An Inter view with Mar y Ellen Whiteman
An Interview with
Mary Ellen Whiteman
Head of Individual Investor Experience
at T. Rowe Price
By Gabriel Potter, AIF®
I
n this issue, Mary Ellen Whiteman
of T.Rowe Price talks to Confero
about topics around Participant
Education.
For the benefit of readers, how do
you distinguish advice vs. education
for employees?
There is a definition we have been using
as sort of a guidepost internally that
might be helpful here. There are 3 criteria
that would need to be met that would
indicate that something has moved from
guidance to advice. The first is around
the recommendation to the advisability
of buying or selling a security—so a
very specific recommendation that says
you should buy this, sell this, or invest
here. It has to be something specific to
the individual’s unique circumstances.
The last is whether the recommendation
serves as the primary foundation
for a decision. So, you may be in a
situation where a specific investment is
recommended, but other data is being
used to compare one decision vs. that
specific investment recommendation. It’s
very much a very specific, individualized
type of recommendation in which
the participant acts based on that
recommendation. That is the advice
definition we have been using.
Guidance comes in a lot of different
forms, but generally the way we speak
about guidance is that it’s a set of
recommendations or options that a
participant can use for further decision
making or further analysis. 99.9% of
what we do is provide guidance versus
advice. We do provide in general—
through 3rd party services—the level
of advice investors require. But I would
say on the whole, most [investors] don’t
engage—they have the option, but the
adoption of those types of services is
pretty low.
In your opinion, what is it – advice or
education - that the typical employee
actually benefits from?
It’s typical to say guidance, but [I
think] it’s more of the education and
guidance. It will certainly vary among
investors, depending on their level of
sophistication and interest. So, how
interested are [employees] in keeping