Alex Jenkins from NestEggs Retirement Plan Services

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In this episode, we welcome Alex, a partner at NestEggs, to discuss how their firm supports privately held businesses and trade associations with comprehensive retirement plan solutions. Alex shares his journey from medical device sales to becoming an investment advisor and details NestEggs’ unique approach as one of the last privately held, fully bundled retirement plan providers in America.

 Listeners will learn how NestEggs offers consultative, no-cost reviews of 401k and 403b plans, helps businesses navigate fiduciary responsibilities, and leverages new tax incentives for small businesses. Whether you’re setting up a plan for the first time or looking to optimize your current offering, discover how NestEggs delivers personalized, transparent guidance to help Main Street businesses safeguard their employees’ financial futures and fulfill regulatory obligations—all without commission-based sales tactics. Tune in to find out how a simple consultation could transform your company’s retirement benefits and compliance peace of mind.

About Alex Jenkins

Alex Jenkins is the Chief Revenue Officer at NestEggs Retirement Plan Services, Inc., based in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. With a background in economics from the University of Florida, Alex brings extensive experience in both retirement plan services and the medical device industry, having previously held senior roles at Zimmer Biomet where he earned multiple performance awards. Recognized for his leadership, sales acumen, and commitment to client success, Alex is known for driving growth and delivering tailored retirement solutions to businesses and their employees.

About NestEggs

NestEggs is a transformative provider of retirement plan solutions, specializing in fully integrated 401K, pension, Multiple Employer Plans, and Pooled Employer Plans. As a third-party administrator, open architecture record keeper, and Registered Investment Adviser, NestEggs custom-builds tax-efficient plans tailored to each client’s unique needs. With transparent, commission-free pricing and dedicated consultants, they handle both plan administration and fiduciary investment management, allowing businesses to unburden HR, delegate fiduciary responsibilities, and focus on retirement readiness. NestEggs stands apart from traditional providers by offering bo

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Catch all the latest insights from the official podcast for the Concourse Benefits Platform, hosted by Marc Palud, one of the Co-Founders and Chief Marketing Officer of Concourse Benefits LLC.

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Episode Transcript

Marc (00:01):
I would like to welcome Alex to our podcast.
Alex, how are you?
I'm doing excellent, Marc.
How are you today?
Awesome.
Now, I want to thank you inadvance for coming on.
And today we're going to talkabout Nest Eggs.
And what is this NestEggs?
What does it mean forbusinesses or trade associations

(00:24):
that have companies looking forhelping their employees in the
space of financial . So maybeAlex, the best thing to do is
start a little bit, tell usabout yourself, your background,
what you've grown up with asfar as your career wise, and

(00:44):
then we'll jump into what isNestEggs and how we can help
businesses and employees.
Awesome.

Alex (00:49):
I appreciate the time and welcome to everybody joining us
today to listen in on theconversation.
I hope you find it valuable.
So, Alex and NestEggs.
So I'm a Florida native bornand raised, attended the
University of Florida, which iswhy there's a gator seemingly
kind of growing out of the sideof my head and got a degree in

(01:11):
economics when I was there andgot out into the real world and
put that degree to use.
Not at all.
I actually was in medicaldevice sales at the enterprise
level for about a decade.
before ultimatelyjoining NestEggs in 2016.
So now I'm putting thateconomics degree to work.
And since my time at NestEggs,I have gone and gotten sort of

(01:34):
the requisite industrydesignation and educations and
sort of acronyms behind my name.
I'm an investment advisorrepresentative, which means I
hold a series 65 investorlicense.
I'm a certified plan fiduciaryadvisor and an accredited
investment fiduciary.
That's a lot of boring stuff,probably not ultimately germane

(01:56):
to the individuals listeningtoday.
But what it speaks to is theculture of NestEggs.
So, okay, who's NestEggs?
Well, NestEggs is in our 25thyear, actually.
Though I did not foundNestEggs, I'm a partner of it
alongside two other gentlemen,and we're steering NestEggs into
its next 25 years.
And what we are is one of thelast remaining privately held

(02:21):
Fully bundled retirement planproviders in America.
That's a mouthful.
What is relevant about beingprivately held?
Well, who is the predominantmember of these trade
associations and industryspecific associations that exist
out there?
It's typically privately heldbusinesses, right?

(02:43):
Banding together for scale,banding together for thought
leadership, for sort of a desireto bring coherence to what it
is they're doing on a dailybasis.
And we think that Main StreetAmerica, the privately held
world is obviously the core ofour GDP and sort of economic

(03:04):
vibrance in the country.
So again, we're a fully bundledprovider of retirement plans.
We are what's called a thirdparty administrator.
We are an open architecturerecord keeper, and we are a fee
only fiduciary advisor.
High level what this means iswe partner with businesses from
three employees up to 10,000typically, and build them a

(03:28):
turnkey 401k or 403b retirementsolution.
And in the roles that we serve,we take over little known
fiduciary liability thatactually exists under ERISA.
So the Employee RetirementIncome Security Act of 1974, is

(03:48):
the package of laws that governcompany retirement plans.
And it's very specific andrather it's very explicit about
the liability that a corporationtakes on or that a privately
held entity takes on when theysponsor a plan.
The industry doesn't educatearound that.
The industry does not typicallyoutsource or take on that

(04:11):
liability on behalf of the plansponsor.
NestEggs does.
So we're very boutique in thatway.
and we're very focused ontrying to drive retirement for
Main Street America, for theprivately held businesses that
are out there working hard everyday to differentiate and
compete against of course thebig corporate conglomerates.

