Democratizing Retirement: How Digital Innovation and Fiduciary Automation Are Transforming the 401(k) Landscape — ShareBuilder 401k - August 22, 2025
By Staff Reports - August 22nd, 2025
As the structure of work evolves and more Americans turn to small businesses and self-employment, traditional models of retirement planning are being reimagined. The 401(k), once the domain of large enterprises and well-staffed HR departments, is now becoming accessible to the long tail of the economy—thanks to technology, fiduciary automation, and cloud-first service models.
Stuart Robertson, CEO of ShareBuilder 401k, is at the forefront of this transformation. His company has built a retirement platform designed for the millions of businesses with fewer than 100 employees—and the self-employed—who have historically been excluded from cost-effective access to retirement benefits.
In this exclusive Q&A, Robertson explains how disintermediation, passive investing, and AI are enabling a new generation of retirement solutions. NOTE: The conversation has been edited into four key areas: strategic assessments, operational imperatives, financial implications, and technology development.
STRATEGIC ASSESSMENTS
BTR: What problem were you originally trying to solve when ShareBuilder 401k was founded?
Robertson: Back in 2005, we saw a huge gap in the market. There were over 30 million small businesses and self-employed individuals in the U.S., but very few had access to a retirement plan. Only around 420,000 401(k) plans existed nationwide. That meant millions of people had no practical path to long-term savings through tax-advantaged retirement accounts. We believed that if we could build a digital-first, low-cost platform that eliminated unnecessary intermediaries, we could make high-quality retirement plans available to anyone—regardless of company size.
BTR: Why hadn’t the retirement industry already addressed this need?
Robertson: It comes down to incentives. The traditional retirement industry is built around advisors, mutual funds, and insurance products—most of which rely on asset-based fees and human-driven sales processes. Small businesses and solo entrepreneurs just don’t bring in enough revenue per account to make that model viable. So they’ve been ignored. We decided to flip the model and rely on automation, index funds, and SaaS-based delivery. That changed the game.
BTR: You mentioned that only a small percentage of businesses offer plans today. Why is adoption still so limited?
Robertson: Awareness is still the biggest barrier. Many small business owners don’t know that offering a 401(k) is even an option for them. And if they have heard of it, they assume it’s expensive and complicated. But with cloud platforms and fiduciary automation—like our built-in 3(38) service—it’s not. A self-employed person can set up a plan in 15 minutes. Even a 10-person company can be up and running in less than 30.
OPERATIONAL IMPERATIVES
BTR: What’s unique about your operational approach to delivering retirement services?
Robertson: We built the platform from the ground up with digital self-service in mind. Everything—plan design, investment selection, employee enrollment, compliance—is integrated into a single online experience. We use index-based investing, which allows us to avoid conflicts of interest and strip out unnecessary fees. And our 3(38) fiduciary service handles the legal responsibility of managing the investment lineup, so the employer doesn’t have to.
BTR: What role do human advisors still play in your model?
Robertson: A big one, actually. While the platform is fully digital, we don’t believe in automation without access. We have specialists for self-employed users, small businesses, and mid-sized firms. They handle onboarding, plan comparisons, and employee education. Many of our users appreciate the ability to talk through their decisions—especially when it comes to things like plan design or fiduciary responsibility. About 15% of self-employed clients go straight through without human help, but most prefer at least a short conversation.
BTR: How do you approach plan education and engagement?
Robertson: It’s all about meeting users where they are. A 50-year-old might prefer a webinar, but a 22-year-old wants short-form video on YouTube. We’ve invested heavily in building out content for multiple formats—live sessions, self-paced tutorials, and on-demand help. We also go onsite for mid-sized companies that want in-person guidance. Education is a core part of our operational strategy because retirement planning is intimidating for a lot of people. If you don’t build trust, people won’t engage.
FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
BTR: Let’s talk economics. How do you keep your pricing so much lower than the industry average?
