ARA Executive Interview The American Retirement Association

What common services or actions make managing a retirement plan challenging for plan advisors and their clients? What are the main points plan advisors and plan sponsors should know about plan termination? How does auto portability benefit plan advisors, plan sponsors, and plan participants?Pete Welsh, Managing Director of Retirement and Wealth at Inspira Financial, joins the American Retirement Association's John Sullivan to answer these questions and more. *Inspira Financial Trust, LLC and ...

What are the biggest challenges facing TPAs, RIAs and recordkeepers? And what will be most impactful from all that we’re seeing on the legislative and regulatory front? We turned to PenChecks’ President and CEO, Spiro Preovolos and Scott Okrasinski, the firm’s National Sales Director, to answer these important questions and more.They joined us to discuss PenChecks' transformation into a true fintech solutions partner, its exponential growth and cultural transformation, and what it means for b...

Follow along with the Learning from the Success of Pension Risk Transfer .pdf. Click here to download.What did the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act’s passage in 2019 do for lifetime income in retirement plans, and what lessons can be learned from the success of pension risk transfer?We turned to Securian Financial to help answer these increasingly important questions. Kent Peterson, Vice President of Institutional Retirement Solutions, and Nick Volkmann, Actu...

The momentum around retirement income products has gained steam as participants are increasingly interested in adding a strategy for guaranteed lifetime income. With a wide range of features, fee structures, and implementation options, it can be difficult to know where to get started.Thankfully, we have Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America’s Michael De Feo to help explain. In this podcast episode, we’ll walk through different product types and provide guidance on how to evaluate an...

M&A expert Peter Campagna, Managing Partner at Wise Rhino Group, has a list of common emotions that advisors face when they decide to sell their business.“Fully 80% of M&A is managing emotions,” Campagna says. “The financial stuff is somewhat easy, but they’re selling their life’s work. They’re serial entrepreneurs who are going to become W-2 employees, and it’s a big mental shift.”He joins us to run through the 13 emotions that happen in four phases during the process: 1 . Prepa...

Interest in guaranteed lifetime income is growing, but plan participants want more than just a reliable monthly income stream. Flexibility, accessibility, and other personalized features are paramount to helping participants achieve outcomes aligned with their unique priorities.We sit down with Michael De Feo, Head of Defined Contribution Distribution at Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America (Allianz), to discuss how guaranteed lifetime income solutions, such as in-plan annuities, c...