MassMutual's Retirement Services Division recently participated in the 2011 Retirement Services Roundtable® Senior Executive Forum, hosted by The Corporate Executive Board Company. MassMutual was invited to present its industry-leading fee disclosure strategy framework as part of the event's best practice case study. Executives from across the country gathered in Arlington, Va. to discuss current economic conditions and share best practices related to the explicit pricing transparency mandated by Section 408(b)(2) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and the regulations issued thereunder.
During this invitation-only forum, Tom Cremona, vice president of sales and client management for MassMutual's Retirement Services Division, led the attendees through MassMutual's comprehensive education-based fee disclosure training approach. In addition to a series of focused WebEx sessions for advisors and third-party administrators (TPAs), this division-wide, tiered training program for client-facing associates has prepared them to assist and educate sponsors, advisors, TPAs, and participants about changes in fee disclosure and what it means to them.
The training was calibrated to match each audience to the right level of training, based on expected client interaction. For instance, relationship managers completed two to three days of classroom training and role playing, and call center associates completed both web-based and scenario-based classroom training to ensure they could be as helpful as possible. In addition to standard classroom and web training, MassMutual provided associates with an array of support tools to help them illustrate MassMutual's offering relative to fees.
"MassMutual's world-class call center representatives as well as account and relationship management teams are fully prepared to respond to fee-related questions, as well as capture disclosure feedback from participants, sponsors and advisors on potential future strategic enhancements," says Cremona. "Every attendee at the Corporate Executive Board event was fully engaged on the subject. It's hard to remember a topic of such importance to the industry and at MassMutual, we recognized this early on and have taken numerous proactive steps to ensure that advisors, TPAs, plan sponsors, and participants have access to the information and resources they need to be fully informed," adds Cremona.
"The MassMutual Retirement Services Division is extremely proud to have been selected for the best practice case profile," says Dennis Miles, vice president of sales engineering, MassMutual Retirement Services. "Following first notice of the upcoming fee disclosure regulations, we worked diligently to prepare our educational approach to ensure we are ready to handle and succeed with this unprecedented change. Every client-facing associate in our organization has been trained on the subject of fee disclosure and we have been proactively discussing impacts with our advisors, TPAs, sponsors and participants. We are well-positioned to demonstrate that MassMutual's reputation as a world-class retirement services provider is well-deserved and affirmed by both advisors and plan sponsors," adds Miles.
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