Robertson: It’s a combination of automation, scale, and focus. For small businesses, we charge a one-time setup fee and a flat monthly administrative fee—for example, $95/month for a 10-person company. Then there’s our asset management fee, which is tiered based on plan size. We use index funds with an average expense ratio of just 0.06%, and we have no revenue-sharing agreements. As assets grow, the advisory fee drops—for everyone. We don’t have stair-step pricing. We just lower costs across the board.
BTR: How does your model compare to legacy providers?
Robertson: Traditional providers often charge more, both because of their investment choices and their distribution models. They rely on advisors who expect commissions or trailing fees. And those advisors may steer clients toward higher-cost mutual funds or bundled insurance products as those can provide more pass through revenue for them. We’ve taken all of that out of the equation. That’s why we estimate our total cost of ownership is about half the industry average when you factor in service, investments, and administration.
BTR: What’s the economic case for self-employed individuals to choose a 401(k) over a SEP IRA?
Robertson: If you're making enough to save more than $7,000 a year, a 401(k) usually makes more sense. You’re both the employee and the employer, so you can contribute up to $70,000 annually, depending on income vs. only $7,000 in an IRA (10x). You also get access to Roth contributions, profit sharing, and loan provisions. SEP IRAs are simpler but more limited. The 401(k) offers more flexibility, especially for people with variable income or long-term savings goals.
BTR: How are you approaching scalability?
Robertson: Our model becomes more efficient as we grow. We’re adding more than a thousand plans a year and reinvesting in infrastructure and education to support that. We’re also using AI to improve prospect targeting and reduce acquisition costs. In a fragmented market, marketing is expensive. But if we can make the funnel more efficient—by using AI to reach the right people at the right time—we can scale faster and more affordably.
TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT
BTR: Let’s talk about AI. Where are you currently applying it in your organization?
Robertson: Right now we’re focused on two key areas: engineering and service. On the engineering side, we’re starting to use AI to assist with QA and to automate repetitive code. It’s making our developers more efficient—what we call “super engineers.” We’re aiming for 30 to 40% of our codebase to be AI-assisted within the next year.
BTR: And on the service side?
Robertson: Our call center vendor is using AI to analyze customer service interactions. It can assess tone, resolution quality, and sentiment—things that used to require manual review. That gives us better visibility into how participants are experiencing the plan. We’re also looking at ways to bring AI into our advisor workflow—helping surface the most relevant information when they’re talking to a client or prospect.
BTR: Any plans to apply AI to investment modeling?
Robertson: Yes, but probably not until 2026. Right now, our investment models are built on SQL and driven by human-led algorithms. But we’re exploring whether generative AI can add another layer of intelligence—especially for retirement income planning. That’s a complex area, with a lot of moving parts, but we think it’s a natural fit for AI over time.
BTR: What’s your view on the regulatory landscape as these technologies evolve?
Robertson: So far, we’ve had a good experience. We’re regulated by the SEC and formerly by FINRA when we were affiliated with a broker-dealer. Our model is relatively simple from a compliance perspective—fixed lineup, fiduciary oversight, no revenue sharing. Regulators seem to appreciate that. Of course, as AI gets more involved in investment selection, we’ll need to stay on top of evolving guidance. But right now, we feel confident in the foundation we’ve built.
CONCLUSION
The evolution of retirement planning for small businesses and the self-employed is not just a story of lower costs or digital onboarding—it’s a structural rethinking of how fiduciary responsibility, investment management, and participant education can be delivered in the cloud era. By integrating SaaS economics, passive investment strategies, and AI-driven operations, new models are emerging that challenge the legacy economics of financial services.
The opportunity is vast but not automatic. Awareness remains a key hurdle, and market penetration among the smallest employers is still low. But the strategic path is clear: automate what can be automated, advise where trust is needed, and design for inclusion at scale.
For the millions of Americans outside the Fortune 500, the new retirement frontier is digital—and it’s just beginning to unfold.