PSNC 2020: Duties With Regard to Annuities

Geoff’s responsibilities include management of the overall day to day business activities of the firm. This central operating role combined with his plan underwriting and quote process management experience, allow DIETRICH the ability to ensure adequate staff resources are always available to service the needs of our clients. This function represents a key competitive advantage for DIETRICH whose smaller annuity placement competitors are often key person dependent with limited back-up staff resources.

Ms. Hueler is CEO and founder of Hueler Companies, an independent data and research firm providing reporting and systems designed for the annuity and stable value marketplace. The firm was founded in 1987. After building an exceptional reputation for stable value analytics and reporting over several decades, the acquisition of Hueler Analytics’ Stable Value Comparative Universe Data and Stable Value Index was recently announced by Morningstar, Inc.

In 2004, the company launched Income Solutions®, a groundbreaking best practice annuity purchasing platform. Today Hueler’s Income Solutions® platform is utilized by a variety of service providers, plan sponsors, and fiduciary advisors throughout the Defined Contribution market.

Ms. Hueler is nationally recognized as a thought leader and key contributor on the topic of lifetime income and is actively engaged in related public policy matters. She has presented at the Wharton Pension Research Council, was tapped to participate in the National Endowment of Financial Education’s think tank on income sufficiency, presented at the Employee Benefit Research Institutes’ National Forum on retirement income sufficiency, and provided testimony before the United States Senate Special Committee on Aging on “Making Savings Last a Lifetime”. She has also testified on multiple occasions before the DOL ERISA Advisory Council on annuitization at retirement, in 2018 on Lifetime Income Solutions as a Qualified Default Investment Alternative (QDIA) Focus on Decumulation and Rollovers.
Most recently in 2019, she spoke as a panelist on “Reducing key regulatory barriers to annuities in DC plans” at the Brookings Institution event entitled “Can retirement plans provide safe income?”.

Additionally, Ms. Hueler is a founding member of DCIIA (Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association) and participates on the Retirement Income Committee as well as on the Society of Actuaries Committee on Post-Retirement Needs and Risks. Along with being recognized as a thought leader in the retirement income arena, she is also an industry expert in the field of stable value investments. She has authored and contributed to numerous articles, spoken internationally and provided testimony before the DOL ERISA Advisory Council regarding Stable Value Funds and Retirement Security in the Current Economic Conditions. She also served on the Board of Directors for the Stable Value Investment Association (SVIA) for six years and chaired the SVIA Executive Committee Communication and Education Committee.

Prior to founding Hueler Companies, Ms. Hueler held the position of a Financial Planning Professional for IDS Life and was a Registered Representative for Kidder Peabody & Company, where she was responsible for institutional and retail clients. She received her B.A. from St. Olaf College in 1981.

In early 2017, Bob assumed the role of Executive Director of IRIC where Bob leads a group of Retirment Plan Advisors, DC executives, DC service providers and investment firms that seek to deliver institutional retirement income products and income solutions through the DC system thereby delivering additional security and additional income to plan participants. IRIC is a not-for-profit organizataion manged by industry professionals dedicated to delivering retirement security throught the DC system by developing best practices regarding retirement income, working with regulators and legislators that promote institutional income solutions, generating innovation & thought leadership that fosters retirment income products within DC plans.
Prior to assuming the Executive Director role at IRIC, Bob was Vice President of Product Development for the Retirement Plan Services Product and Solutions Management team at Lincoln Financial Group for 11 years. In this role, Bob was responsible for identifying applicable trends, regulatory changes, legislative changes, competitive product developments, plan sponsor needs and participant needs as they affect Lincoln’s Retirement Plan Services business and the employer-sponsored retirement plan industry. Bob was responsible for developing the Lincoln Retirement Plan Services product strategy that creates or repositions solutions in response to the changing marketplace.

Bob holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts and an MBA in Business Economics from Drexel University. He speaks on a variety of subjects at various industry conferences and has published several articles on the retirement plan industry, plan design, fiduciary issues and other topics and trends.