NEW YORK, Sept. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- FINOVATE -- BrightScope (www.brightscope.com), a 401k ratings and analytics firm, today announced the launch of Advisor Central 1.0, adding an advisor and consultant optimized interface to its unique suite of 401k-based products. BrightScope now enables advisors and consultants to search by critical plan design and investment criteria among over 12,000 data rich plan evaluations to find new plan sponsor clients in need of their services and to provide the best possible advice to those clients.

"The world is growing more complex every day for Financial Advisors who focus on the employer plan market," noted leading retirement industry executive Michael Falcon, a member of BrightScope's Advisory Board. "Advisor Central 1.0 is an important tool that aggregates huge amounts of reliable data, makes it usable, and puts that information at advisor's fingertips. BrightScope has added search and sort capabilities specifically designed to save advisors time - from preparing more comprehensive and timely plan reviews, to enabling targeted prospecting at greatly reduced costs."

The type of search criteria Advisor Central offers is currently unavailable in other tools, and allows advisors to quickly identify plans to fit a target market, and to find and address critical pain points for plan sponsors, giving them an unparalleled opportunity to demonstrate their expertise and differentiate from peers. The end result is delivery of actionable steps that help improve 401k plans and get participants to retirement.

"We now provide products for both plan sponsors and advisors, each of which is best in class because of the depth and quality of the data we're able to deliver," said Mike Alfred, BrightScope CEO and co-founder. "As our first product designed to serve market influencers beyond the plan sponsor, Advisor Central significantly improves on existing products in the space, and was developed specifically in response to months of feedback and requests from advisors and consultants."

With Advisor Central, BrightScope adds to their robust 401k-focused product line, including the sponsor-focused Plan Management Dashboard, and the BrightScope Rating(TM) that launched the company into the space. With the launch of Advisor Central, BrightScope continues to support its mission of securing the best retirement outcomes for participants, because high quality advisors and consultants can add significant value in the retirement plan marketplace.

For all of its products, BrightScope obtains its data directly, either from plan sponsors, or from publicly available sources ranging from The United States Department of Labor (DOL) to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Additionally, BrightScope receives investment data from Xignite. The company is aligned with plan sponsors, operating in a transparent manner to avoid any conflicts that could jeopardize its ability to give clients unbiased information. BrightScope is the only truly independent 401k analytics service and does not accept compensation in the form of revenue sharing from mutual fund companies or plan providers.

BrightScope has rated more than 12,000 401k plans, spanning 24 million workers and $1.5 trillion in assets. The BrightScope Rating for small plans with assets of $50,000 to large plans with more than $30 billion can be found at its public disclosure Web site: http://BrightScope.com. The company is working to rate more than 30,000 plans by the end of 2009.

About BrightScope

BrightScope is committed to helping America's workforce retire in dignity. BrightScope is an independent data analytics firm that quantitatively rates 401k plans and gives employers, employees, and brokers tools to enhance plan performance and maximize retirement outlook. The BrightScope Rating(TM) developed in partnership with leading independent 401k fiduciaries, reviews more than 200 unique data inputs per plan and calculates a single numerical score which defines 401k plan quality at the company level. BrightScope published ratings, rating definitions, criteria and methodologies are available on the agency's public site, www.brightscope.com.

SOURCE BrightScope