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Improved user interface and cleaner presentation Ratings and benchmarks to compare plan sponsors More data than ever before Customized Trackable Marketing Letters (CTML) Prospect. Analyze. Contact. Profit. Transitioning to Larkspur Executive can radically streamline your marketing efforts and present analytics to clients like you’re in the 21st century. Improved user interface and cleaner presentation Let’s face it. Planisphere’s user interface is showing it’s age. Like an all original 1930’s bungalow, it was time for a complete makeover. Larkspur Executive’s (LEXE) sleek user interface means that you can proudly display charts and analysis during a client meeting. You can search with a map and select filters while seeing in...

Colin Ward

03 Oct 2019

Plan Ratings in Larkspur Executive

Average Employer Contributions / Participant Percent of Retirees: The Quintessence of Larkspur Executive: Overall Plan Rating The differences between benchmarks Benchmarking by the state is useful when prospecting in rural areas The Business benchmark can be too small for niche plan sponsors Often our users ask us to clarify the many ratings provided by Larkspur Executive. We get it. It is important to know these ratings in and out so that you can confidently explain the reasoning behind them to clients. Here’s a rundown of the Larkspur Executive ratings. The benchmark ratings are a quick way to assess how a plan scores when compared to 1000s of similar plans. A...

Colin Ward

01 Oct 2019

Why are Participant / Employer Contributions important to a plan sponsor?

Sponsors may not be maximizing their 401k contributions, and Larkspur Executive’s tools can easily show this deficit. Your sponsor contacts are most likely considered highly compensated employees (HCE) by the IRS – an employee who owns more than 5% of the interest in a business, earns more than $120,000 (2019), or is simply in the top 20% of employees when ranked by compensation. HCE’s are subject to more strict contribution limits to prevent wealthier employees from disproportionately benefiting from the tax deferment aspects of 401k plans. The IRS requires companies to minimize the discrepancy between the retirement benefits of HCEs and lower compensated employees. Average employer contributions...

Colin Ward

30 Sep 2019

Marketing to Millennials

Marketing to Millennials Optimize your company’s website for the 21st Century Your website needs to support mobile and tablet users Tackle Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube Personalize your company’s brand Be charitable, socially, and environmentally conscious Don’t try and do it all We wrote about how Financial Advisors are missing the ESG Market and believe they are missing millennials for similar reasons. Financial advisors have an advantage because only half of the millennials say they would trust a robo-advisor and even less are interested in a DIY-approach. Yet, millennials are behind in retirement savings, for their age, but we’ll discuss that in another post. Perhaps the finance knowledge gap is so...

Yon Perullo

26 Sep 2019

Doing Custom Stress Tests with Options

There are a few features in the new Portfolio Crash Testing Pro (PCT Pro) that allow an advisor to compare and contrast the outcomes of various portfolio allocations. Some of the most dramatic comparisons come from including assets that feature a non-linear payoff profile when used in stress tests. This post will illustrate a simple portfolio that holds an option. We can analyze other asset types, like structured products and annuities with caps or floors built into their payoffs, in the same manner. I am going to compare a simple US-based 60/40 portfolio with $1m to the same portfolio with 1% of the equity exposure allocated to an option. Figure...