Timing is everything, not just in retirement, but in the retirement business as well.

Two years after it started pushing RIAs to provide 401(k)s and 403(b)s in earnest, Jersey City, N.J.-based TD Ameritrade Institutional is enjoying positive results, thanks, in part, to improving financial technology, a changing regulatory environment and the rise of defined contribution plans as a primary method of retirement saving.

According to internal numbers reported by TD Ameritrade Institutional, a recent survey of RIAs revealed that 57 percent of advisors are already actively pursuing and managing retirement plan assets.

That should be a relief to retirees. When the dust finally clears from the Department of Labor and the Securities and Exchange Commission fiduciary rule processes, plan sponsors may lean heavily on the RIA channel.

“The government is imposing a number of requirements to make plan providers line up under a fiduciary standard,” Newman says. “RIAs are structurally set up to meet these requirements, while other providers have had to do everything possible not to be deemed a fiduciary. When the Department of Labor comes out with their new regulations, it’s going to lend a lot more momentum to sponsors seeking out these services from RIAs.”

Newman says that custodians like TD help RIAs expand into the 401(k) industry by offering educational and digital tools to the advisors on their platform.

For example, at the National Linc conference in February, the firm launched a new tool for retirement plan advisors that allows them to search existing plan sponsors who might be attractive client prospects by size of the company, geographic location, economic sector and current plan provider.

Newman says that in its first month, use of the tool has exceeded its expectations.

“Technology allows firms like our to help advisors offer smaller companies service packages similar to what the largest firms in the country have,” Newman says. “Plans that have $1 million in them can now have the same services as those delivered to the $100 million plan market. Technology has helped us to become more efficient, and advisors are thriving in the small plan marketplace.”

Anecdotally, Newman says that more than 1,000 advisors attended preconference workshops and breakout sessions focused on the retirement plan business at TD Ameritrade’s conference in February.

Rising RIA interest has resulted in a 106 percent increase in the number of advisors using TD Ameritrade’s Retirement Plan tool according to the firm’s internal numbers, says Newman, “The amount of activity we’re seeing is quite extraordinary.”

Newman says that the number of proposals from independent advisors to defined contribution plan sponsors using the Retirement Plan tool has also doubled, and that the number of advisors who have won new business with TD’s retirement solutions has increased 238 percent year-over-year.

“The firms that have won new business with us have an average assets under management of $350 million,” says Newmans. “The larger firms are the ones on the forefront of jumping on the retirement plan opportunity.”

A third of the internal survey’s respondents serving retirement plans say they are a profitable client segment, and 36 percent are growing this area of their business.

Newman says that most of the plans provided by RIAs on TD’s platform have between $1 million and $10 million in total assets, “We’ve helped advisors compete for plans as high as $80 million to $100 million in assets,” with medical groups and accounting firms among the most popular prospects.

The new business is changing the look of these RIAs, says Newman.

“When they decide to get into the plan marketplace, they’re often hiring one to two new advisors who are already specialists in the area,” Newman says. “Those advisors begin to form a small subgroup within the firm that targets and grows the retirement plan business.”

The internal numbers complement a survey of plan sponsors released in December showing that while only 28 percent were currently using an RIA to advise their defined contribution plan, most were willing to at least consider switching plan providers to seek lower fees, more investment options and greater access to planning tools and advice.

“The services that advisors offer in terms of education and support for the sponsor are the services that sponsors want,” Newmansays. “It’s a good alignment.”

Newman says that retirement plans began to shift towards RIAs following the passage of the Pension Protection Act in 2006, which began the movement towards improved fee disclosure for retirement plans.

“The old approach that was popular for decades was that providers would give away advising services at low cost or for free because the cost of these plans was embedded in the cost of the investments,” Newman says. “With fee disclosure, it’s difficult to do that these days, and sponsors are in a better position to make an apples-to-apples comparison of which plan provider offers the most value.”