A new way to bid for the 401(k)

InHub's Ariana Amplo.

Is that $20 million 401(k) engagement worth all the hours you’ll have to put into an RFP to win the gig?

It may be that retirement plan advisors have no other recourse since plan sponsors are increasingly relying on much dreaded requests for proposal in order to document their procurement process.

That reality, and the extremely cumbersome nature of retirement plan bidding, led Ariana Amplo to launch InHub, an online RFP tool that matches plan sponsors with advisors who can service their plans, while cutting out many of the hardships associated with the solicitation process.

Amplo, who co-founded the eRFP system with partner Kent Costello, conceived the idea based on firsthand experience in retirement plan business development.

Working for Morgan Stanley’s institutional arm, Graystone Consulting, she and Costello worked on plans ranging from $20 million to $1 billion — on both the servicing and prospecting sides.