For years, price has been a primary differentiator among record keepers. Today, however, technology, integration capabilities and overall ease of doing business are playing a growing role in advisor evaluations of of these firms.

NMG Consulting’s Defined Contribution Advisor Insights study suggests that advisors increasingly view technology, integration and ease of doing business as central to both their satisfaction with record keepers and their willingness to recommend them to clients.

Pricing remains foundational, but in many ways, the race to the bottom has simply made it table stakes. Increasingly, technology and ease of doing business are where record keepers win or lose advisor advocacy. 

While fees remain among the most frequently cited selection criteria, derived analysis suggests they are not the primary drivers of recommendation behavior. Instead, advisors are most influenced by capabilities that improve efficiency, integration and engagement, highlighting a shift from price-based competition toward technology-enabled differentiation. 

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However, defined contribution advisors’ needs are not monolithic. While wealth advisors often prioritize operational efficiency and streamlined rollover processes, DC specialists increasingly look to technology-enabled capabilities, including integrated platforms, fiduciary analytics and participant engagement tools, as key sources of value. 

The shift in advisor perceptions also reflects broader changes in the economics of advisory practices. Advisors are now facing many of the same pressures that have reshaped the recordkeeping industry, including fee compression, rising service expectations, and the need to do more with fewer resources. As margins tighten, technology is becoming less of a discretionary investment and more of a strategic necessity. Nearly half of advisors report investing in technology to improve efficiency and differentiate their practices, underscoring a growing focus on scalability, workflow optimization and operational effectiveness.

In many ways, advisors now find themselves confronting the same challenge they have long posed to record keepers: how to modernize service delivery while maintaining profitability and enhancing the client experience. This shared reality is reshaping advisor expectations of record keepers. Rather than viewing technology solely as a feature set, advisors increasingly see it as a means to create connected workflows, reduce administrative complexity and enable more consistent client outcomes. 

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As a result, differentiation is becoming less about individual capabilities and more about how effectively advisors and recordkeepers can partner through integrated technology, streamlined processes and shared digital experiences to better serve plan sponsors and participants.

Advisor commentary throughout NMG’s research reinforces this point. One hybrid advisor, defined as someone who has embraced retirement and wealth convergence, described the burden of fragmented systems directly: “It is too cumbersome for me to organize and manage numerous recordkeeper forms, websites, etc.” Wealth advisors emphasized the need for “seamless integration with the tools and software commonly used by sophisticated advisory practices,” while DC specialists highlighted the importance of modernizing “old school platforms.”

These operational preferences are increasingly influencing advisor record keeper relationship decisions. Advisors are consolidating relationships around “fewer partners with consistent service, integrated technology, and transparent pricing.” In practice, advisors appear less interested in managing multiple disconnected ecosystems and more interested in platforms that reduce friction across plan administration, onboarding, participant engagement and reporting.

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Advisor satisfaction with recordkeepers further reflects these perceptions. Firms such as Fidelity, American Funds and Vanguard rank high among advisors on digital experience, ease of doing business and overall scores within NMG Consulting’s proprietary Business Capability Index. Not surprisingly, those firms also lead many advisor satisfaction measures.

A deeper analysis comparing what advisors say is important with what most strongly correlates with satisfaction suggests that technology may now serve as a “silent differentiator.” Advisors may still describe fees and service as primary decision drivers, but their advocacy and satisfaction increasingly correlate with digital experience, advisor websites, participant websites, mobile functionality, enrollment capabilities and fiduciary analytics.

Taken together, the findings suggest that advisors increasingly define value through a combination of price, operational ease and technology integration. Competitive pricing still matters, but advisors appear to reward record keepers that make their practices more efficient, scalable and easier to manage in an increasingly margin-constrained environment.