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978-689-6906
ndulac@rfgnetwork.com

Employer Sponsored Retirement Plans

401(k) Outsourcing ~ Does it Make Sense?

Outsourcing is the hiring of a consultant from outside the company to complete a task or provide a service that they are better suited to do then your own employees. Many small to mid-sized plans are beginning to outsource 401(k) fiduciaries.

Companies outsource many services, including payroll, auditing, marketing, legal defense, building maintenance, HR services and advertising, to name but a few.

The reasons for outsourcing generally include:

  • Cost savings
  • Better outcome
  • Time savings
  • Increased productivity
  • Allows employees to do the things that they do best
Client Centered

Numerous business experts and consultants tout the benefits of outsourcing. Do what you do best and outsource the rest. When work can be done outside better than it can be done inside, you should do it.

There is now a growing trend to outsource 401(k) services for many of the same reasons, but also because there are additional benefits in so doing, such as:

  • Reduced liability
  • Increased objectivity
  • Fewer conflicts of interest
  • Increased service level

Employer Services

Outsourced CRO™-Outsourced Chief Retirement Officer

Fee Benchmarking, Vendor Searches, and Plan Design

Benchmarking Fees, Plan Design, and Participant Success Measures Report provide comprehensive “apples to apples” comparisons of a plan’s fees, design, and participant success measures. Department of Labor regulations under ERISA and, specifically, section 408(b)(2) require that plan sponsors obtain fee disclosures for their plan and that all such fees be “reasonable” for the services being provided.

As your partner, we work to align with a provider that best fits the needs of your organization and employees. Our benchmarking process provides an equal emphasis on the cost and quality aspects of a potential retirement providers services. Our RFP approach helps ensure that apple-to-apple comparisons are used throughout the benchmarking process.

Overseeing the implementation of a competitive employer-sponsored retirement plan is a significant responsibility. Your plan and processes are being observed by various agencies and by your employees. It is important to the protect your employees interests and stay within the laws.

Our customized Request for Proposal (RFP) process includes:


Client Centered

Once your plan is in place, you can expect ...

  • Ongoing monitoring
  • Monitoring of participation levels and investment performance
  • Plan cost benchmarking and analysis against other vendors and plans
  • Guidance on areas of improvement
  • Target date analysis and custom target date solutions

ERISA and Fiduciary Responsibility

CFOs, CEOs, Presidents and other fiduciaries have personal liability for assets in the company’s retirement plan. It is crucial that plan sponsors partner with an independent firm specializing in services that reduce exposure to fiduciary liability.
As your partner, we can share the fiduciary responsibility with you, and implement a disciplined and best practice process to better manage your responsibilities. As well as provide resources to inform and educate committee members on ERISA's fiduciary liability.

Our extensive process includes:

  • Plan policy creation and documentation, including Investment Policy Statement and Investment Committee Charter.
  • Investment Committee Fiduciary Education Modules
  • Comprehensive Fiduciary oversight reviews, and compliance and file checklists.
  • Meeting minutes and executive summaries
  • Plan record Documentation and Retention

Investment Selection and Monitoring

Choosing and monitoring the appropriate investments offered in your plan is a serious fiduciary task, as it can impact a participant’s retirement experience. As your experienced partner, we will help you establish an investment strategy that fits the distinct needs of your organization and your employees. We then monitor the selection and deselection of funds to continue to meet the goals of your Participants

Client Centered

Our investment process includes:

  • Investment Policy Statement - We assist you in developing a customized Investment Policy Statement (IPS) to serve as a blueprint for selecting and monitoring your plan’s investments
  • Investment Selection - It’s important to construct a well-balanced investment lineup that offers broad diversification across asset classes. We make investment recommendations using a proprietary fund ranking system, and an in depth quantitative and qualitative analysis.
  • Investment Monitoring - Our investment monitoring and review is conducted quarterly, to ensure investments are meeting the needs of the plan participants, and remain consistent with plan goals and IPS criteria

Plan Design

<sup><strong>Employee Engagement</strong></sup>

Employee Engagement

The true measure of success of any employer sponsored retirement plan is engagement of employees. We not only create a plan that is financially sound, we also educate employees to encourage participation. This focus on providing employees with what will help them the most with becoming retirement ready is truly what sets us apart.

Retirement Fiduciary Group was built on a holistic approach to financial planning, which allows us to provide independent advice to help your participants feel confident about the financial decisions they make. We will work with you to provide a customized education suite to help deliver essential plan information and provide solutions that can lead to successful retirement outcomes.

Does outsourcing in the 401(k) area make sense? Consider this! ERISA’s “prudent expert rule” specifically states that the plan should outsource to independent experts if they themselves do not have the expertise, because it is ultimately in the plan participants’ benefit.

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