One of the great supermarkets in my area is ShopRite and it’s one of the unique successes in the supermarket business. ShopRite is a co-operative consisting of individual supermarket owners who band together for purchasing power and marketing purposes.

So what’s good in the supermarket can be good for the third party administration (TPA). I was introduced to Alliance Benefits Group (ABG) by John Blossom of Alliance Benefits Group of Illinois who is a client of mine and Alliance Benefits Group sponsored me at their booth at the NAPA event in Las Vegas last March. Alliance Benefit Group has grown again as Jocelyn Pension Consulting, LLC, with offices in San Rafael, CA and Boulder, CO, became the latest retirement plan recordkeeping and consulting firm to become a licensee and join the ABG network.

Being in the TPA business is rough, so it makes sense that some good TPAs have decided to band together for the reasons that any cooperative business is created.