The annual Leafhouse National Retirement Symposium (LNRS) took place in Austin, Texas in October. The theme was the Art of Change and LeafHouse CEO Todd Kading made several partneship announcements while there, including one with PlanTools as well as its entry into the health savings account (HSA) market through a partnership with HSA Bank. He also announced an automatic IRA force-out solution called the LeafHouse Investment Rollover Automation or LeafHouse IRA.
Attendees heard keynote addresses from the “father of the video game industry” (and inventor of PONG) Nolan Kay Bushnell, an American businessman and electrical engineer who established Atari, Inc., and the Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre, as well as Guadalupe Laiz, an international artist, photographer, and explorer. Practical application insights on communicating change came from the Moxie Institute’s Garret Blair. Thom Singer, CEO of the Austin Technology Council, focused on “Try New Things: Being Open to the Unknown.”
Panels focused on the need for change and obstacles to it. From the opening keynote by former Chief Content Officer of the American Retirement Association Nevin Adams to a CEO panel including Kading, Strategic Retirement Partners’ Jeff Cullen, and Prime Capital’s Scott Colangelo called “Take the Shot”, they challanged those in attendance to “See different. Learn different. Be different”.
There were panel discussions regarding tech innovations, including AI that can—and are—making personalized portfolios a reality, as well as a panel of “advisor-centric” recordkeepers who have and are continuing to break new ground. That interplay continued later in the symposium in a panel moderated by Leafhouse’s own Chad Brown, focusing on the battle for participants and advisors that brought out the implications of both an increased focus on financial wellness and the application of managed accounts.
Another panel took on “the fight for open data”, and the issues, inaccuracies, and inefficiencies that continue to plague the free flow of pricing and security information, costing both unnecessary time and money – not only for the industry itself but for the plans and participants that depend on that information.
Those discussions teed up the symposium’s “Fast Break” segment, where industry experts were given 10 minutes to make their "pitch". This year, the focus was on retirement income.
Yet industry challenges remain. Prime Capital’s Colangelo put the issue squarely on the table, noting, “There are things that we should be doing to partner with each other to help grow each other’s practices, to be more of a collegial community”—but then acknowledged that the industry as a whole remains “protective,” if not standoffish.
Adams warned that forces outside the retirement industry are looking for an opportunity to step in—both in the private sector and those advocating for strong government intervention. In fact, when asked to identify the biggest challenge ahead, Adams cited the coverage gap and said that time was running out for “us” to solve it. Referring to multiple measures in the SECURE and SECURE 2.0 Acts, he noted that they were gifts to help solve that problem—but that the industry needed to step up quickly and demonstrate commitment.
“The clock is ticking,” he said.
Kading challenged the audience about “the lack of adoption of things that are obviously good for individuals. I don’t understand what it will take to get everybody to wake up to the right things for participants. Just because they’re different doesn’t mean they should be scary.”
The event raised $17,645 for the Helping Hand Home for Children via a silent auction of 10 works of art depicting different aspects of the sessions at the symposium contributed by artist Anthony Freda, whose work has been published in Time, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and the New York Times.
