As a plan sponsor, you know the importance of providing a well-managed retirement plan for your employees. You are also aware of how much time and energy it takes to organize and administrate such a plan, not to mention the fiduciary responsibility that goes along with it. As a result, you may turn to a retirement plan consultant to provide expertise, objective guidance, and service. Your business and your employees are a high priority, so you don’t want to choose just any consultant. How do you know if your consultant is the best fit for your business? Is there a way to ensure they are doing their job and improving your plan? Use our retirement plan consultant checklist below.
A Plan Consultant Report Card
You’ve hired a consultant to take care of critical services such as plan design, education, and investor oversight, among others. Once you’ve started working with your consultant, it’s time to evaluate the relationship.
Be sure to review if your consultant has:
- Provided me with Part 2 of Form ADV, which outlines, in plain English, the types of advisory services offered, the adviser’s fee schedule, disciplinary information, conflicts of interest, and the educational and business background of management and key advisory personnel of the adviser.
- Did you check for recent litigation against any employee or firm or any recent citing by a professional or regulatory body for disciplinary reasons?
- Have there been any changes to firm management or ownership?
- Confirmed our plan consulting fees are in line with other clients that are similar in size/scope
- Reviewed our Investment Policy Statement, ensuring compliance and suggesting edits where needed
- Provided quarterly performance reports with appropriate benchmarking and provided thorough analysis and recommendations where needed
- Provided reviews/benchmarking of all plan fees to ensure reasonableness, including recordkeeper and money managers, relative to their peer group and services received
- Confirmed that they have not received any form of compensation from any vendor or money manager
These are the objectives a retirement plan consultant should meet within a year of working for you.
Innovation And Strategy
You should also evaluate whether or not your consultant goes the extra mile for you to ensure your plan is top-notch. Here are some other services to expect from your consultant.
Does my consultant:
- Actively keep me abreast of industry trends and issues including legislature/regulatory updates?
- Make recommendations to our plan design (where appropriate)?
- Keep me abreast of trends in investment structures and provides recommendations?
- Keep me abreast of my vendor’s latest services as well as trends in other vendor’s services?
- Provide timely qualitative and organizational changes of investment managers and vendors to our plan?
- Assist in maximizing the educational services of our vendor and provide helpful suggestions?
- Consider themselves a co-fiduciary to our plan and indicate so in our agreement?
PlanPILOT Consultants
At PlanPILOT, we strive to meet all your plan sponsor needs, working with you to not only assist you in reaching your goals and satisfying your fiduciary responsibilities today, but in continually looking ahead to ensure a progressive plan and benefit. We are proud of our talented associates and know that their knowledge and expertise can be a great asset for you. We want you to feel confident that your consultant is doing their part to help your plan excel, and we will ensure we follow all the services noted in this retirement plan consultant checklist. If you would like more information on what we can do for you and your plan, call us today at (312) 973-4913 or email info@planpilot.com.