Fidelity said it has seen a 51 per cent rise in the number of “emerging” retirement advisors since 2013 ─ advisory firms moving from accommodating retirement plan requests to growing their retirement plan businesses.

Fidelity Clearing & Custody has linked up with Envestnet Retirement Solutions to offer the latter firm’s workstation to retirement plan advisors at Fidelity.

“The industry has realized the opportunity that retirement plans present; now, many firms are focused on scale and asking how do we grow this side of the business efficiently?” said Meg Kelleher, senior vice president at the retirement advisor and recordkeeper segment of Fidelity Clearing & Custody. “We see this workstation as the first important step in our open architecture platform which will drive efficiency for retirement plan advisors.”

While Fidelity research has identified time and resources as top challenges among advisors offering retirement plan services, it also found that they see technology as a means to overcome these challenges. That said, however, only a third of retirement advisors said they are leveraging technology to the fullest.

“This new Envestnet Retirement Solutions workstation will help advisors more easily put technology to work for their businesses by integrating into the systems and service providers they are already using,” said Babu Sivadasan, group president of Envestnet | Retirement Solutions (ERS), a majority-owned subsidiary of Envestnet. “It will also serve as a single solution for needs that are often outsourced or pieced together by firms, including compliance reporting and plan reporting.”

The Envestnet Retirement Solutions workstation will be accessible through Fidelity’s WealthCentral and Streetscape platforms, and available to Fidelity Clearing & Custody clients as of Q1 2016.