How has Covid-19 impacted 401(k) Plans? A discussion with ERISA attorney Matthew Eickman
Josh holds a discussion with Matthew Eickman about the overall impact of Covid-19 on 401(k) plans, looking at it from 3 perspectives: plan participants, human resources professionals and fiduciaries. Matthew is the National Retirement Practice Leader for Qualified Plan Advisors and has a background as an ERISA attorney. This is the first chapter in a four part series addressing top of mind issues facing plan sponsors & business owners during a time of unprecedented change. You can watch our conversation at https://youtu.be/OlDt0nafVV0. Here is a transcription of their discussion:
Josh Null:
Hi, everyone! Welcome to chapter one of our Retirement Education and Planning Series, what we're going to be referring to as the REAP Series, R-E-A-P, for short. I'm Josh Null. I am a independent financial advisor and I am the owner of Gulf Coast Financial Advisors, which is located here in Fairhope, Alabama. For those of you all not familiar with lower Alabama or Fairhope, we're near the Gulf of Mexico.
Josh Null:
I'm joined today by Matthew Eickman. He is the national retirement plan leader for Qualified Plan Advisors. Now, Qualified Plan Advisors, or QPA as you'll hear us refer to them, is the qualified retirement plan division of Prime Capital Investment Advisors, of which my firm, Gulf Coast Financial Advisors, is part of their network of independent financial advisors. In Matthew's role, he oversees the firm's retirement practice and he also sits on the Investment Advisory Committee, which is tasked with overseeing about $10 billion worth of assets, and that number is growing. Matthew also has a background as an ERISA attorney and he was previously a partner in an employee benefits boutique and in that capacity had nearly 17 years of private practice experience. So with all that said, Matthew, how you doing?
Matthew Eickman:
Good, Josh. How are you today?
Josh Null:
Doing great.
Matthew Eickman:
Good.
Josh Null:
Well, Matthew, before we dive into our topic today of chapter one, let me have a brief disclosure. Advisory services offered through Prime Capital Investment Advisors, a federally registered investment advisor, Overland Park, Kansas. The following commentary and responses are the opinions of myself, Josh Null and Matthew Eickman, and are not necessarily the opinions of PCIA, are for informational and educational purposes only, and are not and should not be considered investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results, no guarantee is expressed or implied.
Josh Null:
All right, so Matthew, what would you and I are going to talk about today is we're going to be diving into chapter one. That's really going to touch on the main thing going on in our world here, in July of 2020. We're dealing with a global pandemic and COVID-19 has impacted so many parts of our lives, both personal and professionally, but what you and I are going to be discussing is the impact, in particular, on qualified retirement plans. Now, as opposed to just sitting here and telling folks what we think from our perspective, as you as an executive of a large qualified plan division, and me as the owner of a boutique financial planning firm, what we really want to do is we want to look at the different perspectives that people may be viewing these things.
Josh Null:
One perspective we're going to look at is plan participants. How has COVID-19 affecting their view as a plan participant? The other view we're going to be looking at will be from fiduciaries. What is a fiduciary looking at that? And then I know there's a couple more perspectives you want to talk about, so with that said, I'd like to go ahead and turn it over to you.
Matthew Eickman:
Yeah, thanks Josh. I think that is absolutely critical. We don't want to think about the retirement plan in a vacuum or overly academic, but instead we really need to think about the people who are involved with the plan. And so, whether you're a human resources professional or you're a CFO or a controller or a CEO or a business owner, or you work in benefits or whatever that might be, we need to be able to put ourselves in the shoes of the other people who are working with the plan. And so frankly, for each person listening here today, it's important to think about those multiple perspectives. How do we put ourselves in the shoes of a plan participant, for starters? How do we ask ourselves, and answer the question? This is what they're feeling, and this is what they're experiencing.
