Content area
Full Text
What is up with ASPire?
What caused almost 100 defined contribution investment only executives to travel to Tampa in the middle of the summer on short notice and sit in a windowless room for half a day to hear what a relatively small and little known recordkeeper was up to?
ASPire (formerly 401kASP), an interactive web Application Service Provider agency for the retirement plan industry, has seemed to captured the attention of not only the DC industry but also the venture capital community with a $25 million investment from a smart and savvy technology focused firm.
They seem to be leveraging many of the industry trends especially around fee disclosure while trying to drive costs down in a deflationary pricing world using technology.
So is ASPire for real and will investment only professionals, third-party administrators and advisors drive significant business?
Or is this just a fade like the one we saw during the Dot Com era when GoldK, Emplanet and ExpertPlan taunted the establishment and...