Welcome to the March RPAG Scoop where we are giving you an investigative look into the retirement industry through the RPAG looking glass. This month, we have a huge announcement, insight into Advisor Managed Accounts, answers to frequently asked questions, and more! We aren't just any rookie detectives over here, so join us!
Exciting Announcement for RPAG! (0:37)
Jesse Taylor, Senior Vice President of Business Development here at RPAG is excited to share some big news. RPAG has joined forces with Great Gray Group, a leader in retirement solutions and fiduciary expertise. This partnership is a game-changer for us and gives us an incredible opportunity to enhance the tools, technology, and support we provide to retirement plan advisors, institutions, and service providers.
The big idea here is scaling for impact. Our mission has always been about empowering advisors with the best technology and insights to navigate the complexities of retirement planning. By partnering with Great Gray, we’re taking that mission to the next level. We’re focused on making retirement solutions more accessible, efficient, and impactful.
Together, we’re better equipped to anticipate and address the rapidly evolving needs of our clients and partners. Our shared commitment to innovation, growth, and fiduciary excellence means we can continue empowering advisors and delivering impactful retirement solutions.
Advisor Managed Accounts, The New Hot Topic (2:49)
According to the discussions at our Advisory Forum, we repeatedly heard Advisor Managed Accounts being a subject of multiple conversations; therefore, we wanted to shed some light on this widespread discussion. Our Marketing Specialist, Melody Ravanipour, took the compiled notes from the Forum and found some interesting insights based on advisor's points of view. The main three questions she answered in her segment were:
Some advisors are using AMAs as a unique service offering to differentiate themselves in this highly competitive market; however, there is still little adoption of the solution as a service for retirement plans. Some roadblocks for advisors include limited data availability from recordkeepers, integration issues, and lack of a universal strategy.
The current ideal candidate for an AMA is an engaged participant that actively monitors their investments, but with that in mind, advisors are concerned with potential scalability. Since advisors use AMAs in different ways, there currently isn't a "one-size-fits-all" method which means limited mass adoption.
AMAs could be the future with updates to key aspects. A benchmarking tool, for example, could be the key if it brings clarity and confidence to the advisors offering this service. Improved communication between the recordkeepers and advisors would be necessary to make AMAs more scalable. While AMAs can be a great way for differentiating yourself among other retirement plan advisors, they still have a long way to go before they become a staple in a plan's offering.
Investment FAQs (7:16)
Our investment team receives multiple questions from our advisors every day, and our Investment Analyst Janette Oh wanted to share some of the answers to these frequently asked ones. Janette says that one of the most common questions she gets from members is "What is Returns-Based Style Analysis (RBSA)?" To understand what it is, it's important to note that 30% of our Scorecard's weight is measured by its style. This specific type of style analysis examines fund returns to selected indices to describe a fund's investment style. This tells us how a portfolio's returns behave rather than what stocks the portfolio is actually holding.
Another heavily asked question is "What are RPAG peer groups?" which also leaks into the "What is Category Rank?" question. RPAG peer groups separate funds by investment strategy, The three buckets we have are Active (actively managed portfolios), Passive Strategies (includes index managers), and Asset allocation (TDFs, risk-based series, multi-manager strategies, etc.). In addition to that, we include all vehicle types where a lot of reporting platforms tend to separate these out. An example would be if we wanted a large growth peer group, we would separate active managers from index managers, but the peer group would include large growth mutual funds, large growth CITS, and separate accounts. Janette wanted to clearly make the distinction between the RPAG peer group ranking and the "Category Rank" which is referring to Morningstar's Peer Group Rankings. Morningstar's peer groups combine active and passive funds while RPAG prefers to make that distinction. They also do not include different legal structures in the same peer groups, meaning that their peer groups would separate vehicle types.
Save the Date for Our National Conference (20:04)
Our National Conference dates have officially been released! We will be hosting our National Conference at the Four Seasons Hotel Chicago from Monday, September 29 - Wednesday, October 1. Keep an eye out for the Save the Date email coming from support@rpag.com and make sure that it's whitelisted so you don't miss it!
Running Reports Across Your Book of Business (21:29)
As an Advisor Service Associate, Alexis Patenaude, gets questions and hosts educational meetings every day. This month, one of her highly asked questions was, "Is there a way to run reports across my entire book of business?" There absolutely is! If you follow Alexis's shared screen in the video, the path to get there starts with "Menu" > "Advisor Reports." In the module, you will see multiple report types that you can run across your entire book of business. You can even view Report Usage to see what reports you have already run. Some popular reports are "Plan Type" and "Service Consultants" under the AUA tab, "Client Data" and "Notes" under the Clients or Prospects tab, as well as "Funds by Plan" and "Watchlist Funds" under the Fund Reporting tab. To generate a report, after you have selected your report type, sub report, and selected apply, you can click "Export" which will give you the data points you would like, which are all editable.
Another great way to see data across your entire book of business is by using our Advisor iQ feature and can be found in the quick links task bar at the top of the RPAG portal as well as in the Advisor Reports module. The Advisor iQ will give you a snapshot of what is going on in your book of business, allowing you to view a variety of different data points. Each of them is able to be filtered using the filter icon on the right-hand side. You can also edit the widgets further by hovering over the widget and selecting the "focus mode" icon. To run a report with these widgets, you would click into "focus mode" and then click the "..." in the top right corner to select more options and then click "Export Data."
Improved Features Walkthrough (25:20)
Michael Feldman, the Sr. Systems Development Coordinator here at RPAG, wanted to show our members a couple of his favorite recent updates that we have made to the portal. In this session, Michael discusses the Advisor Compensation product with the added ability to add Tiered Based Assets as well as the updated output report. He also goes over the importance of the bulk templates update to the Service Plan (as a note, this is only available for Company Admin roles). These upgrades are already live on the portal which you can access here.
We hope you enjoyed getting this month's Scoop! See you next time!
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Contact the RPAG Support Team at support@rpag.com to learn more about RPAG and get help with our platform, suite of services, next-gen technology, or anything else!