Matthew Eickman:
And frankly, you think about that, Josh, the biggest thing that's really impacted them from a retirement plan perspective, it's these huge market swings think about being an employee who has a full time job doing what he or she does all the time, then hit with the pandemic. So, then we're in this position where there's maybe a change in his life or her life, and maybe we're missing out on some social activities and maybe youth sports and maybe a graduation. And then maybe there's concern about whether this individual will lose a job or have hours cut. And then all the sudden you throw these big market swings out there. And if you're a participant in a retirement plan, how would you possibly make sense of the headlines? Look at those, Josh. The Dow's jumping 700 points on hope. And then when the stock market is up, the economy is down and is the volatility going to be greater or is it going to be less?
Matthew Eickman:
And so ultimately, that's the biggest concern. It's not about making sure that every individual in this entire country understands the stock market or every aspect of it. The real question is how are we handling that emotionally? What type of behavior are we experiencing or concerned about when it comes to employees? And so ultimately, if you work in an HR department or you're a business owner, or you work within finance isn't that really where we need to start? In the middle of all of this, don't we really need to say, "Okay, what are they experiencing?" And then how do we set them up for success? How do we help employees to understand not only how to sift through that headline risk, which is significant, think about the way in which a really sharp or a poorly worded or an extremely worded headline might push one of your employees to make a big, rash change in the marketplace.
Matthew Eickman:
The number of people across this country who panicked in March and decided on March 23rd to move their money into cash and have since missed out on about a 30% market run-up after that, it's really sad. It's really sad and the closer your employees are to retirement, the less likely it is that they'll ever recover from that decision. And so Josh, as you know, when we're working with plan participants, the number one question that we hear during the pandemic is not, "Help me better understand equities, help me understand fixed income, help me understand large cap, small cap, mid cap, technology funds, real estate funds." The question we get is, "What should I do? What should I do?"
Matthew Eickman:
Well, that's an incredibly challenging question to answer. Isn't it? Josh, I wouldn't even be able to answer that question from you, "What should I do?" Because I need to have a conversation with you to work you down a path so that we understand a roadmap to put you where you want to be. So when you think about how that roadmap works, Josh, obviously, it depends a bit on how an individual may be invested within a retirement plan. That's probably the right place to start.
Josh Null:
Well, and also Matthew, I think that it's worth very to say that not only this, with that chart you shown that showed that humongous drop we had, right? In equity values. Combine that with the fact that we had 11 plus years of a pretty stable climb. So, one thing that I think we as humans demonstrate pretty consistently, is we have very short memories and a lot of people have only been investing in a time period where they've seen some dips, they've had some mild corrections over the past 11 plus years, but for the most part, it's been fairly smooth sailing. And that smooth sailing not only translated to the plan participants, but it also to the plan sponsors, the human resources folks, even all the way up to the people that were housing the plans and whereas, not a set, forget it, but it just needed a little bit of nurturing.
Josh Null:
Well, you combine that with what is really a once in a generation, probably once in a multi-generation, event with the COVID-19 not only impacting everybody from a health perspective, but also having a severe detrimental effect on the market and volatility going through the roof, historical levels of volatility. So I think that, to circle back around to what you said is, the number one question we get is, "What do I do?" Well, you're getting those questions from not just plan participants. You're also getting them from human resources, business owners, plan sponsors. Up and down the chain.
Matthew Eickman:
Well, yes, certainly Josh. And I think sometimes analogies can be cheesy, but my mind works with analogies. That's the best way for me to understand how do we make an apples to apples comparison and help people to also understand what we're in the midst of and the way that I would describe or recap what you just said, is that the retirement plan industry been on a bit of an autopilot feature for a while. And let's think about how that works. Think about if you're a pilot and you're in training and you know that there's this autopilot feature, perhaps you don't pay attention to the classes that teach you what you need to do when that autopilot's not there. Or perhaps you don't go to the classes or perhaps the classes aren't offered. Couldn't we argue that that's really happened with a lot of employees across the country?
