How Matt Compton’s Record Keeping Roots Made Him a Stronger Plan Advisor | Matt Compton

There is a version of plan advising that stops at the investment committee. Matt Compton has spent his career building something different. After more than eleven years on the record keeping side at Principal Financial Group, he crossed over to plan advising in 2019 with a clear point of view: plan sponsors need a partner, not just a report.

In the latest episode of Gray to Great, Matt joins host Dan Dal Degan to talk about what that partnership looks like in practice, how his provider background shaped his approach, and what it takes to build a retirement practice that creates better outcomes for plan sponsors and participants alike.

The Education You Cannot Buy

Matt describes his time at Principal Financial Group not as a detour, but as a foundation. Working alongside thousands of financial professionals gave him a clear view of how the provider model works and where advisors have an opportunity to do more.

That perspective shapes how Matt and his team operate today. Collectively, they bring more than 50 years of record keeping experience, which means they understand the provider relationship from the inside, including what plan sponsors actually need when something goes wrong.

What COVID Taught Him About Building a Model

Matt made the move to plan advising in October 2019. Six months later, COVID hit. What could have derailed a new practice ended up accelerating something important.

“In retrospect,” he says, “I think it was one of the best things that could have happened to us as far as building the model.”

The disruption forced Matt and his team to think carefully about how they wanted to find new clients, service existing ones, and train colleagues to identify retirement plan opportunities within the broader benefit relationship. The service model they built during that period is the one they run today.

Be the First Call

When an issue arises in a retirement plan, plan sponsors often struggle to identify where the breakdown occurred. Was it payroll integration? Plan design? Something on the record keeping platform? Sorting through the possibilities weeks after the fact is frustrating and inefficient for everyone involved.

Matt’s answer is straightforward: be the first call, every time.

“We tell our clients that something is going to break, because we know that already,” he explains. “By encouraging them to come to us when that happens, we find that we are more efficient. We make our clients more efficient. We decrease the frustration level for everybody involved.”

The Holistic Advantage

It is not uncommon for employers to work with one consultant for health and ancillary benefits and a completely separate firm for their retirement plan. Matt sees that disconnect as a missed opportunity for plan sponsors and a structural challenge for the industry.

When the retirement plan lives inside the same relationship as the rest of the benefit program, it stops being the thing that gets deferred to next year. Employers are engaged year-round, not just when something breaks or a contract comes up for renewal.

Relationships Are the Return

When asked what advice he would give his younger self, Matt did not talk about AUM or product knowledge. He talked about relationships.

His team has made a deliberate effort to invest in newer HR and finance professionals, the people just coming into a client’s organization who are still learning the ropes. When those professionals move up or move on to a new employer, they bring their advisors with them.

“You can never spend enough time helping someone succeed in their career,” Matt says. “When you do that, it is all going to work out.”

That philosophy, combined with a service model built around genuine plan oversight, is what took Matt’s retirement practice from approximately $70 million to over $1.4 billion in assets under advisement since 2019.

More About Matt Compton

Matt Compton, AIF, CRPC, is a Partner, Retirement and Wealth Services at Alera Group. Before joining Alera Group in October 2023, Matt spent over six years at Brio Benefit Consulting, an Alera Group company, serving as Director of Retirement Services and later Partner, Retirement Solutions. Prior to that, he spent over eleven years at Principal Financial Group, building deep expertise in record keeping and plan administration across defined contribution, defined benefit, and nonqualified deferred compensation plans.

That provider-side foundation shapes everything about how Matt approaches plan advising today. Since transitioning to the advisory side in 2019, he and his team have grown their retirement practice from approximately $70 million to over $1.4 billion in assets under advisement. Matt has been recognized as a PLANADVISER Top Retirement Plan Adviser, and his team has earned national accolades including Plan Adviser of the Year and the Excellence in Operations Award.

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