ING has launched a new business building program for advisors, consultants and the third party administrator (TPA) community serving the small and mid-sized corporate retirement plan market. The suite of practice development tools and resources is designed to help the company's distribution contacts leverage all that the company has to offer.

In addition, each tool and resource is accompanied with a sales idea that an advisor, consultant or TPA can implement. The resources offered in the ING Grow Program focus on three specific categories, such as sales ideas and business-building tools to help grow relationships; value-added thought leadership to keep retirement professionals up-to-date on industry trends; and technology and educational applications to help participants become prepared for retirement.

According to ING, the advisors, consultants and the TPA community may find the tool useful as it offers current and prospective clients an outline of their statement of services. The document can help retirement professionals develop a value proposition on their service commitment. It can incorporate details as the services they intend to provide and their relating to consulting, conversion and ongoing installation.

The distribution community includes ING practice management seminars on topics such as fiduciary responsibility and trends in retirement plan administration. Also included are the retirement research which provides research, white papers and industry commentary.

The company said that participant seminars and user-friendly retirement planning calculators are also included such as INGYourNumber.com, which helps calculate the total amount of money one needs to save by the time they retire; INGCompareme.com, which harnesses the peer comparison for users to see; and my retirement outlook: a retirement and paycheck analysis tool that integrates pension plan assets, social security benefits and personal savings.

Bill Elmslie, executive vice president of intermediary sales and service for ING, said: It’s not enough anymore to give our distribution contacts access to research and innovation, they now need something tangible to do with these resources to differentiate themselves in the market.”