"Most smaller plans are looking for a little bit more than low cost," says Ryan. "They want some services, they want advice for participants, they want to have loans made available. You can go in there now using our tools and just prospect all the plans above 3% in fees-the people with the real pain."
Now add in geo-location-the ability to target plans that are paying the highest expenses and that are within a 10-, 20- or 100-mile radius of your office. You can screen for 50 plans with assets of a certain size that have high fees and that are in a 100-mile radius of your ZIP code.
BrightScope creates simple prospecting reports customized with an advisor's logo and a space where an advisor can enter a brief description of his value proposition. Advanced reporting capabilities are also available with more granular data on a plan versus its peers.
Advisors can subscribe to BrightScope for $8,000 a year. That buys unlimited searches of plans and 12 plan reports that can be used for prospecting. But the number of prospecting reports you can create is limited to 12, 36 or 60 a month.
My guess is prices will come down in the years ahead, but BrightScope is the first time market and doing a great job. So advisors who are serious about the qualified plan business will pay its price.
Editor-at-large Andrew Gluck, a veteran financial writer, owns Advisor Products Inc., a marketing technology company serving 1,800 advisory firms.