Mainspring Partner

Winter 2012

Market Commentary

By Julie Grandstaff, VP & Managing Director, StanCorp Investment Advisers, Inc.

Popular discontent so defined 2011 that Time magazine named "The Protester" as Person-of-the-Year. Throughout the world, people took to the streets to express dissatisfaction with their governments' unresponsiveness to their needs.

The last 12 months have felt more eventful than a typical year. Besides protests and regime changes, 2011's other significant events included the Japanese earthquake/tsunami, the death of Osama Bin Laden, and the budget fight here in the United States that ultimately resulted in the loss of our AAA credit rating — once considered unassailable.

How did the markets do last quarter and what does the new year hold?

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5 Tips For Growing Your Practice in 2012

The unpredictable economy has likely affected your practice to some degree over the past few years. Now more than ever, it takes flexibility and a willingness to try new approaches to keep growing your business.

The Standard's sales team offers you five tips to help endure and even thrive in today's economy.

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Using Fee Disclosure As A Prospecting Opportunity

The ERISA fee disclosure deadlines set by the Department of Labor are just around the corner. As an advisor, you have an excellent opportunity to add value with clients and prospects by helping them understand and manage the challenges ahead.

The Standard shares three ways for using fee disclosure to differentiate yourself with plan sponsors.

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Providing Non-Fiduciary Support To Plan Sponsors

Many plan sponsors are unaware of their fiduciary responsibilities or the possible penalties for not fulfilling those duties.

While you do not want to strike too much fear into plan sponsor clients, it is important to educate them regarding their fiduciary obligations. We provide a checklist of four ways you can provide non-fiduciary support.

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Four Strategies For Enrollment Success

Advisors can be crucial to helping their clients' employees overcome common saving and investing roadblocks at enrollment time. Whether you like to conduct meetings yourself or instead prefer to leverage The Standard's licensed enrollment resources to complement what you do, these four simple strategies can help put participants on the path to meet their retirement savings goals and properly plan for their future.

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Online Services Updates

Scheduled to launch in early 2012, our redesigned online services will offer streamlined, intuitive navigation featuring a redesigned account overview screen with quick access to account details and settings. We have made it easier for plan sponsors and participants to access important information, including balances, returns and contributions. With more graphics — including interactive tables and charts — participants will be able to more quickly absorb plan information.

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Building Your Business Webinars

In case you missed the Nov. 30, 2011, webinar, "Your 2012 Success Formula Action Plan" with Charlie Epstein, founder of The 401k Coach Program^®, you can still take advantage of this valuable resource by visiting our webinar archive. In 2011, the series also featured timely topics including secrets of big producers, plan sponsors' top five issues, behavioral finance, control-point sales productivity, fiduciary concerns during plan conversions, providing stellar customer service and more. Webinars can be downloaded at any time from the site in a variety of formats.

Watch for a separate email in early February for our first-quarter "Building Your Business" webinar.

What's New

Find out what resources The Standard is offering advisors, plan sponsors and participants on topics including indexed limits, fee disclosure, fee transparency and staff announcements.

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