Matthew Eickman:
You move to automatic enrollment. "Oh, I don't have to make a decision about whether to participate. Oh, I don't have to make a decision about how much to save." You moved to automatic escalation. "Oh, cool. Somebody else is going to increase what I save." You move to a qualified, default investment alternative or a QDI. "Oh, great. Well, I don't have to make a decision about how I'm investing." Then what happens when we hit the turbulent skies and all the sudden the autopilot comes off and the individual has to grab a hold and make sure that we're going to land that plane. Apply that analogy to an employee, a participant and a plan, and think about how they can achieve that smooth landing, which is what they're trying to achieve when they get into retirement. And frankly, Josh, I believe that the best way to handle that for a retirement plan participant is for each individual to have a roadmap to work through.
Matthew Eickman:
And those roadmaps really divide into one of two primary categories. The first category, I would say, for plan participants who are in what we might describe as a do it for me solution, that'd be somebody who's in a target date fund, or they're in a managed account or some sort of risk based portfolio. Well, in that setting, they nonetheless need a roadmap to work through and to manage, as you said, the emotions that can overwhelm them when they have this short term memory, as you described. And so, for anybody out there working with plan participants who are in that do it for me type of solution, they still need to be educated on what they have. They need to understand how that vehicle will work. What's the point to putting somebody into a conservative target date fund, for example, if they don't know that when the market bottoms on March 23rd, that they haven't lost as much as the broader market?
Matthew Eickman:
So we want to make sure that all those plan participants out there are aware of what they have and then reassess what they have, go through a new risk profile, understand what works for that particular individual. And then Josh, the most critical point for those people, need to commit to a strategy at the end of the day, right? Need to determine at the very end of the process, what will I do if this happens in the marketplace? And it reminds me a little, as you know, I'm going on a family vacation tomorrow to Yellowstone, and we've known the entire time that there's a possibility that one of my boys would have state baseball on the last day of our vacation. And we've said the entire time that when the schedule comes out, we may need to depart Yellowstone a day early. And we've known that the entire time.
Matthew Eickman:
And when the schedule came out yesterday and I said, "We have to come home a day early," my wife said, "No we're not." And I said, "Well, we had to commit to our strategy. We've got to stick to our strategy and we're coming home early." And I think it's the same thing for those plan participants. And then Josh, I mentioned, there's really those two camps. You've got those who are in the do it for me, but of course, there's still many people in retirement plans who say, "Hey, I want to pick my own investments. I want to do it myself." Well, even there, it's probably even more important to have that roadmap in place, to ensure that there's a reassessment of what the portfolio looks like and ask each individual, "How did you get there? And does that still align with what you want to do today and how you see your future?" And have that conversation right there, Josh, that's an absolutely critical point in time.
Matthew Eickman:
As we look across the country, I have seen investment advisors take one of two extreme approaches, some have faced the pandemic and have said, "You know what? This is so overwhelming. I don't have good answers. I'm going to avoid the conversation and probably take advantage of relaxed expectations. And I'm going to work less." And others have said, "We are needed more now than ever before. We are clearly in the midst of a worldwide emergency." Josh, I know you're working ridiculous hours right now. We work with many people who have said, "This is the time when I have to be there." And so we're in that roadmap stage for a do it myself investor. And this is the time for the conversation. So if you work with a retirement plan and you haven't been talking to your advisor or your broker, whomever works with your plan, shame on them. This is when your people need help the most.
Josh Null:
Yeah, I've said publicly before Matthew, that in my opinion, I haven't had this much value in 11 years, and I may not have this much value for the next 10 years. Right now is when the value provided is most important. And in regards to what you were discussing with plan participants, we had folks come in, new clients come to our practice that had panicked and had cashed in. And, at that point, the damage is done. You just got to try to nurture the thing back to a healthy status. And you've also had, quite honestly, on the flip side of that, you had 401k plan participants that, that stuck it out. Right? And who knew that we would have a fairly monumental callback of some of the gains. My pivot to you, or to anybody that is watching this video is, can anyone tell me if this is over?