Marc (04:36):
So can you walk us through the journey of a business sees
NestEggs in the mastermarketplace for Concourse
Benefits and they're interested.
What would the journey kind oflook like from next steps and
timelines?

Alex (04:53):
Sure. We are highly consultative.
So a retirement plan is not acommodity.
A 401k plan is not a commodity.
And unfortunately, they're soldthat way.
The market over the 80s and the90s sort of integrated, just
like we're seeing buyouts occuracross industries sort of
nationally.
The 401k industry used to bethis ultra sophisticated sort of

(05:14):
white collar place.
And then it got purchased byall the huge corporate insurance
providers and brokerages andwhat we call wire houses,
custodians.
And they stripped what makes401 so special out of it.
And we are sort of the 401k ofyesterday.
And in that regard, we're goingto provide a really robust

(05:36):
upfront consultation tobusinesses that are interested
in either sponsoring a plan forthe first time, or they're
interested in perhaps a secondset of eyes to look at the plan
that they have today and toadvise them on potential
alternatives, enhancements,optimizations, potentially cost
cutting measures that couldimprove their existing plan.

(05:59):
So if someone finds us throughthe marketplace and they reach
out and say, Hey, we'reinterested, They're going to get
introduced to a planconsultant, perhaps me, perhaps
one of my colleagues, and we'regoing to get under the hood and
say, you know, Marc, what areyou looking for in a 401k plan
if you don't have one today?
Marc, are you aware of therobust tax mitigation available

(06:22):
to you as an entrepreneur viathe 401k?
And we're going to providethem, after gathering some
necessary sort of intakepaperwork, we're going to
provide them a tax focusedqualified retirement plan design
that shows them a multitude ofdifferent options.
Marc, you could do it this wayand it would save you this
amount in tax.
Marc, you could do it that wayand it would save you that

(06:44):
amount in tax.
It's really critical foreveryone to know in 2019 and
2022, Congress updated for thefirst time that package of laws
that I referenced earlier,ERISA.
And when they updated it, theyadded really robust tax credits,
incentives, for smallbusinesses to sponsor 401k plans
for the first time.

(07:05):
These incentives can grow to40, 50, $60,000 a year for the
first five years that a businesssponsors a 401k plan for the
first time.
So we're going to provide thatlevel of consultation.
You know, if you go get a 401kplan really anywhere else in
America, it's a sushi menuexercise.

(07:26):
That's what I call it.
They slide a sheet of paperacross the table to you.
They ask you, Marc, how long doyou want people to have to wait
before they can enter the plan?
Marc, how much do you think youwant to match them?
And you start checking boxeswithout fully appreciating what
is it I'm getting, right?
Like what's in the dragon roll?
What's in the kamikaze roll?
They just tell you there's aroll.

(07:47):
There's six pieces.
What are the ingredients?
What's it going to taste like?
You know, how does this work?
We're going to provide you a indepth budgetary insight.
inclusive of all the taxcredits now available to you
under the new laws and includingall the tax deductions
available to you.
They've always been available.
And we're going to let you pickyour best outcome.

(08:09):
And we're going to consider thecultural tugs of war that might
occur too, right?
There might be cultural goalsthat you have for certain
classifications of employees,certain people within your rank
and file.
But the point is, what's itlike to find NestEggs in the
marketplace and to engage us fora conversation, it's going to
be consultative.

(08:29):
We don't have a product tosell.
We have an education we'd liketo provide to plan sponsors to
empower them towards awell-fitting 401k for them.
And again, the same is true onthe takeover or existing plan
conversation.
If you have a plan today, Doyou know whether or not you're
being served in a fiduciarycapacity by your current service

(08:51):
providers?
Do you know whether there'srevenue sharing or commissions
built into the investments ofyour plant?
Are you serving inadministrative roles where
you're doing things like trackeligibility of new hires or
facilitating payroll data fromone pay period to the next,
getting the payroll data out ofyour HCM platform and over to

(09:12):
your 401k record keeper?
Are you approving any of thedistributions or loan requests
or hardship requests from youremployees?
Are you signing that pesky form5500 every year?
Are you confused by what thatis?
If you have over 100 employeeswith a balance in the plan, are
you having to facilitate thatannual audit with the CPA each

(09:33):
year?
Okay, if you answered yes tosome or none or all of those
questions, let's have aconversation about what it could
look like to de-risk your planSo what are the tasks and the
roles that you're serving todaythat you shouldn't be, that are
causing liability for youpersonally, that you may not be
aware of?
What are the opportunities toreduce the costs that your

(09:53):
participants are paying today?
Are your investments performingin line with their peers?
Let's look at all that.
And we'll do all of thisconsultation at no charge, Marc,
for the plan sponsors, these HRrepresentatives, these CFOs,
whoever's in the driver's seatof this.
We're going to give you a nocharge consultative look at your

(10:14):
plan, show you things that noone's likely ever educated you
on before so that you have aneyes wide open sort of view.
And it's up to you if youengage us for that next
conversation.
Our value is that we're goingto give the insight, the free
advice away.
And that's an investment into apotential partnership.

