When retirement policymakers sought to incentivize small businesses to begin offering retirement plans in an effort to help close the coverage gap, they did so in part by creating greatly expanded federal tax credits that would offset their cost in providing those plans. But research has found fewer than 6% of eligible employers are properly claiming the tax credit—and that’s a problem that doesn’t sit well with retirement plan advisor Will Hackler, AIF, the “401(k) Fix-It Guy” who is the Man...

As part of 401(k) Specialist’s Q2 Deep Dive on target-date funds, Editor-in-Chief Brian Anderson sits down with Mercer Director of Defined Contribution Strategic Research Teams Preet Prashar to discuss the rapidly evolving TDF landscape—from market concentration and glidepath design to passive investing, fiduciary concerns, lifetime income solutions, and private assets. Drawing from Mercer’s recent white paper, “Target Date Landscape: The Evolution of Target Date Strategies and Future Conside...

In this episode, Jessica Porter and Hayley Porter, financial planners at BPG Wealth Management, speak to 401(k) Specialist about the 401(k) Girls, a financial education platform aiming to make financial wellness accessible and exciting for professionals and their clients. Jessica and Hayley, who were featured in 401(k) Specialist’s Profiles in Participant Outcomes in 2025, started the 401k Girls in January last year after noticing a need to make retirement and financial planning more a...

Advisor Insights Winning the Finalist Presentation: How offering a "Hope-based" engagement model like GigMatch differentiates you from advisors stuck in "Fear-based" messagingReducing Financial Stress for Sponsors: Leveraging the $5/month subscription model as a low-cost, high-impact benefit recommendation for advisors.The "Lifetime Income" Complement: How to use the gig economy to supplement Social Security and 401(k) distributions when the math doesn't quite add up.Strategic Partnerships: I...

There’s a lot of increased attention about adding private markets investments to 401(k) plans in the wake of President Trump’s 2025 Executive Order on alternatives, and participants are starting to take notice. Invesco’s recent DC Participant Pulse Survey had some very interesting findings about participant perceptions of private markets, which we explore in this episode with Greg Jenkins, Managing Director, DC Solutions at Invesco. Greg shares insights about participant familiarity with priv...

Much of the technology infrastructure that powers the workplace retirement plan industry could use an update to improve on old legacy systems to better serve the needs of today’s 401(k) participants. To learn more about how and why it needs to evolve, we talk with techno-business leader Mahesh Natarajan, Chief Revenue Officer at Congruent Solutions, which has been a specialist technology solutions and outsourced plan administration provider to the retirement industry since 2004. We’ll talk ab...

In this special edition of the 401(k) Specialist Podcast—part of our Deep Dive series on “How Not to Get Sued”—Editor-in-Chief Brian Anderson sits down with legendary ERISA attorney Fred Reish to examine how fiduciary risk is evolving in today’s regulatory and litigation environment. Now serving as Director of Fiduciary and ERISA Practice at Prime Capital Retirement, Reish shares insights on the shifting landscape of ERISA litigation, emerging concerns around private assets in 401(k) plans, a...

Eric Dyson, Executive Director of 90 North Consulting and one of the retirement industry’s more active ERISA expert witnesses, joins the 401(k) Specialist Podcast for a practical conversation on how plan sponsors and advisors can reduce fiduciary risk—and be better prepared if the Department of Labor comes calling. Drawing on his experience testifying in more than a dozen ERISA cases, Dyson shares the most common mistakes he sees in litigation and investigations, why a DOL audit may be a bigg...

As retirement planning strives to become more personalized, plan sponsors are under increasing pressure to offer solutions that meet participants where they are—not just by age or account balance, but by considering their full financial picture. That’s where workplace managed accounts can really make a difference. Lorianne Pannozzo, Senior Vice President, Personalized Planning & Advice at Fidelity Investments and leader of the firm’s workplace managed accounts program, joins us to explain...

In the first new 401(k) Specialist Pod(k)ast episode of 2026, Editor-in-Chief Brian Anderson sits down with Kelby Meyers, founder and CEO of Nestimate, to explore the evolving landscape of in-plan retirement income and the Nestimate Retirement Income Summit. Meyers discusses the upcoming second annual Nestimate Retirement Income Summit, shares insights on new initiatives at Nestimate—including its recently launched TDF-IQ analytics tool—and weighs in on what the Vanguard-TIAA target-date CIT ...