Needs Based Plan Design – Not Bundled or Unbundled
Stop Calling Retirement Plans “Bundled” or “Unbundled.” There’s a Better Way.
Let’s talk about borrowed language.
“Bundled” sounds cozy. Safe. Like something wrapped up neatly and handed to you with a bow. “Unbundled” sounds like the opposite, like someone took that neat package and scattered it across the floor.
Neither of those images has anything to do with retirement planning.
And yet here we are, an entire industry using terms lifted from insurance products and health benefits admin, slapping them onto retirement plans and wondering why nobody outside the ecosystem quite understands what we do.
We’re done with it. At The Asteri Collective, we’re introducing a different term, one that actually means something: needs-based.
Not borrowed from another industry. Not a repackaging of old jargon. Ours.
Where Retirement Industry Language Came From
“Bundled” is an insurance word. It’s the same energy as a cable package, pay one price, get everything included, don’t ask too many questions about whether you actually need all of it.
“Third Party Administrator” came from the health benefits world, where administration was neatly separated from advisory, design, and strategy.
Both terms migrated into retirement planning and just… stayed. Even as the work evolved. Even as the roles expanded. Even as the labels stopped reflecting anything close to reality.
The retirement industry has been renting vocabulary from other industries for decades.
It’s time to own our own. And needs-based is where we’re starting.
Why Needs-Based Plans Make Sense
Asteri Collective member firms work with all kinds of plans. Many are structured around broker-dealer platforms and recordkeeper-led solutions, efficient to set up, easy to maintain, and genuinely the right fit for a lot of businesses at the moment they’re established.
We support those plans. We work alongside those partners every single day. When the structure fits the company it was designed for, it works. Full stop.
The issue is that companies don’t stay the same. Workforces grow. Ownership shifts. Profitability changes. Goals evolve. And the plan that fit perfectly at setup starts showing its limits, not because it was a bad plan, but because the business outgrew it.
The industry calls that moment “unbundling.” We call it something more accurate: a shift to a needs-based plan.
This Isn’t Unbundling. It’s a Shift.
“Unbundling” implies something is being dismantled. Fragmented. Made messier and more complicated. That framing makes everyone nervous, plan sponsors hesitate, advisors second-guess, and a completely healthy evolution of a plan gets treated like a problem that needs solving.
A shift to a needs-based plan is the opposite of a problem. It’s the plan growing up. It means the structure now reflects how the business actually operates. How compensation works. How ownership is structured. How the workforce is changing. Where the company is going. It means the advisor’s strategy has room to breathe. It means the recordkeeper’s platform is being used the way it was built to be used.
It’s not complexity for its own sake. It’s alignment.
This Is Also Why We’re Retiring “TPA” Right Along With It
The shift from “bundled vs. unbundled” to needs-based isn’t a standalone rebrand. It’s part of the same conversation we’re having about moving from TPA to RPC, and it’s not a coincidence that both changes are happening at once.
“TPA” came from health benefits. “Bundled” came from insurance. Neither term was designed to describe what retirement plan consulting actually looks like in 2025.
A Third-Party Administrator administers a plan. Runs compliance. Files the forms. Keeps the lights on.
A Retirement Plan Consultant does all of that, and then interprets what the plan sponsor actually needs as the business evolves. Designs structures that support those needs. Coordinates across recordkeepers, advisors, and DCIOs. Ensures the data flows cleanly. Catches problems before they show up in testing, reporting, or, worst case, participant outcomes.
The RPC isn’t alongside the system. They’re inside it. And in a needs-based model, that role is the whole point.
What This Means for Everyone at the Table
When a plan is built around actual needs rather than a predefined package, the entire ecosystem performs better.
- Recordkeepers get clean, consistent data and plans genuinely designed to run on their platform, not jammed in sideways.
- Broker-dealers and advisors get alignment between strategy and execution, supported by a structure that reflects the client’s reality instead of fighting it.
- DCIOs get an investment architecture that matches the plan’s objectives and the people it’s designed to serve.
- Plan sponsors get a plan that fits their business, instead of spending years trying to fit their business into a plan.
Nobody wins when the structure doesn’t fit. Everybody wins when it does.
We’re Not Here to Blow Up What Works
Predefined, platform-aligned plans aren’t the enemy. They’re efficient, scalable, and exactly right for a lot of businesses, especially at setup. The Asteri Collective isn’t in the business of telling every plan sponsor to tear things down and start over. We support those structures. We augment those relationships. And we’re clear-eyed about when a plan is ready for something more tailored, and when it’s not.
What we’re changing is the language we use to describe that transition. Not unbundling. Not tearing apart. A deliberate, supported shift to a needs-based design, one that fits the business as it is now, not as it was when the plan was first established.
Words Matter
When we call something “bundled,” we’re implying it’s complete. Sufficient. Done. When we call something “unbundled,” we’re implying it’s fragmented. Risky. High-maintenance. Neither term describes the actual goal: building the right plan for a specific business at a specific moment in its life, and maintaining that plan as the business evolves.
Needs-based does that. It starts with the plan sponsor. It considers the full ecosystem. It results in a structure designed to perform over time, not just check a box at setup. It’s a term this industry hasn’t had before. It’s one we’re introducing on purpose. And it’s one we intend to make stick.
The Asteri Collective Perspective
Retirement plans are not products you buy off a shelf. They are systems, living, evolving systems built to serve real people’s financial futures. And like any system, they perform best when they’re designed around the actual needs they’re meant to meet.
So let’s retire the borrowed language. Let’s stop calling plans bundled or unbundled. Let’s stop importing terminology from insurance and health benefits to describe work that has its own identity, its own complexity, and, now, its own vocabulary.
We are Retirement Plan Consultants. We support needs-based plan design. We work across broker-dealers, recordkeepers, advisors, DCIOs, and plan sponsors to make sure every plan is designed with intention, implemented smoothly, and built to evolve without drama.
That’s not “unbundling”. That’s just needs-based. And we’re making it a thing.
The Asteri Collective is a group of independently owned Retirement Plan Consultants shifting the retirement industry from passive to active, from manual to automated, from clunky to streamlined.
