You will hear about how certain retirement plan providers have won awards. Awards are impressive, but sometimes they’re not. You have to be wary as to who gave the award and what the award really means, You also shouldn’t just pick a provider because they won an award.

The best example is my local business newspaper that gave a lifetime achievement award to the former managing attorney for my law firm. The law firm is a big time advertiser of that newspaper and under this managing attorney’s watch, two offices closed and the firm is down 33% in size. Is the award justified or is it simply a thank you to a long term advertiser? Probably the latter.

I’ve seen plan providers tout awards that aren’t worth the paper the certificate is printed on. I’ve seen plan providers tout awards I never knew existed. Heck, I could mention that I won the Martin Buskin Award for Excellence in Student Journalism, but that was so 1994 and in college.

So many reasons are there to hire a plan provider, some type of award-winning isn’t one of them.