I’m an Independent 401(k) Advisor, Fiduciary — and Advocate

I help employers design, oversee, and improve their retirement plans.

I coordinate with recordkeepers, TPAs — sometimes I am the TPA — payroll providers, and investment managers. I review fees, monitor investments, help solve administrative problems, and guide employers through the decisions that come with sponsoring a retirement plan.

But the simplest way to describe the job is this:

I sit on your side of the table.

Your recordkeeper has its own business.

Your payroll provider has its own business.

Your investment company has its own business.

That is fine. But somebody involved in the plan should have one job: looking out for you and the plan.  Sometimes these vendors try to sell you additional services.  Managed accounts, wellness programs, and so on.  But are those serving your interests or helping someone meet a quarterly sales goal?  In other words do you have a fox watching the henhouse?

That is where I come in.

You don’t hire me to sell a product.

You hire me to be an independent advocate — to make sure your retirement plan works the way it is supposed to, question things that do not make sense, and take ownership when something goes wrong.

Most 401(k) plans are run by a committee of vendors — a recordkeeper, a TPA, an advisor, maybe a payroll provider — all touching the plan, none of them necessarily owning the outcome.

Or it is one bundled vendor that hands much of the real work back to the plan sponsor and calls it “self-service.”

Three throats to choke, none of them chokeable.

Here is what having an actual advocate looks like in three real situations.

Judgment: When Your Recordkeeper Is Selling Behind Your Back

A few months ago, I noticed a recordkeeper actively pushing in-plan managed account services directly to participants — without disclosing that the plan already had an advisor relationship in place.

Different fee structure. Different incentive. And the participants had no idea the pitch was coming from a party with skin in the game.

Most advisors could have shrugged.

Recordkeepers do this. It is annoying, but it is “normal.”

I escalated it as a fiduciary disclosure issue. I documented what was happening, took it to the wholesaler, and forced the conversation onto the record.

Not because it was specifically in my contract to do so.

Because the plan sponsor should have someone paying attention to whose interests are being served.

That is judgment.

A robot can pick funds.

An advocate notices when something is off and knows when it is worth pushing back.

Ownership: When the Plan Was Set Up Wrong From Day One

A client came to me with a vesting issue involving one of their employees.

Prior service credit had not been properly reflected when the plan was established, meaning some employees were being treated as newer than they actually were and their vesting did not match what they had earned.

This was not my error.

It was not even my era.

The plan had been set up that way before I got involved.

The easy move would have been to point at the TPA, point at the prior advisor, and let the client navigate the correction themselves.

That is how these situations often go: several vendors, several sets of hands raised, and one frustrated business owner trying to figure out who is actually going to do something.

I owned the fix.

I coordinated with the TPA on the correction methodology, made sure the affected participant records were updated, and documented the resolution for the plan files in case it ever surfaced during an audit.

Done.

That is ownership.

Not “this is my fault.”

“This is my problem to solve.”

Accountability: When the IRS Sends a Letter About Someone Else’s Mistake

A client received an IRS Form 5500 inquiry — the kind of letter that makes a small business owner’s stomach drop.

The issue traced back to an error by a prior broker who had assigned the wrong plan number years earlier.

Nothing the client had done wrong.

Nothing I had done wrong.

But the letter was sitting in their inbox and the clock was ticking.

The advisor who caused the original problem was long gone.

The recordkeeper said it was not their issue.

The TPA said it was an advisor matter.

I handled it.

I reconstructed the history, prepared the response, got it filed, and the matter was closed without escalation.

That is accountability.

When something goes sideways, you should not have to figure out which vendor owns which 15% of the problem.

You should have someone who picks up the phone and says:

I’ll handle it.

This Is the Job

Picking funds is the easy part.

Anyone can do it.

AI can do it.

The hard part is everything else:

The judgment to notice a problem before it becomes a bigger one.

The willingness to challenge a provider when the incentives do not line up.

The ownership to fix things that are not technically your fault.

The accountability to be the person who answers the phone when something goes sideways.

And the independence to tell you when the best answer is to change something — or when the best answer is to leave everything exactly where it is.

That is what I mean by being an advocate.

If that is the kind of relationship you wish you had with your current 401(k) advisor, let’s talk.