client has not endorsed and you can now choose to invest in those funds. [14:58] JD: And you literally add that fund to your own core menu. [15:02] Chad: You're right. So you're in your nationwide log and you're seeing these 20 funds. You say, hey, I want to go into the fund window. You click a disclosure, boom, it bounces you right out. It gives you Morningstar ratings, it breaks everything down. It gives you analytics, gives you prospectuses. And now you say, okay, I want this specialty fund or I want gold, something that's not in there. I want an emerging markets fund. If my plan sponsor didn't make that available to me. So you have access to almost the world in there, really. [15:24] Mark: And you put it in a very simple way. But a lot of times you think about something like that, conceptually, you think that's probably kind of difficult. There's probably a lot of layers to it. Maybe it's tough to do. Maybe participants really won't know how to do it. Sounds confusing, all those types of things. We understand that people that want to do this are going to go through those steps. Maybe those that are on kind of the fence might be hesitant because it sounds a little difficult. But the video Nationwide has, and I recommend that if an advisor wants to bring that in, show the video because it makes it look so incredibly simple and it's so robust. The ability you have within that platform, going and try to it. It's so simple. [16:05] Chad: The application, the application for it as well is, is great to talk about in a point of sale. You know, each of these providers are looking for ways to make themselves different. While so much of the education and the materials and the deliverables are all the same. Nationwide is the only one doing this. And the application of it is neat because you're sitting in that meeting and you're saying, hey, I get it. As a plan Sponsor, you can't take extra risk and you need to create a prudent menu for them. And it's got to be scrubbed. You gotta have an ips. But for those that want a little more handy, your executives, your engineers meet up in the Bay Area. We're down in the Southern California, but especially in the Bay Area. Your engineers dig this. [16:44] JD: That's how I get out of my own. [16:47] Mark: Yeah, yeah. [16:48] Justin: So participant decides to go out. What happens to the sponsor? [16:51] Chad: Nothing. So that's the beautiful thing about this. What a core menu fund is, is it's a diagram. They have liability in being prudent in selecting those funds. Once they click the disclosure and say, I understand that I'm stepping outside of what my plan sponsor is endorsing, keeping in mind these funds are still well scrubbed by nationwide. It's not 18,000 funds that are there. But now the participant can go out. Fred Reich has even endorsed it. He's written a white paper on it. [17:17] JD: The sales pitch to that, on this flip side, is that it can actually keep Plan Sponsor safer because now they don't have to have a tech fund in their core menu. They don't have to have an emerging markets fund or health science fund in their core menu. And that's a debatable subject, whether those types of asset classes should be in there. [17:37] Chad: Have you seen, I mean, in all your years, have you seen anybody take it to the extreme and say, you know, let's start with we're going to cover the nine, the main nine, and maybe a couple other international funds, bonds, core fix, so forth, and then just offer mutual fund window, or even take it to the extreme and say just asset allocation and then mutual fund window. [18:00] JD: Out of all the hundreds of clients we have, I have one that does that. And with Nationwide, I think we have over 100 clients. I know one that had just asset allocation funds. But that's kind of another pitch to it is you could just have target dates and you could put everyone in target dates and then anyone that doesn't want to be in target date, just can use the funnel window and go do whatever they want. Now that's, that's one approach. [18:23] Justin: But I mean this seems like, I don't know if cutting edge is the right word, but why is doing this? [18:29] JD: Why is no one else doing it? [18:31] Chad: They've been doing it for a long time. [18:32] JD: And before we answer that, let's clarify. Everyone has a self directed brokerage account and it's very different from this. This is not a self directed brokerage account. [18:40] Chad: It true. [18:41] JD: This is built into the program. You're not going off to TD Ameritrade and buying equities. [18:45] Chad: This is, this is a shows in your investment. [18:48] JD: Let's be clear about that. [18:49] Mark: It's all integrated nationwide. In addition to having this, they also offer. [18:53] JD: Yeah, right. [18:54] Justin: It gives you a full, you know, broad spectrum to be either hands off or hands on as a participant. [19:00] Chad: Yeah. And it's funny that that's what they preach. They say, hey, we've got the full spectrum. Your hands off participant. We have money management, we have, we have asset allocation hands on. We can go to the extreme of self directed brokerage. And then right here next to that is this fund window. [19:16] Mark: Yeah. [19:16] JD: And so let's answer your question. I have no freaking clue why other vendors don't have this. We know that it did start with the