TD Ameritrade Trust Company has unveiled a turnkey retirement plan solution for RIAs to expand their presence in the 401(k) market and simplify the process of establishing retirement plans for business clients.

The service was announced at the firm's annual conference in Orlando, Fla., yesterday.

About 400 of the 4,700 RIA firms affiliated with the firm use it as a custodian for clients' retirement plans, said Skip Schweiss, TD Ameritrade's managing director of advisor advocacy. "That means 90 percent aren't" using the firm for these services, he said.

Given that TD is only now making a major support effort, it is unclear how much potential it has. But Schweiss believes that possibly 20 percent to 30 percent of the RIAs affiliated with TD might be interested in entering the market.

At present, the 400 advisors engaged in the business have 7,500 plans with $27 billion in plan assets at TD, so the numbers are significant. Moreover, that represents an increase from 2,500 plans with $6 billion in assets in 2009. "It's already going well with 8 percent of our advisors," Schweiss noted, adding that doubling the number of advisors and assets would appear a reasonable target.

In a survey by Financial Advisor magazine last fall of nearly 1,700 financial advisors, 69 percent said they saw retirement plans offering significant profit potential for their firms and 67 percent plan to increase the number of clients they advise on retirement plans.

Schweiss acknowledged that some RIAs don't have an interest in the market, while others lack the "bandwidth." But many advisors have told TD that if it could simplify and educate their staffs and put the TD brand on a program, their firms would be positioned to take advantage of a missed opportunity. Fidelity, the nation's largest 401(k) plan provider, has enjoyed a strong relationship with advisors partnering with them in the space.

"Advisors tell me once you have two, three or four plans in place, it's not nearly as hard as you think," Schweiss said. RIAs don't need to become data processors, but they do want to raise their game in terms or education and service.

A number of TD's RIA clients, such as Edelman Financial Services, CFS Investment Advisory Services and Savant Capital, already are major players in the business. "You have to invest in it," Schweiss says. "But if you have a lot of business owner clients, it's a natural entry point into other small businesses."