Financial advisors

Do more for your clients and your firm

Modernize your retirement offerings with our 401(k) plans, tools, and support.

Man using a laptop
Man using a laptop

Retirement plans your clients will love

  • Easy setup

    You and your clients can set up a 401(k) plan in 20 minutes. From there, we’ll take care of recordkeeping, filings, and more.

  • A rocket representing the growth of low-cost investments.

    Seamless technology

    We integrate with popular payroll providers to provide a largely automated 401(k).

  • Low-Fee 401k Investments

    Affordable pricing

    Your clients will get a 401(k) with low monthly costs, low-cost investment options, and no transaction fees.

More state mandates are coming this year.

See if your clients will be impacted

Billing and fees

A retirement platform with built-in billing

When you set up a Guideline plan for your clients, you can add your advisory fee to their plans. Guideline will process your fee from participant accounts on a quarterly basis in arrears and send it to your firm.

Your client's monthly plan fees from Guideline will be paid by your client directly to us.

Help grow your retirement business

Guideline Pro is a free program for financial advisors. We combine technology and expertise so you can better guide your clients to a secure retirement. Learn more

  • Intuitive client dashboard

  • Plan management capabilities

  • Dedicated relationship manager

  • Retirement education

We connect with top payroll providers

With payroll integration, we can seamlessly connect their payroll and 401(k). Plus, automate employee onboarding, payroll deductions, and more. See payroll integrations

  • and more
  • and more

Open an account in 20 minutes

We can walk you through the steps.

Become a Guideline Pro today
  • 1

    Schedule a demo

    Reach out via phone or email to set up your account — there are no fees to join.

  • 2

    Add your clients

    Invite clients directly from your dashboard

  • 3

    Design their plans

    Set them up yourself or work with your relationship manager to design their 401(k) plans.

Stay on top of state mandates

Our relationship managers can help guide you through the different mandates and requirements.

Guideline at a glance

  • 45,000+

    business clients

  • 2,500+

    advisor and accountant partners

  • $10B+

    assets under management

  • Fintech 50

Help your clients modernize their retirement plan

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Frequently asked questions

What is Guideline Pro?

Guideline Pro is a free program for financial professionals. With Guideline, you can provide your clients with a seamless 401(k), plus get the tools to design, monitor and manage your clients’ plans while incorporating your own advisory fee.

How does Guideline process my advisory fee?

Pursuant to separate agreement(s) between you and your clients, Guideline can process and pay advisory fees owed by your clients to you. Guideline will pay the advisory fee out of the Plan participants’ accounts based on assets under management. The advisory fee will be prorated daily based on each active participant’s account balance and deducted directly from each active participant’s account quarterly and paid to the advisor in arrears. If you are interested in having Guideline process your advisory fee, you will have to provide the RIA W9 and ACH Bank Account for the RIA when you set up your Guideline Dashboard.

How do clients pay their plan fees?

The monthly fee is paid by your client directly to Guideline.

Can I design a plan on behalf of my clients?

Yes, you can. With your advisor dashboard, you can see all of your clients plans—completed and in progress. For new plans, you can help design the plan, track progress, and streamline the approval process to get it up quickly.

Will I have a dedicated point of contact at Guideline?

Yes, you will be introduced to your dedicated Relationship Manager after you join Guideline Pro and connect to your free advisors dashboard.

What are Guideline’s key services?

Once a plan is set up, we take care of nearly everything including recordkeeping, investment management, government filings, and more. We integrate with 18 different payroll providers and charge low monthly fees with no transaction fees.

What plan design features are available?

All Guideline plans include the fundamental services and features needed for a great benefit. In addition, clients can add profit sharing, vesting schedules, matching options, and more depending on the plan. Every Guideline plan features automatic enrollment, and we do not currently support an hours-of-service (i.e. part-time employee) eligibility restriction.

Why auto enrollment?

Auto enrollment is a required feature for all Guideline 401(k) plans. Auto enrollment can help improve IRS nondiscrimination testing results, increase employees’ retirement readiness, and much more. Learn more about auto enrollment

What are the investment options?

With Guideline, participants can create a custom portfolio from our fund menu or choose one of 6 different managed investment portfolios. Each portfolio is diversified with funds from low-cost providers giving them an average expense ratio under 0.07%. When combined with a 0.15% account fee the estimated total cost of an active participant investing in one of Guideline’s managed portfolios can be under 0.22% — that’s up to 7x less than the industry average.

Do you offer target date funds?

We do not at this time. Target date funds tend to have higher expense ratios for participants. We lower these fees by building the portfolios ourselves, and still give participants the flexibility to choose investments that serve a shorter or longer term investment strategy. Read more here