Investment Management Consulting
Lucid Advisors, Inc.® understands that management of a company-sponsored retirement plan has become extremely challenging as retirement plans are offering a greater number of investment options with diverse investment strategies. More complex plans, coupled with the knowledge that many employees are depending on their company-provided retirement plan as their sole vehicle for retirement savings, and the growing evidence that employees are generally under-saving, has increased the burden of ensuring that the investment options are being selected and monitored in a prudent fashion.
Although many people focus their attention on historical investment performance, Lucid Advisors, Inc.® believes that reviewing performance is but one facet of a prudent investment monitoring process which should also include risk analysis, review of expenses and qualitative factors such as investment personnel turnover and firm/fund governance issues.
Many retirement plan sponsors have historically delegated many of their investment selection and monitoring processes to their investment provider (such as an insurance company or brokerage firm). In theory, outsourcing tasks to hired experts is a good practice, however, many plan sponsors fail to recognize that their particular 'expert' may have compensatory arrangements with the investment community, thus giving them a vested interest in recommending/selecting certain products over others. Because this critical conflict of interest is often not fully disclosed, these clients do not realize that they may be receiving 'filtered advice'.
As an independent consulting firm, Lucid Advisors, Inc.® offers objective investment consulting services to assist clients in the development and deployment of prudent investment processes related to their assets.
Services include:
- Investment policy development and compliance processes
- Investment manager/mutual fund review and analysis
- Investment manager/mutual fund search processes
- Performance measurement and reporting
- Ongoing investment monitoring (qualitative and quantitative)
- Investment fee and expense analysis (see Fee & Revenue Sharing Consulting section for more detail)
- General education/training on institutional investment management processes
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