BCG Blog

We may be excited to be living longer, but can our retirement strategies keep up? New research shows that financial advisors may need to reassess how they discuss retirement target date planning with clients.

Uncertainty in the financial services industry is not something financial advisors can control, but they can prepare for it. There’s no need for something new. Traditional methods of optimizing resources will work well for businesses regardless of size. Here’s how.

For many in the financial services sector, the options for client surveys are clunky, costly, chaotic, or confusing. When it comes to online survey companies, advisors may find that the aspects that drive the popularity of some programs can make them inappropriate for their business. We researched feedback about these customer survey programs to assess the qualities financial advisors were most likely to need. Here are our results.

Major changes to student loans could be coming to an employee near you. While payment options may be reduced for borrowers, plan sponsors looking for avenues to help those participants still have many options.

Employers know that a strong benefits lineup attracts and retains quality employees. They also know those employees are the best asset their company has. But they might not know what they don’t know: how those costs and fees compare to their competition. It can be hard to know what points to look at when comparing plans. Yet benchmarking is essential to plan management.

The prevailing wind when it comes to encouraging employees to invest their HSA funds is to increase education. But that does not mean sponsors have to sail into it. Instead, they may want to factor in sharp rises in health care spending and continuing needs for emergency funds when drafting internal communications.

An essential part of investment planning has always included drafting a strategy to account for a client’s level of risk tolerance. Yet, assessing risk tolerance has always been balanced on two imprecise supports. Advisors may want to consider whether their clients who are considering drastic changes are reacting to a volatile market or if one of the imprecise supports of risk tolerance measurement has slipped.

The volatility in the market, and the whipsawing reactions to it, have ushered in an email maelstrom of offers of help. Why aren’t more clients responding? It could be that clients don’t know how to respond to offers to help that aren’t specific. In this practice pointer, we review how advisors can lighten their clients’ loads in seeking help by offering specifics.

Can advisors help their clients manage investing anxiety in today’s volatile market by reinforcing their duties as fiduciaries? We think so. Here’s an overview of how advisors can detail their commitment to protecting their clients’ bests interests.

Lately we’ve noted an uptick in the word recession. It isn’t the frequency of its use that concerns us, it’s the placement. Lately, the use of the word recession has been popping up more in the general media. While we know that talk of recession is a strong indicator of investor confidence concerns, it’s a complicated topic. Getting it right is important.

New research indicates a gap between how well retirees perceive that they are doing against how well they actually are financially. In the past survey responses of retirees showed high satisfaction even though objective measures told a different story. Plan sponsors may want to increase participant education programming to help with the gap areas identified in new research.

The Department of Labor (DOL’s) beleaguered fiduciary duty rule lingers on in federal court litigation, but there are signs that the dispute (as well as the Rule) may not be around for long.

There are several levels to the news on ESG. For plan sponsors not all of the forthcoming information is necessarily news to use. We suggest focusing on the news about lawsuits on fiduciary duties and ESG rules for plan sponsors.

Instead of taking changes at the DOL as single item issues, it might be more useful to see how all the changes interact. Often, legislators and regulators want changes to interact like a puzzle; each piece interlocking to form a larger picture. But sometimes when many policies are changed at the same time, conflicts emerge that can put those supposed to be following them into the proverbial spot between a rock and a hard place.

Many plan sponsors report lags in enrollment and retirement activity among plan participants. While some statistics show that new tricks and tips have impacted participation in retirement plans, enrollment may still lag. It is possible that the way employees think about retirement in general could be behind the lag in active retirement investing.

Many retirees are not well positioned for the health care challenges they may face in retirement because they did not take advantage of long-term care insurance. While many saving for retirement have begun optimizing savings through Health Savings Accounts, they may not understand how those accounts can be used for long-term care insurance premiums when they do retire.

Political turmoil may be rocking the markets and your firm’s office. How can advisors lead their teams during tough times? Five tips that work.

A Supreme Court ruling curtailing the EPA’s rulemaking for outcome-based regulation could change cybersecurity rules for financial advisors. Well, maybe. We discuss the details by reviewing the Court’s decision and the federal framework for financial institution cybersecurity safeguards.

There may be a new player in the fiduciary duty sandbox, and it involves ESG. Most often when discussing fiduciary duties, the topic at hand involves the research and appropriateness of decision making. Issues of loyalty and trust in investment advice are always worth following.

By this point in January, most people have stepped aside from the aspirational goals they set for the New Year. For many advisors, increasing their marketing efforts made it into their goals for 2025. It can be difficult to carry through on this goal. The key may be to find ways to maximize efficiency when it comes to marketing.

When it comes to alternative investments, do clients want new options or a new approach to the traditional ones? We review the performance of traditional alternative investments, such as private equity, real estate, and commodities and assess new trends.

With the success of auto-enrollment in retirement plans for new hires, some plan sponsors are looking to a new trend among benefits. Many have begun creating plans for re-enrolling employees who have dropped out of retirement plans during their tenures.

When it comes to financial wellness, plan participants and sponsors might not be seeing eye to eye. That divide may not be insurmountable; a little planning may smooth any tensions.

Employee education is often a topic plan sponsors or the employer delegates to vendors, such as a plan administrator. However, recent surveys indicate plan sponsors are opting for plan design changes. It is possible that linking employee education programs to these changes could facilitate those changes.

2024 was full of dramatic moments. Given that, it might be easy to have missed some of the key details and trends in the less dramatic world of employee benefit plans. We thought a review of trends and regulations could be helpful for those whose attention may have been drawn to elsewhere.