Every advisor wants to grow their practice. Fewer are looking in the right place. Alex Barned, National Sales Director at Absolute Capital Management, has built his career around a market most advisors don’t even know exists—and after six years, he’s still surprised by how few have come looking.
Absolute Capital provides a turnkey asset management program, but calling it’s services only a TAMP undersells what the firm does for advisors in practice. Where most platforms operate in familiar territory—taxable accounts, IRAs, rollover assets—Absolute Capital aims squarely at workplace retirement accounts: the 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and 457s sitting inside employer plans while clients are still actively employed. The numbers behind the opportunity are staggering, and the competition for those assets is nearly nonexistent.
“Of all of the money available—we encompass or give advisors access to nearly $5 trillion of AUM—at this moment in time, there is an advisor attached to six-tenths of 1% of those assets,” Barned says. “So, as far as what makes that different, you’re not taking the asset away from anybody. You don’t have to go and say, ‘I’m better than this other advisor.’ It’s really to approach the client, have the conversation.”
And more often than not, advisors report the same reaction from clients: genuine surprise that professional management was even an option.
A Participant Solution, Not a Plan Solution
One of the more persistent misconceptions about workplace retirement account management is that it requires an advisor to become a plan consultant—navigating recordkeepers, waiting out committee decisions, competing for plan-level business. Barned is quick to clear that up. The W.I.N. (Workplace Investment Navigator) platform at Absolute Capital operates at the participant level, meaning advisors work with individual clients regardless of whether the firm has any formal relationship with the plan itself.
“This has nothing to do with you and the plan. You’re not waiting two years. You’re not going in front of recordkeepers,” Barned explains. “It’s: You have a client, and they work at American Airlines, Home Depot, Hilton, hundreds of thousands of different locations. It’s you helping just one person at a time. It is a participant solution, not a plan solution.”
The platform currently supports plans across 28 recordkeepers, covering employers from Fortune 500 corporations to government agencies and major university systems. Advisors don’t need to be rep of record. You don’t need a preexisting plan relationship. The entry point is the client sitting across from you who already has a retirement account they’ve probably never had professionally managed.
Where a typical plan participant might have 15 fund options and a series of target-date choices, Absolute Capital gives advisors access to more than 400 separately managed accounts (SMAs) that can be mixed and matched in a unified managed account (UMA) format. The roster of institutional money managers includes Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, State Street, Dimensional Fund Advisors, and more than 100 other firms delivering models through the platform. Clients gain access to institutional-grade investment choices they couldn’t access on their own. Advisors gain a new revenue stream—and a cleaner, more complete view of the household.
The Enabling Infrastructure
Part of what has historically kept advisors out of workplace retirement accounts isn’t disinterest—it’s uncertainty about how to work in this arena compliantly. A small but notable corner of the market has relied on client credentials to access plan accounts, a practice some regulators have begun characterizing as client impersonation. Barned doesn’t mince words about the risks, but he’s also seen firsthand how advisors using workarounds run into operational headaches that undercut the whole model.
“If you’re billing a client quarterly, and they change their password, and you lose connectivity for two weeks, you now have to go and readjust your billing to account for the two weeks where you didn’t actually have connectivity to the client’s account,” he notes. Fee caps set by plan sponsors create another compliance layer—one that’s easy to miss when you’re not hardwired into the plan’s rules.
Absolute Capital bypasses all of that entanglement. The platform connects directly at the recordkeeper and custodial levels, with no client credentials involved. Fees are debited directly from plan assets, removing the need to find a separate account to bill from. Compliance with fee caps, plan rules, and state-level requirements across all 50 states and U.S. territories is built into the infrastructure. Advisors who have migrated from credential-based solutions frequently cite the operational relief as much as the compliance clarity.
“Advisors are now coming into the space. They see the opportunity, but they don’t really understand the rules, restrictions, and probably going to be some regulatory issues that they’re perhaps getting a little friction against,” says Barned. “They just need to be attuned to it, and we take care of all that.”
For advisors already running a holistic planning model, the visibility alone changes the equation. Rather than asking clients for quarterly statements on an account the advisor can’t act on, the platform pulls plan assets into the advisor’s existing tech stack—actively managed, reportable, and integrated into the broader financial plan.
What’s New on the Platform
Absolute Capital has been expanding its platform on two fronts: analytics and asset management options. On the analytics side, Barned highlighted a recent integration with BlackRock’s Aladdin system, bringing institutional-grade investment analysis tools directly into the advisor workflow.
“For advisors who are looking for a little analytic assistance on things as well, we heard you loud and clear on the need for some more toys and tools,” he says. “BlackRock has engaged to help out via the platform—some added Aladdin functionality there, which is super exciting.”
On the asset management side, the firm has been responding to advisor demand for less-conventional options. Dimensional Fund Advisors models are coming to the platform, alongside those of Avantis Investments. Goldman Sachs has expanded its model offerings. And Absolute Capital is moving into the quant space, where managers have the flexibility to go short or use leverage—strategies that bring nontraditional return profiles into a retirement account context for the first time for many clients.
Barned is also watching the private markets closely. “Ambitionally, I think we’re all waiting as an industry to see what will or won’t be allowed on the private side as we get perhaps late this year, likely ’27,” he says. “But we’re always looking for great options to meet advisor demand on things, for sure.”
Depending on how regulatory guidance evolves, private market exposure inside workplace retirement accounts could be the next frontier for advisors already positioned in the space.
The Case for Moving Now
Advisors who have started managing workplace retirement accounts tend to keep going. Barned attributes much of the momentum to a simple dynamic: the resistance just isn’t there. Clients aren’t being asked to move assets or change advisors. They’re being asked if they’d like help with an account they’ve been managing themselves—and the answer, more often than not, is an unflinching yes.
The average account size on the platform runs about $400,000, which puts the opportunity squarely in range for advisors accustomed to working with meaningful household wealth. At a 1% advisory fee, the numbers hold up well. And Barned believes the fee is more than justified given the delta between self-directed and professionally managed outcomes—a gap well documented in behavioral finance research, and one that advisors are positioned to close.
“There’s $5 trillion out there in terms of this marketplace, and there’s going to become an expectation by clients that this assistance is part of the package,” Barned emphasizes. “You can be an early adopter, you can come later, but at some point in time, I think everyone’s going to end up having to engage in the space.”
The scale of what Absolute Capital has built access to—across 28 recordkeepers and thousands of employer plans—makes the window feel both urgent and wide open.
Advisors interested in seeing how the platform works can visit abscap.com to book a one-on-one call or join one of Absolute Capital’s weekly group demos—a low-commitment, roughly 20-minute overview of the opportunity and how the platform operates. No hard sell. Just a look behind the curtain at a market most advisors haven’t touched yet.
Additional Resources
- Contact Absolute Capital Management
- Workplace Investment Navigator (W.I.N.) Platform
- Check a Plan for Pre-Rollover Management
- Meet the Team
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Disclosures
This was not a paid endorsement. The Firm does compensate The Wealth Advisor for other marketing purposes. Past performance is not to be considered indicative of future performance. Any investment contains risk including the risk of total loss. There is no assurance that the objectives of strategies offered by the Firm will be achieved or successful. Asset allocation and diversification do not guarantee a profit or protect against a loss. For additional information about Absolute Capital Management, visit their website at www.abscap.com or call 888-388-8303.
