The Market for Retirement Financial Advice

The market for retirement financial advice has never been more important and yet more in flux. The long-term shift away from traditional defined benefit pensions toward defined contribution personal accounts requires all of us to be more sophisticated today than ever before. However, the landscape for financial advice is changing all over the world, with new rules and regulations transforming the financial advice profession. This volume explores the market for retirement financial advice, to explain what financial advisors do and how to measure performance and impact. Who are these professionals and what standards must they abide by? How do they make money and what are their incentives? How can one protect clients from bad advice, and what is good advice? Does advice alone effect changes in personal habits? Answering these questions, along with new technology that will decrease the delivery costs of advice, will play a transformative role in helping more households receive the quality financial advice that they need. Accordingly, this volume illuminates the market and regulatory challenges so as to enhance consumer, plan sponsor, and regulator decisions. Contributors to this volume - Andrew G. Biggs, Resident Scholar, the American Enterprise Institute. Jason Bromberg, Assistant Director of Financial Markets and Community Investment, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO). Alicia P. Cackley, Director in the Financial Markets and Community Investment team, the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Michael Finke, Associate Professor and Director of Ph.D. studies in Personal Financial Planning, Texas Tech University. Mathew Greenwald, President, Mathew Greenwald & Associates, Inc. Andreas Hackethal, Professor of Finance and Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Goethe University Frankfurt. Paula H. Hogan, Founder, Paula Hogan. Sarah Holden, Senior Director of Retirement and Investor Research, the Investment Company Institute (ICI). Kelli Hueler, CEO and founder, Hueler Companies. Angela A. Hung, Senior Economist, RAND, Director of the Center for Financial and Economic Decision Making, and Associate Director for the RAND Roybal Center on Financial Decisionmaking, RAND. Roman Inderst, Finance Professor, Goethe University Frankfurt. Christopher L. Jones, Chief Investment Officer and Executive Vice President of investment management, Financial Engines. Arthur Laby, Professor of Law, Rutgers University School of Law in Camden, New Jersey. Robert Mayer, Professor in the Department of Family and Consumer Studies, the University of Utah. Frederick H. Miller, management consultant and founder, Sensible Financial. Olivia S. Mitchell, International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor of Insurance/Risk Management and Business Economics/Public Policy, the Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania. Dana M. Muir, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Business Law, the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, the University of Michigan. Alicia Munnell, the Peter F. Drucker Professor of Management Sciences, Carroll School of Management, Boston College. Anna Rappaport, actuary, consultant, author, and speaker, Anna Rappaport Consulting. Lisa Schneider, Research Director, Greenwald & Associates. Jason Scott, Managing Director, the Financial Engines Retiree Research Center. Kent Smetters, the Boettner Chair Professor, the Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania, and Faculty Research Fellow, the National Bureau of Economic Research. John A. Turner, Director of the Pension Policy Center. Anthony Webb, research economist, the Center for Retirement Research, Boston College. Joanne K. Yoong, Economist at RAND and Professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Cathleen D. Zick, Professor in the Department of Family and Consumer Studies, and Director of the Master of Public Policy program, the University of Utah.