(10:34):
We hope that, and anecdotally,we know that you will hear and
see things that are new.
And in many cases they're notnecessarily good things.
And the, the ConcoursePlatform 401k platform powered
by NestEggs, it can solve forall of the issues that exist
everywhere in the 401kmarketplace.

(10:55):
And if an individual, whetherit's starting a plan for the
first time or, or looking at aconversion of their plan onto
the concourse platform poweredby NestEggs, it's a six week
process.
We're going to hold your handfrom start to finish.
We're going to work on behalfof you with your prior
providers, with your payrollcompany, with your participants.

(11:16):
Our job is to pull you out ofit, right?
Get you out of the middle.
You don't manage 401k s for aliving.
So you shouldn't have to bearthe burdens of the setup process
if it's a new plan or theconversion process if it's an
existing plan.

Marc (11:33):
Great job, Alex.
My takeaway from this is 401kof yesterday, old school, take
care of the customer type ofrelationship building.
And there's so many things inyour world that if you're a
company with a 401k plan, andyou miss something, it can have

(11:55):
serious impact.
I wasn't fully aware of that.
So the call to action or thevalue proposition to members of
Concourse Benefits platform isjust reach out to Alex and his
team, get a consultation.
The worst thing that'll happenis you'll probably learn
something new and you might endup with a better long-term

(12:16):
relationship for managing youremployee 401ks.
Great job, Alex.
That was awesome.
Is there anything else thatyou'd like to add before we
conclude?

Alex (12:28):
No, I would just pile on to sort of, you nailed it.
You know, the call to action isthat you have a highly
technical expert now, you know,on staff via this Concourse
Platform, willing and able andexcited to provide you a
consultative view of your plan.
We are the highest level offiduciary under the law.

(12:48):
We are obligated by that law toplace your interests ahead of
our own.
So you're going to get theinsider baseball, the inside
scoop, a real look, sunlight onyour plan that you've likely
never had before.
And we're not allowed to fudgethat.
So if there's great aspects toyour plan, we're going to tell
you that too.
If you have a great investmentlineup, that's ultra low cost,

(13:11):
that's performing just like itspeer group, we're going to tell
you.
If you're being served by afiduciary already, we're going
to tell you that.
But if you're not, we're goingto tell you that as well.
And so there really is no riskto this.
We're not going to charge forthe exercise.
You know, there's a half dozendocuments, Marc, that we gather
from the plan sponsors toconduct these types of reviews.
We'll even hop on a screenshare with you to log into your

(13:34):
administrator portal if youalready have a plan.
We'll show you what documentswe need to get to comb that out
and give you a review.
And I'll end with this.
The Department of Laboractually recommends that plan
sponsors, as fiduciaries,Benchmark their plan every three
to five years.
It's a rhetorical question, butto the audience listening
today, when's the last time youhad a disinterested third party

(13:57):
provide a benchmark or review ofyour plan?
It's totally different thangetting a annual review from the
guy serving the plan who's aptto tell you he's doing a
wonderful job.
Getting that third party inthere, and that's the value of
this Concourse Platform, right,is we've been hired to provide
this value up front, whether ornot the plan sponsor initiates a

(14:20):
relationship with us after thefact.
So it's a wonderful benefit.
And again, you're going tofulfill a fiduciary obligation
that the Department of Laborsays, do this every three to
five years, and we're going tohand you a report.
You can set it on your desk.
And if the DOL ever knocks onyour door and says, when's the
last time you looked at yourplan?
You can say, oh, yeah, you knowwhat?
We did do that.

(14:40):
Here you go.
Check it out.
We've fulfilled our duty.
So it's a wonderful value add.
You know, we are not like thebig financial institutions that
employ salespeople.
In fact, we don't have a singlecommission-based employee at
NestEggs, not in our 25-yearhistory, mind you.
We're consultants.
And so we're here to help.

(15:00):
And we're really hopeful thatthe message I've delivered today
adds value for the ConcourseMembers.
And we hope that, you know, thephone rings.
We'd love to help anyone thatwe can.

Marc (15:12):
So guys, if you're listening to this, in Concourse
Benefits, just trigger a requestfor a consultation and that
will set the things in motionfor you to get connected with
Alex or somebody from his team.
Alex, thank you so much foryour insight.
I'm actually blown away on theamount of things that companies
need to be aware of.

(15:33):
And again, I thank you forbeing such a valued partner in
the Concourse Benefitsecosystem.

Alex (15:38):
I appreciate all of your kind words, Marc, everybody out
there listening today.
We hope we get to meet yousomewhere along the way.
We're here to help.
And yeah, I hope everyone isblessed and well in the back
half of the year.

Marc (15:50):
Thanks.