Josh Null:
Because if you can tell me that we're through the woods and we're not [crosstalk 00:14:37] this again, fine. Then let's just, "Hey, we survived that bout, let's just let her rip next time." I don't think that's going to be the case. So I think now for someone that maybe was fortunate enough to have a plan and was able to weather the storm for whatever reason, maybe it was not approaching retirement where the panic button was close to their hand. But now is a time where there's really the most value that you're probably going to see in a couple of decades of how do I accommodate the fact that this is not going away?
Josh Null:
No one knows the future of the virus. No one knows the future of the economy. But we can all have enough common sense to say that we're in for a bumpy ride. So particularly as a plan participant, I think that's a great way to segue to our human resources is on plan participant, probably now is not a bad time to, even if you feel like maybe it's too late, maybe the damage is undoable, that's not accurate. There is a way to come in and put a roadmap, particularly as maybe if you were coming towards the end of your accumulation years. So, that's what I'd like to say as we transition to the human resource perspective.
Matthew Eickman:
Yeah. Well, you're spot on there. There's that old Chinese proverb that tells us, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the second best time is today. And I think it's really easy for people who, made what proved to be a poor decision, perhaps, in March or maybe in April or at some point in time. And to see that and throw their hands up in the air and say, "Hey, I can't get back from that. So I'm going to give up on trying." And what I would say is, "Let's not look backwards right now. Let's look forward only. Let's start today and say, what I chose to do in March, or didn't choose to do in March, that's either a sunk cost or it's added to my value and I have more play with now. So let's look forward."
Matthew Eickman:
And I think for human resources professionals, Josh that's particularly the case. And so, don't look back, but let's say, "What do we need to be doing now? And the biggest part of that of course, will be understanding and implementing new ways to be able to communicate. And that's going to start with your working in HR and with respect to any sort of benefit programs, it's going to require an embrace of technology. The fact that people are tuning in to watch our mugs right now, Josh, tells me that we've got people here who have embraced technology, but recognize the way in which communication previously occurred is that maybe if anything, you'd be sitting around a conference room table and maybe you'd have a conference line if somebody wasn't there, but the need now to become comfortable, to be able to be in that position and whether you're using WebEx or Zoom or Adobe or whatever platform you might be using, to recognize, that's not just the future, that's the present.
Matthew Eickman:
We got there so quickly. And if you go back several months, people probably thought, "Yeah, that might become more popular and it might become more widely used." It's happened. It's there. We've got to be there. And so, I think for human resources professionals, it's absolutely critical to say, "How am I going to embrace technology? But, you know what's interesting about that, Josh, is that it's not merely a matter of saying, "Okay, how do I download the Zoom app? Or how do I make sure that I have a web cam?" The ultimate question is, how do we make that effective? How do we become really darn good at using it so that we can connect with our employees?
Matthew Eickman:
And so when you're in HR, that would be the way to personally challenge yourself, is to say, "Okay, I've got this set up and I know how to use Microsoft teams, or I know how to use WebEx, but how do I make this a truly interactive experience for the people who I'm working with?" And that, to me, would be I think the biggest challenge, but it's doable. And it's actually fun because the expectations for being absolutely perfect have changed. And really what people are looking for is effort and creativity and energy. And Josh, you certainly can bring that to the table by embracing technology.
Josh Null:
Well, and I think what we've seen, to build on our previous conversation about the fact that we had an 11 year pretty consistent bull run. Not only was it a bull run, it was a bull run with some of the least amount of volatility that we've seen in the history of the market. So you combine those two things, it's not that people get lazy, it's not that people got careless, it's just to be fair, sometimes like you said earlier, Matthew, we thought the autopilot was just flying this plane just fine. And we were going to be fine until we landed.
