Asteri Collective names Sheri Fitts executive director as Slotwinski retires

Sheri Fitts, the founder of SWAY LIVE and a retirement industry executive, has been named executive director of The Asteri Collective effective immediately, succeeding Ann Slotwinski, who is retiring, 401(k) Specialist reported. The appointment places an entrepreneur atop a membership organization built out of retirement plan consulting firms.

Slotwinski led Asteri from its conception through its establishment as a national organization whose member firms represent more than 51,200 retirement plans, 2.2 million participants and $158 billion in assets under administration. Those firms, according to the announcement, span different sizes, geographic markets, specialties and perspectives, and they share an interest in advancing the role of the Retirement Plan Consultant, the term increasingly used for third-party administrators, and in improving how the retirement ecosystem works together.

Her own career in the plan business runs 30 years and includes time with John Hancock and the creation of National TPA Day, a celebration of the people whose expertise keeps retirement plans running. She called building the collective one of the most rewarding chapters of that career, and said Asteri "has grown into a community with a powerful voice and an important role to play in the future of our industry."

The announcement describes the membership it hands over as "entrepreneurs who have lived through every change this industry has thrown at them and are still pushing to be better, to set the standard, and to grow."

That description is also the constraint. A collective of consulting firms holds influence on loan from the firms that choose to belong, and its standing with recordkeepers, plan sponsors and advisors rises or falls with how many of them keep showing up. Fitts takes over a coalition rather than a client book, and the scale cited in the announcement is the measure of what she starts with: more than 51,200 plans, 2.2 million participants, $158 billion in assets under administration. Whether member firms keep arriving is the question the handoff leaves open.