Human Interest was founded to help Americans in all lines of work achieve a secure retirement. Initially, we focused on closing the trillion-dollar retirement savings gap by building fully bundled 401(k) solutions for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Our modern platform caught the interest of a segment looking for affordable, flexible retirement plans. This emphasis on an underserved SMB market helped drive approximately 25% of all new 401(k) plans started in America in 2024¹—plans that many legacy providers weren't motivated to support.
Our first wave of growth was largely fueled by relationships with over 500 payroll partners, accountants, benefits brokers, and other partners who recommended us to larger businesses. Yet, as we encountered larger companies, our paths inevitably crossed with the financial advisors serving them. It became evident that addressing the retirement crisis required collective effort from the entire 401(k) ecosystem—including financial advisors.
To fulfill our mission and truly disrupt the legacy recordkeeping space, we recognized the need to build a better product for the financial advisor channel. This led us to develop PartnerConnect™, our latest innovation designed to help financial advisors offer and manage retirement plans. By providing a consolidated view across their business, the tool streamlines plan management and helps advisors better serve their clients.
Built with advisors, for advisors: Entering a crowded space
Other retirement plan providers—including the incumbents we are challenging—have built deep ties with financial advisors over decades. Of the roughly 922,810 existing 401(k) plans in the U.S., approximately 56% involve a financial advisor.² We weren’t the first provider to offer an advisor-centric product; we set out to be different. Matching existing features for the financial advisor channel wasn’t enough. We needed to build something fundamentally better.
Entering the market later gave us the strategic benefit of a "last mover advantage." Our intensive research and development process included in-depth interviews with over 30 financial advisors and consultations with 10 different home offices of leading broker-dealers and registered investment advisors. We didn't just guess what advisors wanted; we partnered with them. This discovery phase pinpointed frustrations with current recordkeepers and helped us identify how to earn the trust of financial advisors.
Digitally native, advisor first
Armed with these insights, we invested $3 million over nine months in product development and engineering. We tested each feature with a dozen additional advisors, incorporating feedback and iterating along the way. Our collaborative approach helped ensure PartnerConnect was built with advisors and for advisors. PartnerConnect comes equipped with modern, intelligent tools, investment lineup workflows, and recordkeeping capabilities informed by these principles:
Digitally native: Take our Lineup Templates feature. Instead of emailing spreadsheets back and forth with legacy providers, advisors can use PartnerConnect to build preferred investment lineups from our real-time fund universe, save them as templates, and instantly apply them when onboarding new plans.
Advisor first: Consider ParticipantIQ™. This tool allows advisors to customize alert categories and thresholds for participants across all their plans in one central location. Need to know when a participant terminates employment with a balance over a certain threshold? PartnerConnect sends an alert, enabling timely outreach for rollovers or education campaigns, enhancing service and retention.
In addition to streamlining practice management, PartnerConnect also helps advisors differentiate themselves by offering a superior experience to plan sponsors and participants. Partnering with Human Interest means providing an automated, user-friendly platform, not the outdated, manual systems of our competitors. We empower advisors' clients via:
Automation: Our 500+ payroll integrations can save businesses an average of 75 hours per year. Our optional 3(16) administrative fiduciary services, utilized by 97% of our clients, save another 50 estimated hours annually while reducing employer liability.³
Seamless participant experience: Employees can enroll in just five clicks, and our Rollover Concierge service handles the hassle of consolidating old 401(k) assets.
Dedicated service: 250+ U.S.-based employees deliver award-winning customer service⁴ backed by an industry-leading Customer Experience Guarantee, our transparent pledge to deliver outstanding, fast, reliable service with accountability.
We identified 110 unique requirements for a top-tier advisor platform. We've already built the top 40 and aim to cover the top 60 by year-end. Committed to continuous improvement, we gather feedback through weekly conversations and refine our tools to ensure they evolve to meet the changing needs of advisors and their clients. But the development doesn't stop here. We have a roadmap to expand support for more niche, advisor-focused features over the next two years.
A modern partnership for a modern era
We believe the old way of 401(k) administration is becoming obsolete. Traditionally, 401(k) recordkeeping involved extensive manual effort, relying on paper forms for enrollments and investment changes and laborious data entry from multiple payroll files. Financial advisors navigated these same manual systems, often relying on mailed paper statements or phone calls to gather basic client data. A lack of integrated systems meant advisors spent significant time on administrative tasks rather than advisory functions and growing their business. Relying on legacy platforms also posed a reputation risk, as subpar systems reflected poorly on advisors.
The next decade of 401(k) recordkeeping is marked by consolidation. According to Accenture, the top five providers are predicted to control over 75% of market assets, and over a quarter of top providers could exit. This concentration requires a platform that serves all parties in a retirement plan—sponsors, participants, and advisors—exceptionally well. Much like QuickBooks has become the de facto leader in the SMB accounting space by claiming up to 62% of market share, we aim to be the default 401(k) solution for advisors and their clients.
Becoming the QuickBooks of the 401(k) means delivering an intuitive industry standard that significantly simplifies 401(k) plan management and reporting. Human Interest is deeply committed to earning the trust of the financial advisor channel and proving that PartnerConnect is the right platform for you and your clients. We invite you to learn more about how we're building the future of retirement plans together.
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The Human Interest TeamWe believe that everyone deserves access to a secure financial future, which is why we make it easy to provide a 401(k) to your employees. Human Interest offers a low-cost 401(k) with automated administration, built-in investment education, and integration with leading payroll providers.
