difference between consultant in retirement and administration in retirement

[covariance128]

I am wondering what are the major differences between consultation in retirement vs administration. What are the major tasks involved and what are the qualities required for each of these departments?

[deathfrombelow]

It depends on what you mean by consulting in administration. Most of the larger "actuarial" consulting firms have administration consulting practices and more general "retirement" consulting practices. Often, admin is a subgroup of the larger retirement/pension/HR consulting group. If you're at one of these firms, there may be some degree of overlap between the work.

There are also standalone administration consulting firms and also firms that administer plans who also provide administrative consulting. To make it even more complicated, the big actuarial consulting firms also have administration groups that actually administer the plans, though this is usually called working "in administration" as opposed to "administrative consulting". I'm going to speak specifically to the case of the difference between "administrative consulting" and "retirement consulting" in one of the big firms like Mercer, Hewitt, Wyatt, Towers, etc.

Assuming you're interested in being an actuary, you could work in either, but you'll find a higher concentration of actuaries outside of administration than inside it, as most administration tasks aren't specifically "actuarial" in nature.

Administration tasks include helping clients ensure that plans are being administered in compliance with regulations, helping verify that changes to client plans are being implemented and administered properly, providing support for unusual or complicated benefit calculations, and so forth. The work tends to require great depth in understanding the specifics of both the law and the client's plans and administrative practice. There is less of the stuff you see on actuarial exams involved in these positions, but there is definitely a good deal of FM stuff involved and also exam M stuff at times.

More actuarially-oriented "retirement consulting" jobs might include tasks such as performing valuations, performing asset liability studies, performing experience studies, consulting on legislative changes, and helping clients with plan design. Often, these tasks require the application of more general skills, though they definitely require a great deal of client and regulatory knowledge at times. If you're in retirement consulting, you're probably more of a generalist than the people who are more specifically in administration within a given firm.

Not to be mean, but just to help you out if you're not a native English speaker, we usually call it "consulting in X field" instead of "consultation in X field". My apologies if you're a native speaker and just don't proofread online stuff. I'm with you if that's the case.