Four NTSA leaders – Tamara Indianer of Lincoln Investment, Bill Fisher of Penserv, Paul Prete of Foresters Financial and I – introduced the NTSA Certified Retirement Education Specialist (CRES) initiative at a Jan. 28 session of the organization’s 30th Anniversary Summit in Tampa.
The CRES will be the foundation of NTSA’s efforts to improve the understanding of retirement planning options and improve participation rates in 403(b) plans going forward. The program includes plan sponsor education resources, advisor solutions for overcoming school access, advisor certification, and registration program, and classroom retirement educational resources.
With the goal of improving financial literacy for public educators throughout the country, it will also serve as a turnkey marketing and client acquisition model for advisors. The program “includes deliverables designed specifically to support the work of advisors and TPAs in the public education community,” said Fisher. “It’s important to view this as material we’ve generated to support the work that you do,” Fisher told attendees.
This program already has met a great deal of success in Massachusetts and Arizona. In Arizona, the local networking group is currently engaging 11 school districts with 33,250 employees at 344 sites, as well as 21 more school districts in the pipeline.
When a school district expresses interest, the approach is to:
- divide the response cards among advisors;
- contact those who submitted them within 24 hours; and
- make a presentation at schools, from which clients will result.
The program has boosted school district participation by as much as 90%. In addition, advisors report receiving approximately10-20 interest cards per school indicating interest in the program and what it offers – and that results in a high conversion ratio and making new clients.
Adam W. Pearce, CFP®, is part of Lincoln Investment’s Phoenix AZ office. He served as NTSA’s President in 2017.
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