resource product. In the resource product they had multiple share classes each what they called tiers. So they're primary tier, primary plus tier. And each of those tiers or areas had its own wrap. So maybe that played into the ability of the architecture. [19:41] Chad: Yeah, that's a great point. Because it allowed them to. Well, each of these providers want to have an understanding. Their actuaries need to have an understanding of what type of revenue is going to be generated from the funds in the platform. [19:51] JD: And 10 years ago those programs were all built on that type of revenue. What was coming from a sharecropping 12B1 [19:59] Chad: sub TA coming through. And nationwide came out with resource which said, okay, we'll give you an institutional share, but if we do, you're gonna have a 60 basis point wrap. And then if you have an A share, you're gonna have a 10 basis [20:10] JD: point wrap that might play into. [20:12] Chad: So they levelized it. Now we see many levelizing. Many, many providers out there are doing institutional investing now and saying this is our target revenue that we need. So this is our wrap fee. It allowed, I think at that time it allows, allowed nationwide to say we don't care what fund you go into, so you go into the mutual fund window. [20:29] JD: But to Nationwide's defense, they did carry it on into each of the products, into each of those product lines. [20:35] Chad: But that could be it, Jess. Maybe it's that the other providers want to be able to have an understanding what revenue is going to be generated from each plan that they bring on. Yeah. And in order to do it, I guess they would have to look at the share class that one individual client was going to fall into, make sure that the mutual fund window had the same share class at it, and then have a rap. That's about the only way. [20:55] Mark: Bottom line is unless you go institution, [20:56] JD: as of today, 2015, no other vendors doing it. No other vendors doing it. And what I want our audience members to know is it's a freaking great way to go into a point of sale that no one else has. And plan sponsors like it. And it's cool for them, it's good for them. [21:14] Chad: Well, and it's different, you know, we, the four of us, we've talked about on the show, but we always chat about, you want an apple and a banana, Right. And that is something that nobody else is doing. You know, it's, it's, it's an apple in comparison to an orange. [21:26] Justin: Curious to see if anyone's gonna, you know, follow their trend. [21:29] Chad: It's been, like JD Said, it's been a long time. Before I was in the industry, they were doing it. [21:33] JD: So check it out. Right? The Nationwide product and this fun window. It's pretty cool. And check out the video, because the video is sick and you're, you could use that video with a plant sponsor. [21:46] Mark: Take it in and show them just how cool it is. [21:48] JD: Okay, so in summary, retireaholics, we're going to continue to try to work on our beer drinking skills for sure. Our Smirnoff Ice Pounding. No more. [22:00] Mark: The person who's responsible for getting that should get it next time. [22:04] JD: Check out our. We talked about this last time. Check out our social media. We're on all of them. Social media. Check out retireholics on social media. And don't forget about retireholics.com. retireholics with a K. I don't know if you know this, but if you misspell it and spell it with a C, you still go there. [22:18] Mark: Yeah. Even better. [22:20] Chad: We want some feedback too. Topics. What do you guys want to hear? What do you guys want to see? When we have these conversations live, when we're out in the field, people will say, oh, I loved this. Let's expand on it. Well, tell us what you want to hear about. [22:31] JD: You can leave comments on the website. You can leave comments on YouTube. YouTube? Did you know that you can email retireaholics at what Retireholics at Gmail, dude. [22:41] Chad: Nice. [22:42] JD: So you can also email us. [22:43] Mark: We're getting so coming up in the world. [22:45] Chad: Are we up to a thousand followers yet? [22:47] JD: No. [22:47] Chad: Thousand views. [22:48] JD: 670. [22:50] Mark: I wasn't aware of the gmail. Did you make that? Yeah, entire holiday there's producer right now. [22:59] JD: Oh yes, that's right to you guy. So get ready for. For episode six. We today not we. I will be playing golf on the golf course. [23:10] Mark: Thanks, man. [23:11] JD: Well, these guys are sponsored hole. [23:15] Chad: Hopefully we'll see some of you guys [23:17] JD: out here and thanks for viewing. That's a wrap. [23:23] Chad: We need a way to close this. [23:24] Justin: Yeah, we do. [23:25] Chad: Like we have the open. [23:26] Justin: Oh, we forgot about. [23:27] JD: Well, you know who closes the show? It's Mark's stupid. [23:29] Justin: He does our version of a boring webinar. [23:32] Mark: We should add that to. [23:33] Chad: That is kind of how you. This is our version of a bo. [23:38] JD: This is. Thank you. This is our version of a boring webinar. [23:42] Chad: Peace. [23:43] JD: Boom. Now get ready to watch Mark do some. You know how Mark does his end of the show moment. You should do it like at the [24:00] Mark: dinner later in front of everybody. Need my beauty sleep. It's exhausting trying to make those guys look good.