SECURE 2.0 and the Compliance Burden on Retirement Consultants
The SECURE 2.0 Act, signed into law in 2022 and phased in through 2025 and 2026, has added significant new requirements to defined contribution plan administration. Auto-enrollment mandates for new plans, catch-up contribution changes, Roth employer match options, and long-term part-time employee participation rules have all created new compliance touchpoints for plan sponsors — and for the consultants who advise them.
According to the Plan Sponsor Council of America's 2025 DC Plan Survey, 72% of plan sponsors reported that their primary retirement plan consultant had increased communication frequency since SECURE 2.0 implementation began. The same survey found that 61% of small to mid-sized plan sponsors rely entirely on their retirement plan consulting firm for compliance deadline tracking and employee communication support.
Virtual assistants are helping retirement plan consulting firms meet that elevated service demand without proportionally scaling their internal teams.
Plan Sponsor Communication Management
Retirement plan consultants typically maintain ongoing advisory relationships with dozens of corporate plan sponsors simultaneously. Each relationship requires regular touchpoints: quarterly plan review meetings, fee disclosure updates, investment menu reviews, and ongoing responses to HR and benefits administrator questions.
A virtual assistant can manage the communication workflow for multiple sponsor relationships: sending meeting confirmation emails, distributing agenda materials ahead of quarterly reviews, following up on outstanding action items from prior meetings, and routing HR questions to the appropriate consultant. According to Cerulli Associates' 2025 Retirement Markets Report, consultants who maintain structured sponsor communication cadences have 28% higher plan retention rates than those managing communication informally.
Enrollment Coordination Support
Annual enrollment periods and onboarding of newly eligible employees represent recurring high-volume coordination tasks for retirement plan consultants. Coordinating with the plan recordkeeper, the HR team, and employees to ensure enrollment materials are distributed, deadlines are communicated, and participation rates are tracked requires sustained administrative effort.
A virtual assistant can assist with enrollment coordination by preparing enrollment communication packages, sending deadline reminder schedules to HR contacts, tracking participation statistics provided by the recordkeeper, and flagging low participation rates to the consultant for follow-up. The Employee Benefit Research Institute's 2025 Retirement Confidence Survey found that plans with structured enrollment communication campaigns achieve participation rates 18 percentage points higher than plans with passive enrollment approaches.
Compliance Report Distribution
Retirement plan consultants are often responsible for distributing regulatory documents to plan sponsors: 408(b)(2) fee disclosures, summary plan description updates, annual investment review reports, and ERISA fidelity bond confirmation notices. Missing distribution deadlines creates legal exposure for both the plan sponsor and the consulting firm.
A virtual assistant can maintain a compliance document distribution calendar, prepare distribution packages for each plan, send documents through secure channels, and log confirmation of receipt. According to the 2025 ASPPA Annual Conference survey data, 39% of plan compliance deficiencies identified in audits involved documentation distribution failures that a structured tracking system would have prevented.
Technology Integration in Retirement Plan VA Workflows
Retirement plan consulting VAs commonly work within platforms including Salesforce, Redtail, Fi360, Vestwell, Empower, Fidelity NetBenefits, and Vanguard Plan Access. The ability to navigate recordkeeper portals and extract data for reports is a key workflow competency.
Stealth Agents provides virtual assistants with experience in retirement plan consulting environments, including sponsor communication workflows, enrollment coordination processes, and compliance document management across major recordkeeper platforms.
The Scalability Argument
Retirement plan consulting is a scale business. A consultant managing 30 plan relationships with an average plan size of $5 million in assets generates a meaningful revenue base — but the communication and documentation volume is proportional. Adding a VA to handle administrative throughput allows a single consultant to manage more relationships without service quality degradation, directly improving revenue per consultant while maintaining compliance standards.
Sources
- Plan Sponsor Council of America 2025 DC Plan Survey
- Cerulli Associates Retirement Markets Report 2025
- Employee Benefit Research Institute Retirement Confidence Survey 2025
- ASPPA Annual Conference Survey Data 2025
- SECURE 2.0 Act Implementation Guidance, IRS 2025