2025 Top Retirement Plan Adviser: Nate Moody
This year, PLANADVISER followed up with advisers on the 2025 Top Retirement Plan Advisers listing to get to know them better. These are the responses from Nate Moody of Lebel & Harriman Retirement Advisors in Portland, Maine.
PLANADVISER: What are some of the most important growth strategies that have generated success for your firm? Where do you source new clients most effectively?
Moody: Our entire growth strategy revolves around making client service great again and staying hyper-focused on supporting our clients’ employees and doing it the right way. We don’t want our clients to just like us; we want them to love us. Each of our clients gets a dedicated retirement adviser, relationship manager and retirement counselor who support them with fiduciary and plan oversight; administrative support; and employee education and wellness, respectively. We’re proud to boast a 93 Net Promoter Score and 99.6% annual client retention rate the past three years.
As a result of that commitment, the overwhelming majority of our new business comes from (1) direct client referrals, (2) client decisionmakers moving companies and not being able to live without us and (3) centers of influence who know how seriously we take our work. What this strategy allows us to do is focus more of our advisers’ time on deepening relationships with their clients instead of on business development, which in turn reinforces that commitment. This strategy has become increasingly powerful, given the overall reduction in service across the industry, particularly at the recordkeeper level.
In addition, we are almost evangelical about resisting the urge to juice profitability at the expense of our clients and/or our fiduciary duty. Whether it’s PEPs, adviser-managed accounts or co-manufactured investment/recordkeeping products, we’re working hard to keep the pendulum from swinging back and the lines between service providers from blurring. As our competitors continue to get acquired or rolled up within aggregators, here’s the singular truth we’ve discovered: True success in this business comes down to caring about the well-being of the people in your plans, and no amount of money or scale can buy that. It’s either part of your culture or it’s not.
PLANADVISER: For those plan sponsors looking for a new plan adviser, describe what makes your firm stand out.
Moody: We promise big and deliver big. Being a service-first organization is not always sexy, but we roll up our sleeves and work alongside plan sponsors every day. At Lebel & Harriman Retirement Advisors, we believe “fiduciary duty” means more than just screening investment options and evaluating fees; it means doing everything we can to help your people prepare for and enjoy their retirement. This stems from the basic fact that we live in the same communities as our participants. We see them at the grocery store, we stand next to them at the ball fields and, since our founding, one of our core principles is being able to look them in the eye and be proud of the work we’re doing on their behalf.
At the end of the day, clients choose us because they can feel the difference: We show up, we deliver and we care. It’s that simple.
View Other Top Retirement Plan Adviser Profiles Here