Link’s workplace financial wellness plans promise full fee schedule transparency
Fee transparency.
You’d expect it to meet with universal agreement. But in some corners of the group benefits and retirement services business, you’d be wrong.
Recently, the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association (CLHIA) raised more than a few eyebrows with proposed amendments to its compensation disclosure guidelines.
Suggested changes include disclosing total dollar value for in-kind compensation—such as gifts, cruises or junkets to sales conferences—where it exceeds $5,000 per advisor per year.
Some in the employee benefits industry are already complaining that this gives the appearance of the CLHIA bowing to pressure from larger brokerages and consulting houses by effectively allowing them to hide bonuses, trips and incentives under $5,000—for which smaller brokers are not generally eligible—and allows for conflict of interest.
In-kind compensation in the industry was once suggested at $500, but these proposed changes allow for more extravagant compensation, says insurance broker Dave Patriarche.
“This creates a situation where now you can game the system. You can structure everything so you end up hiding a lot of it . . . you can hide the trips and all the things that create the conflict of interest in the first place,” says Patriarche. “We should all be disclosing conflict of interest.”
Link: No surprises, no ‘gotchas’
Not exactly transparent, is it?
At Link Investment Management, we believe in full fee transparency. And we live those values, every day.
Link is an innovator in workplace financial wellness. Our personalized plans, such as the defined contribution LINK Multi Employer Pension Plan, and our fully digital, cloud-based platform translate to lower fees for small to midsize businesses and their employees.
And it’s not just a question of lower fees—about 1% to professionally manage an employee’s pension assets, compared to as much as 3% charged by traditional providers.
We also operate without secrecy. We are entirely up front, fully transparent, about fees. No hidden costs, no surprises, no “gotchas.”
Simple, straightforward and honest
Fees have a profound effect on the final value of a portfolio. Lower fees can mean higher returns, less worry, more security and a better retirement.
At Link, we work with small and midsize employers to determine a plan that best suits the needs of their business, while also meeting the needs of their employees. At the same time, we remove the administrative burden—all the way down the line, from plan design and implementation to recordkeeping and reporting.
Trivest Wealth Counsel co-founder Martin Pelletier has called the workplace financial wellness sector “an inefficient industry that lacks transparency, and yet has high margins.” Today’s business landscape is rapidly changing, however, and seeing greater demands for fee schedule transparency every day.
Link believes in making financial wellness benefit programs simple, straightforward and honest including absolute fee transparency.
Transparency. What a concept!