Evaluating Your Plan’s Recordkeeper

Your fiduciary responsibility to your plan participants includes periodically evaluating your plan’s recordkeeper to ensure their processes facilitate the correct execution and reporting of transactions, adherence to federal and state regulations, in addition to the reasonableness of fees in relation with the quality of services provided. With that said, it is important to periodically assess your current recordkeeper. Learn more about the role a plan recordkeeper plays and some of the factors plan sponsors should consider when choosing and evaluating a recordkeeper.

Is Your Retirement Plan Advisor Providing the Best Services?

Outsourcing retirement plan management duties to a retirement advisor can just be good business—not only are these advisors up-to-speed on the most current regulations governing retirement plan offerings and industry best practices, but they can also free up a plan sponsor’s time to focus on critical aspects of company operation. However, it’s important to evaluate these advisors at the outset (and regularly during their administration of the plan) to ensure that you’re receiving the best possible services. How can you tell if your advisor is doing a good job? Below are a few key attributes that describe a good retirement plan advisor.

Maximizing Plan Design to Drive Better Outcomes

A successful retirement plan program encourages and enables its participants to build sufficient retirement savings, choose the appropriate investments, manage investment risk, and generate a lifetime of income. Although there exist nearly as many retirement plan structures as individuals who participate in them, not all plans are created equal—and plan design can significantly influence savings and retirement decisions. However, due to the number of options available, plan design can be a complex undertaking. Learn more about the plan design features that will boost your plan participants’ readiness for retirement.

Finding the Right OCIO Partner

As financial regulations and global markets become increasingly complex, more organizations have decided to conserve their in-house resources by outsourcing the role of the Chief Investment Officer. Organizations that partner with an outsourced CIO (OCIO) find it to be an effective solution for dedicated expertise, sophisticated research and analytics, and faster investment decision making. However, finding the right OCIO provider is becoming more difficult given the growth in the number of firms providing OCIO services and the complexity of their solutions. Managing the assets of an organization is mission-critical so it’s important not to rush into choosing an OCIO provider that may not be the right fit for your business.

Ongoing Plan Sponsor Concerns

Managing a thoughtful retirement plan while trying to keep up with the ever-changing legal and regulatory environment can be challenging. Often, concerns over managing a retirement plan can vary, and plan sponsors are unsure of what needs to be addressed. Below, we review five ongoing plan sponsor concerns that sponsors should keep in mind to guarantee they have an effective retirement plan in place not only to ensure the retirement readiness of their employees, but to avoid liability should an audit occur.