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Pontera, a New York-based technology provider serving advisors in managing held-away retirement savings assets, has announced new functionality that provides advisors with visibility into client accounts, such as 401(k)s, to guide them on recommended actions aligned with their financial goals.
The move, which Pontera called non-discretionary retirement advice, is an addition to the firm's core discretionary advice offering, allowing advisors to directly manage held-away assets with participants' consent. The new tool will launch in September, with a waitlist for advisors to join and access Pontera's other services, such as billing, reporting and supervision of client accounts.
According to the announcement, advisors using the service will not have access to client accounts, the ability to withdraw funds or the ability to make contributions or beneficiary changes. Instead, it will offer "guided workflows" for participants to follow on their advisor's recommendations.
CEO Yoav Zurel said in a statement that the option offers additional choice in how retirement savers receive financial advice.
"Some want their advisor to implement every portfolio decision. Others want to stay directly involved while benefiting from professional guidance," Zurel said. "Our job is to build the infrastructure that supports both."
The move also comes, however, after Pontera had a public spat with the country's largest workplace retirement record keeper, Fidelity Investments. In September 2024, the Boston-based financial firm, which has $17.9 trillion in assets under administration, sought to block credential sharing systems—without naming Pontera directly—to protect client information and assets. A year later, Zurel wrote a letter to Fidelity accusing it of denying clients financial advice they may want for their held-away savings.
Zach Pardes, the head of brand communications for Pontera, said the new non-discretionary move has nothing to do with Fidelity or other record keepers. Instead, he said it was in response to advisors and their clients, some of whom want more control over their assets.
"It's really a reflection of different strokes for different folks," Pardes said. "Some firms prefer discretionary management, and some would rather work in a non-discretionary mode."
Andrew Besheer, managing principal of Besheer & Associates, read the move differently, calling it a "white flag" in the battle to obtain advisors' account holder credentials to directly manage held-away assets.
"It certainly feels to me like Pontera has finally accepted that it's not going to win its battle with Fidelity over access to plan participant accounts," Besheer said. "The painful part is that Pontera would've told you for the past 7 to 8 years that this was the wrong model—that advisors should have full discretionary trading access directly into plan accounts and that access would allow them to manage a client's plan/non-plan assets holistically."
Besheer added that the non-discretionary platform option would still be useful for advisors, but not as useful as the initial idea of directly managing held-away assets.
"I think Yoav and his team came up with an outstanding idea for helping both advisors and retirement savers," he said. "In some ways, it could've been the golden goose. That said, I think maybe they were too stubborn and unwilling to be pragmatic in their relationships with plan administrators/custodians and that dogmatism has done them no good service."
Fidelity did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the non-discretionary offering.
Pontera's Pardes said the firm stands ready to work with Fidelity and any record keepers. He said they can either do so through existing API technology or by working with the record keeper directly to build a link-up for advisors.
"If a record keeper does not have that [API] available and would like us to build it, or we can work with a mutually agreed upon work frame, we'll do that," he said. "If a record keeper doesn't want to offer it, that is their choice."