Short Story:
PlanConfidence Corp was started by a financial adviser and a software developer to let hard-working Americans know exactly how to professionally manage their 401(k) plans!
Kevin T Clark, RF
Kevin started his career in financial services as a “Special Agent” with Prudential Preferred in 1997.
In 2008, his clients started demanding advice on how to invest their 401(k) plans the same way he was investing their IRA money.
Kevin was told by his broker/dealer that doing that would make him an ERISA Fiduciary and they were not comfortable on signing off on that kind of advice.
So, Kevin read every book he could find on ERISA for financial advisers and printed out every page of the ERISA law and read it front to back.
He went back to his broker/dealer and showed him the written prudent process he was going to use, how he was going to research all his clients’ investment options, how he would overlay Ibbotson Models over the investment options to create the advice and how he planned on delivering the advice and documenting the whole process.
His broker/dealer signed off and the beginning of Plan Confidence was born.
As word spread about him giving 401(k) advice, his client base grew and the manual process to provide ERISA Compliant advice was taking 8-10 hours per month to complete.
Kevin sat down with his friend Mark (software developer) and described the process and asked if he could figure out how to “automate” this manual process.
Mark told him, “If you can label it, I can automate it”.
And they rolled up their sleeves and began creating the software that is now helping advisers easily (and compliantly) scale their work with “held-away” assets.
Mark Reddick
Mark has been developing software ever since he graduated from Devry University in 1988.
Around 2005, Mark created a product that was very popular with individuals who purchased their second iPod. Back then, many people “burned” music to their iPods and it was extremely difficult to transfer your songs from your old iPod to a new one.
So, Mark created iGadget, which was a tool (really an “app” before we even knew the term “app”) that allowed users to transfer songs from an old iPod, to your computer, and back to your new iPod (or to iTunes account), preserving play counts, ratings, last played dates, playback position and many other settings; also users could transfer playlists.
Mark listened to Kevin describe the manual process for providing ERISA Compliant advice and coded software to duplicate it.
Kevin was now able to do in minutes what used to take him 8 - 10 hours per month!
Mark and Kevin are working diligently on making PlanConfidence better everyday!
They have created the technology to do all the research, create and deliver your advice, document the process and keep you compliant.
They can also help you and your clients implement the advice (complete the trades) through 3rd party trading partners which we hope to integrate with in the near future.
The API technologies to do away with the term “held-away” does not yet exist. But that does not discourage them for waiting for the technology to catch up to their vision (See the “Future” section).
Kevin always says, “Netflix did not wait for most homes to have Broadband before they created their company. They mailed DVDs directly to homes well before they could directly stream into them. We are in the ‘mailing DVD stage’ of held-away accounts”!