Josh Null:
Well, what we're seeing on that is with this COVID thing coming into the mix and with the relevance of technology being pushed more or less in our face. You and I have a camera and a microphone in our face right now, something we may not have done three months ago. But with this being pushed in our face, a lot of people thought things were trending was more of a high technology, lower human touch, lower human value when it came to being a human resource or a plan sponsor business owner offering these types of plans. And when in fact, the reality is different, is completely the opposite direction. You are now, in my opinion, with the technology tools that you have available to you, with the things that are going on with the market, with the fact that these are people investing in this plan, where you are part of that process, where you're part of the overseeing of it.
Josh Null:
You're one of the people that will actually want more contact. They want more touches. Even if it's electronically driven, they want a human element behind it, I firmly believe that. And I think that's one of the things I know we try to do down here. And I will give kudos to Prime Capital Investment Advisors and Qualified Plan Advisors. I think you all have done a great job with that as well, providing... It's math with a human touch. It's technology with emotion provided.
Matthew Eickman:
Well and Josh, we've got a network of retirement plan educators across the country who have a lot of experience behind the windshield and in the airports and in the airplanes. And one of our best educators is a woman named Terry Lewis. She's just incredible with people. And Terry would describe herself as an old school communicator. She didn't like the movement to email and doesn't want to just pick up the phone, but she wants to see people face to face. She wants to see them in person. And it's been really fun to watch Terry evolve throughout this process. The way in which she has said, people really enjoy this. If Terry and I have a call that we need to have, just a one on one call, we'll hop onto a Zoom meeting, just because it's so much more personal. And it's been really fun to see people evolve and be open minded in that regard.
Matthew Eickman:
And really, Josh, Terry works a lot with human resources professionals, and she's really enjoyed the way in which those who are very proactive and said, "Oh cool. You can provide more service to our people. You can reach more of our people more frequently in an environment that works for them. Let's do it. Game on. And that's been really fun to watch."
Josh Null:
Well, Matthew, I want to ask you about our third leg, as looking at this from different perspectives. That fiduciary is perspective. I'd like to see what your thoughts are on that.
Matthew Eickman:
Well, great. Josh, I think that's an interesting point because it's hard for people within an organization, given what we've been through and what might be ahead of many of you from an economic perspective or a financial perspective with your organization, to think about fiduciary matters with your 401k plan and your 403B plan being front and center, obviously when you wake up in the morning and you look at the list of things that are going to be absolutely critical to the day to day operations and potentially survival of your company, it won't rise to the top, but I would argue that fiduciary responsibilities are more important now, more than ever for a couple of reasons.
Matthew Eickman:
One, as Josh referenced earlier, jeez, people need help more than ever before. The decisions that fiduciaries make now, matter more than ever because we're not on autopilot. We actually need to make sure that we have an experienced captain and an experienced pilot manning that plane and getting us to where we need to go. And then secondly, it's absolutely critical because of the pace at which we're seeing developments. And so for example, Josh, a starting point has to be the CARES Act, right? I think we have to recognize right up front that the CARES Act did a lot for businesses across the country. It was intended to help out small businesses and with retirement plans, it did a fair number of things.
Matthew Eickman:
Many probably know that it added to this enhanced distribution option. It also added this ability to take out bigger plan loans or to not make repayments on loans for the rest of the year. And so for anybody, whether you're in human resources or you're a fiduciary, it's critical to understand the bullet points you see here on the screen. What were the choices? Wouldn't it be interesting to give a multiple choice test to people who work within retirement plans and just ask them to identify what the choices are? So much complexity, so many confusing misconceptions about what was possible. And then for every organization to say, "What did we choose?" I would love to poll everybody who might be watching this and say, "Hey, what did you choose?" And see the degree to which that matches or doesn't match with what the particular organization's chose and then, how do we communicate that to our employees?
