The Growing Opportunities in Retirement-Plan Business (AdvisorOne)

As stock market volatility continues, a newly popular niche market may be one you have never considered: advising individual company retirement plan participants on the choices their plan offers. For many, these accounts are the largest, most valuable investments they’ll participate in across their lives, which helps explain why they so desperately need guidance on where to allocate funds. Advisors who focus on providing real service for how to operate 401(k), 403(b), and 457(b) plans can end up acquiring tens of millions of dollars of new assets to manage for a fee. And it’s getting easier to offer advice and manage these assets: just this week, the Department of Labor issued new rules that allowed advisors to issue financial advice more easily and to a wider range of clients.