Today’s industry news isn’t just another personnel announcement. When Fred Reish, a lawyer whose name has been synonymous with ERISA’s most complex fiduciary and regulatory issues for decades, changes teams, the whole retirement plan ecosystem should take notice.
Reish isn’t just experienced, he’s one of the very few people whose work has genuinely shaped how practitioners, providers, and plan sponsors think about fiduciary risk, prohibited transactions, and plan design. For decades he’s been in the trenches, advising plan sponsors, financial institutions, and fiduciaries on thorny problems most providers never see until it’s too late.
Now he’s joining Prime Capital Financial’s retirement practice to lead their fiduciary and ERISA work. That’s notable for two reasons:
1. Talent attracts scrutiny—and improvement. When someone with Reish’s depth of technical firepower moves, it often signals that the receiving organization is serious about strengthening its compliance and governance muscle, not just its brand. This is rarely “window dressing.” It’s substantive.
2. Sponsors should care about who shapes advice. Plan sponsors don’t buy lawyers; they buy confidence that their advisors know the difference between good intentions and defensible action. Providers aligned with true subject-matter experts can help sponsors navigate ambiguity in ways that aren’t just comforting, but defensible under scrutiny.
This isn’t about headlines. It’s about practical impact—on governance models, on how fiduciary risk is communicated, and on how sponsors and providers think about compliance as a process, not a product.
So yes, Fred Reish’s move is “landmark.” But more importantly, it’s a reminder: Experience doesn’t just matter in theory—its absence shows up in audits, examinations, and litigation.
Providers who want to thrive in the next decade aren’t just hiring bodies. They’re investing in minds that can explain risk before it becomes a problem.
Sponsors should be paying attention. Because when the landscape shifts at the expert level, it usually arrives at the compliance desk next.