Matthew Eickman:
And then really Josh, what we're seeing most right now is the emergence of IRS and Department of Labor guidance that says to us, "How does this work now, practically speaking, when somebody takes this type of distribution, what paperwork do we have to give them? How do we handle withholding?" The devil is truly in the details when you get there. And just within the last couple of weeks, the IRS put out notice 2020-50, 2020-51, 2020-52. And the IRS is saying, "Hey, we get it. This is really, really challenging, but we know that you need help." And so Josh, when I think about issues for fiduciaries right now, I start with the CARES Act.
Matthew Eickman:
What's interesting about the CARES Act is that unless we get additional congressional action that extends the applicability of it, it's going to be somewhat of a point in time or short-lived impact. So then absolutely will be important for fiduciary is to say, "Okay, how do we move forward? And what do we focus on as we move forward? And, I think the critical thing there for fiduciaries to understand is that all of these different issues and these different developments fit under this very expansive, fiduciary umbrella. So if I put myself into a fiduciaries shoes, I've got to recognize that the things that should govern my decisions start with these primary or these preliminary duties.
Matthew Eickman:
The duty of loyalty, what is the duty of loyalty? The duty of loyalty is for a fiduciary to make decisions in the interest of participants and beneficiaries. Did you notice I didn't say the duty of a fiduciary is to cover his or her tail? The duty of a fiduciary is not make sure he doesn't get sued or she doesn't get sued? Frankly, the duty of a fiduciary is to make decisions in participants' interests and not their own, but you know what happens if you take that approach, you actually protect yourself better because you make better decisions when you're guided by the right motivations. And then fiduciaries have this other responsibility, it's this duty of prudence. Well, what's the duty of prudence? It's the duty to fulfill your responsibilities with the care, the skill, the diligence, and the prudence of someone familiar with the matter. So ignorance is not an excuse. Fiduciaries, can't say, "Well, I didn't do that because I wasn't aware of it." In fact, that's one of the worst possible answers. And so when you think about this fiduciary umbrella, you can see the list, right, Josh?
Matthew Eickman:
You've got the CARES act decisions, but then even more importantly, that duty of prudence. Are we holding a meeting to make sure we're going through a consistent process that shows the care, that shows the diligence? Are we looking closely at plan fees, understanding how those become more important to a participant's balance over the course of a career? Are we aware of the potential conflict between the Supreme Court's opinion in the Intel case, which says that participants have to have actual knowledge of something before the statute of limitations starts to run, yet the Department of Labor just put out a new regulation that says, "Hey, you can disclose things to them electronically by sending it to an email address you have on file and you don't even have to check whether they got it." Well, if I were a fiduciary, I'd be hearing those two things and I'd say, "Well, that sounds like really great and really terrible news. How do I reconcile the two?"
Matthew Eickman:
So there are tremendous challenges for fiduciaries. And unfortunately, if we get too concerned about the risk element, then we don't focus on the true risk, which is that their employees won't be prepared for retirement. And Josh, you mentioned earlier my background as an ERISA attorney. And I think sometimes it probably surprises people that when they say to me, "What's the number one risk that I face as a fiduciary?" And a lot of them would think what? Probably say you're going to get sued. Right? Or you're going to get audited. Well, here's my answer to that. Well, the likelihood of getting sued, it's actually statistically pretty low. Now, if you're in the middle of it, that doesn't mean it's a pleasant experience, but statistically it's actually lower than some think.
Matthew Eickman:
Okay. So how about becoming audited by the IRS or the Department of Labor? Not fun, right? If you've ever been in the middle of one of those, they're not very fun and you want to make sure you're prepared. And if you're not prepared, they can become very miserable. But statistically again, not as likely as the greatest risk and the greatest risk is that organizations are not using their plans to their maximum potential, not focusing on employees in the right way and saying, "Our number one reason for doing this is what?" It's an employee benefit plan it's to benefit our employees.
