Tim Rouse, Executive Director of the SPARK Institute, Rachel Weker, Retirement Strategist at T. Rowe Price , and Chris Weirath, Head of Client Success at Morningstar Retirement, preview the 2026 SPARK Forum, the industry’s final major gathering of the year, covering a member-built agenda that spans the full arc of retirement, from first dollar to last payout, including AI, alternative investments, regulation, and retirement income.
Transcript:
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Well, we’re gonna talk about the upcoming SPARK Forum. It’s coming up in mid-November, I should say, and joining me to help break it all down, Tim Rouse is the Executive Director of the SPARK Institute. Rachel Wecker is with T. Rowe Price. Chris Weirath is with Morningstar, and they’re collectively co-chairs of the SPARK Forum Agenda Committee. Ladies, gentlemen, great to see you.
Thanks for joining us in the program this morning. Thanks for having us. Well, Tim, I wanna start with you because the SPARK Forum every year has a theme, and you and the team have worked real hard.
What is the theme for this year’s SPARK Forum?
Tim Rouse, The SPARK Institute
Well, Jeff, I wanna first start by thanking Rachel and Chris for all the work that they’ve done to develop the agenda and the theme. And our theme for this year is from first dollar to last payout and beyond.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So, Tim, that begs the question, why that theme and why this year?
Tim Rouse, The SPARK Institute
Well, it reflects the expanding role our members play across a person’s financial life that now starts at birth with the new Trump accounts and continues through workplace savings, moves into lifetime income once the paycheck stops, and extends to the transfer of wealth from one generation to the next. The industry is no longer just about accumulation. It has to now work across the full arc of an individual’s life.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And, Tim, I mean, the membership of SPARK continues to change over time. It’s adapting to the same issues that are going on in the industry. How has the membership continued to evolve?
Tim Rouse, The SPARK Institute
It definitely has. And with the forum, what began as a record-keeper-focused event has broadened with the industry. So six years ago, our board recognized the need to have advisors in the room, and it created 50 scholarships so that they could join us and share their perspectives.
We have also seen a significant increase in TPAs attending our forum. And as you would expect, Jeff, a growing number of both fintech providers are coming to the forum, as well as alternative investment providers.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, that’s great. I mean, this is the last conference, industry conference of the year, I should say. So it puts a nice bow tie at all the goings on in the retirement industry.
Chris, it’s great to meet you. I don’t think I’ve ever had you on the program, so it’s great to have you on Morningstar. Let’s talk about the forum from your perspective.
You worked on the agenda. So what excites you about this year’s forum?
Chris Weirath, Morningstar
Yeah, thanks for having me, first of all. It’s nice to meet you, too. I think what most excites me, there’s kind of two things, is one is who’s gonna be in the room, similar to what Tim was referencing, all the different folks that we have coming in.
We’ve brought together some of the sharpest minds in the industry, and they’re people who are really shaping how retirement plans are designed, delivered, and they’ll be sharing what they’re seeing kind of firsthand. I’m also, secondly, really excited about that the agenda was really built by our members. So we listened to the feedback from last year, both on what people really wanted to talk about, but also the format and how they wanted to actually receive that information.
And they shaped the topics. That feedback shaped the topics and the format with really providing a lot of room for real discussion as opposed to just like sitting there and listening to it. So, you know, this is really the member’s agenda and it reflects really what the members told us matters most to them at that right now.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And Rachel, it’s always great to see you. Full disclosure, Rachel and I used to work together when I was a record keeper at T. Rowe Price. So it’s always great to have her and I haven’t seen her in a bit, but always great to reconnect.
Rachel, what topics should members expect to hear about?
Rachel Weker, T. Rowe Price
Yeah, it’s good to see you again and thank you for having me. I think you hit the nail on the head there in terms of the amount of things that we could be talking about. And when I think about my time in the industry and I think my first SPARK was probably around the same time as yours, our industry is in such a moment of change and this agenda is an opportunity to really unpack the implications of some of those things.
