Plan sponsors are ready for discretionary menus

Fidelity's 17th annual Plan Sponsor Attitudes Study, released today, puts a number on a shift that has been building quietly: 41% of surveyed sponsors now want their adviser to have full discretion over investment-menu decisions, up from 36% in 2025. The five-point jump in one year is the kind of figure retirement-plan practices should open with in the next sponsor conversation, because it suggests the people who run plans are concluding the work has outgrown a quarterly recommendation meeting.

Mike Manosh, Fidelity's defined contribution investment-only sales lead, says it plainly: most sponsors are not doing plan administration as their sole responsibility, and they are concluding they need to outsource. Nearly all respondents, 93%, already work with an adviser, but the top areas where they want support—legislative and fiduciary issues (56%), employee retirement planning assistance (53%), analysis of plan metrics (52%), and financial wellness education (52%)—are all services an adviser can deliver, and none requires handing over the menu.

Further down the survey, 89% of sponsors say adding new investment options is a goal for the coming year, and 52% are considering replacing their current target-date funds. The menu itself is growing more complex, with 55% interested in target-date funds with embedded annuities and 52% in stable value components. That combination—a stated desire to make changes on a more complicated shelf—is the argument for a discretionary engagement. The adviser who offers to own the menu turns a one-time replacement project into an ongoing, fee-bearing service.

J.P. Morgan Asset Management's July study found workers are just as willing to delegate, with 73% saying they would push an "easy button" to hand off retirement planning completely. Put the sponsor-side number next to the participant-side number and the case for selling delegation has hard evidence behind it. To be clear, 41% is not a majority. But the direction of the move and the complexity of the products sponsors are weighing suggest the discretionary model will keep gaining ground. A practice that starts this year's review meetings with the Fidelity data is positioning itself as the specialist sponsors already say they need.