How RIIA Recognizes and Encourages Industry Adaptation: The RIIA Awards

Francois Gadenne has graciously agreed to cover for me until my return on May 16. He will be contributing a variety of essays addressing contemporary and future retirement income opportunities and challenges.

Last week, it became clear that it is too early to pick the retirement income winners. Differentiation is still going on. Market selection is still at a very early stage.

We also saw that a shared challenge for retirement income competitors is to avoid dead-ends. By dead-ends, we mean manufacturing and distributions models that are not favored and selected by the market.

In a meaningful way, we stand on the shoulders of business giants who came before us and avoided dead-ends. Now, we are depending upon our own efforts for future success. What will be our path?

Thinking about paths, you probably noticed that Monte Carlo analysis has become quite popular in the industry. Monte Carlo analysis is a probabilities-based simulation method that can be used to paint a large number of possible paths over a given space. For instance, we can simulate the many paths of returns for a risky asset or the many paths of our customers’ spending patterns.

This notion of path is important. Of all the paths that our businesses can follow, how and when do we know that we are on a winning path? If business success comes from making decisions that keep us on the better business life-paths, how and when do we know that we are following one of our best possible paths?

A daily task for business leaders is to determine if their perceptions are objective and verifiable or if they are subjective projections of their inside-the-box biases. One way to evaluate the goodness of the path that we are following is to look around and to benchmark ourselves against the right number and the right types of competitors. There are many existing benchmarks that we can use if we are focused on accumulation and investment returns. What are the benchmarks focused on retirement income?

The RIIA Awards are designed to deliver independent, objective and cross-silo benchmarking.

In particular, RIIA’s 2007 Awards focus on efforts and contributions that are most helpful to Financial Advisors (FAs) who find themselves “between chairs” during the industry’s transition from Accumulation to Income Distribution. RIIA brings valuable benchmarks to all of its members by recognizing and encouraging institutions that have delivered exceptional efforts and contributions on our collective path of adaptation from Accumulation to Retirement Income.

These Awards, and the judges include:

  • RIIA’s Practical Research Award.
  • This Award is part of the Communications Conference that will take place during the afternoon of RIIA’s 2007 Annual Meeting and Awards Dinner (September 17, 2007 at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Boston).
    Bob Tyndall from Research Magazine chairs the Award Committee.
    The Committee is looking at recent academic research to identify, from an FA’s point of view, what published research was most practical and useful during this “between chairs” transition period.

  • RIIA’s Advertising Award.
  • This Award is part of the Awards Dinner on September 17.
    Sean Hanna from InvestmentWires chairs the Award Committee.
    The Committee is looking for the most creative and motivating advertising in the retirement income space. The Awards will go to both the advertiser and to the creative agency.

  • RIIA’s Retail Communications Award.
  • This award is also part of the Awards Dinner.
    Suzanne Siracuse from Crain’s InvesmentNews chairs this Award Committee.
    This award will recognize the best in printed materials aimed at planners who prepare themselves and their practices to help clients as they move from accumulating assets to the withdrawal of those assets in retirement. Awards will be made in two categories: Printed materials and new media.

  • RIIA’s DC Communications Award.
  • This Award is also part of the Awards Dinner.
    Charlie Ruffel from Asset International chairs the Award Committee.
    This award will recognize the best in printed materials aimed at DC planners who prepare themselves and their practices to help clients as they move from accumulating assets to the withdrawal of those assets in retirement. Awards will be made in two categories: Printed materials and new media.

    RIIA’s membership is still open and we look forward to your participation. If you want to join one of the Awards Committees or if you want to submit material for the consideration of the Committees, please contact the Committee Chairs directly by checking Committees webpage on RIIA’s website, www.riia-usa.org.