So I think about recognizing the complex financial lives that people are juggling, as Tim mentioned, from birth all the way through accumulation and then to distribution, the different roles and participants in the industry and the ecosystem today relative to many years ago and all of the new opportunities from an investment standpoint. And then just layer on top of that, all of the technology advances going on. So I think it’s a really exciting time.
We’ve identified a number of topics to really understand the implications of those changes. So the audience is gonna have an opportunity to understand what’s going on from a regulatory and legislative standpoint. There’s been a lot of activity in the retirement and retirement adjacent space.
So we’ve got some great experts to explore that. We’ll really be unpacking the opportunities and considerations related to AI. There’s a tremendous amount of excitement and there’s also a lot of really serious questions that we need to make sure we’re also evaluating at the same time.
So that’ll be on the agenda. And we’re gonna be revisiting some familiar topics like retirement income, the leverage of alternative investments. We’ve been talking about some of these things for a while, but we wanna make sure that everyone has an opportunity to understand sort of where there’s changing and where do we see directionally us heading to.
And that’s really just getting started.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Chris, a lot of these topics are consistent with a lot of other industry events. I mean, these are not kind of newer topics, but I guess my question is what can attendees expect when they, that’s gonna be different when they come here to the forum?
Chris Weirath, Morningstar
Yeah, I mean, the topics, you’re right. The topics are ones that people can expect because they’re the ones that are really shaping our industry, right? The agenda has really broad industry trends and focus that’s by design.
So really no matter where you sit in the overall retirement ecosystem, there’s gonna be something there for you to actually to gain value from. The difference where I feel that the SPARK Forum agenda is, is that the depth. So a lot of the events really cover these topics at the headline level.
And then at the forum, we’re really have the time and the expertise in the room to dig deeper. So what’s actually changing? What does that mean in practice?
And then where are still, where are the open questions and what do we need to do to address those? So because we have the people, the appropriate people in the room, we can really dig deep on those topics so that you can see exactly what we need to do. And I think that that’s different than what you see at other industry events.
Rachel Weker, T. Rowe Price
I’d just like to add one thing there. And I completely agree with everything Chris is saying. I think additionally, when you think about the wide range of constituencies we have, we’re able to represent those different perspectives on the stage.
So we’re also gonna be able to explore some of these topics from different standpoints. And I think that’s gonna be a really exciting part of the sessions.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Well, Rachel, I wanna kind of ask you the same question to conclude with you. Well, actually I have another question for Tim, but I wanna ask you, what are you most excited about when it comes to this year’s forum? And obviously you helped draft the agenda.
So what kind of picks, you know, stands out to you?
Rachel Weker, T. Rowe Price
Well, I think I would go just a little bit different direction there. In addition to learning from all of the experts that we’re gonna have on stage, I’m really excited about the opportunity to reconnect and with peers, I’ve been in the industry a long time. But when you think about the amount of changes and the new players, it’s such a great opportunity to be meeting folks from new players in the industry as well.
So I think that’s really another thing I’m looking forward to in the few weeks that we’ll be there.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Tim, I wanna kind of finish up with you. You know, it’s mid October. So there’s about a, I don’t know, less than a little less than a month.
People can still enroll to attend. So how do they do that?
Tim Rouse, The SPARK Institute
They can, and they should go to our website to do that. We are well over the numbers that, we’re well over the numbers that we have from last year, but there’s still opportunity for folks to join us.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So thank you. And it does take a village to put this together. You have a great team, Marlene, Kim, they do a great job to help to put this together 24 hours.
Tim Rouse, The SPARK Institute
Very thankful for all their help.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah. Well, certainly a great event. Really appreciate all of you coming on the program.
Tim Rouse, Chris Weirath, Rachel Wecker. It’s great to see you. Thanks for joining us.
Good luck at SPARK. And we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon.
Chris Weirath, Morningstar
Thank you.