Matthew Eickman:
And so, throughout all these developments, and I know Josh, we're going to talk about this more in the next series within this podcast or the next item within the podcast series. It's that focus on wellness. It's absolutely critical. And I think that through more conversations and throughout this series, we're going to really focus on the ability to enhance the wellness of participants. And as you enhance their wellness, guess who else becomes well? The fiduciaries. And then guess who else becomes well? Your company, your organization, and really it is astonishing. The more that we talk about this and the more that we think about this, the way that it all rolls up together, and we understand how everything's so interconnected.
Matthew Eickman:
Despite our attempt here, Josh, to try to split things up so that we can share it in a way that it becomes manageable to consume. It's all so interrelated that sometimes it's even hard to draw those lines.
Josh Null:
Yeah. I completely agree with that, Matthew and to be honest with you, I'm very excited to see how this thing gets knitted all together. Now, for those of you all that have participated in this video, please understand that this is chapter one of basically a four chapter retirement education planning series. This one we wanted to lay the groundwork on how we felt COVID-19 had impacted planned participants, human resources, business owners, fiduciaries, all of that.
Josh Null:
And I think Matthew, you did a fantastic job doing so. If you all will dive into what we're creating here, we're going to be supporting this chapter one and the following chapters with additional supporting content, you're going to have white papers, you're going to have articles, blogs, you're going to have clips, you're going to have videos. You're going to have some things that actually are going to help you in your day to day activities, as it relates to qualify plans, not just Matthew and I getting on here and talking. You're going to have a lot of supporting documentation that eventually, as we build through this eight week campaign, is going to lead to a webinar at the end that we'll have in the link of these videos, how you can go ahead and start participating and getting ready for that event.
Josh Null:
Matthew, I'm going to give you the final closing, but I do want to lay out you all come back. This was chapter one, this was retirement plans in a COVID-19 world. Chapter two will be financial wellness during COVID and beyond. It's going to be huge. Chapter three, we'll be reducing liability. Particularly, what does the CARES Act deal changes mean for your plan? You want to know. And then lastly, we're going to talk about benchmarking. That's that's something that everybody related to a plan should know about plan sponsors, business owners, things of that nature. So that's what we have coming up. I'm going to let Matthew take us home, but will say Matthew, fantastic job.
Matthew Eickman:
Hey, thanks Josh. I appreciate that and appreciate the opportunity and the conversation. And I think probably my closing comment to share with everybody relates to this term that I've seen in a small number of publications, but it really gives me pause. And that's the idea that as a result of the pandemic and the way in which people are working in different places, in different settings, that we're entering what's called a low touch economy. And for anybody out there who believes in the need to provide service to others, anybody who's in the customer service field, or you have customers, or you have clients, what does low touch suggest to you?
Matthew Eickman:
Low touch, to me, suggests somebody trying to say, "I don't want to have to work as hard." And frankly, I think a low touch economy is the absolutely worst description we can come up with for what your people want and need as we come through this and hopefully eventually out of this. I believe that people merely want to experience those touches differently. And I believe that now, as we embrace technology and we bought webcams and mics to have in our offices, et cetera, we're more well equipped to be able to do that. And so, to me, it's a new normal, it's a new way to try to provide information, but plan participants, human resources professionals, company financial professionals, business owners. I believe we're in an era where they want to need more touches.
Matthew Eickman:
And so that's why I hope people come back and join us as we work through this series because you need more. You need more than what you've been getting. Your employees need more than what they've been getting. And so we're in a position to try to deliver on that and I really look forward to it.
Josh Null:
All right, so this has been chapter one. Thank you all for joining us. Again, I am Josh Null with Gulf Coast financial Advisors down here on the Gulf coast, Gulf of Mexico. You also heard from Matthew Eickman, who is with Qualified Plan Advisors, QPA and also we are both with Prime Capital Investment Advisors. Thank you all for joining us. Our contact info will be attached to the various pieces of content that we put out, including this video. Feel free to reach out to us. If you have a question, we will get back to you. And for that, Matthew, thank you. And we'll call it a wrap.
Matthew Eickman:
Yeah. Thanks Josh. I appreciate it.