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What is a 3(16) Plan Administrator?
Every retirement plan has a plan administrator. If your plan document does not name one, the job falls to you. Here is what the role covers and what a 3(16) provider can actually take off your hands.
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What Are 401(k) Forfeitures and How Can They Be Used?
Understand what forfeitures are, the three things your plan can do with them, when they have to be used, and who at your organization has to make that decision.
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What Do I Have to Do As a 401(k) Trustee?
As a 401(k) trustee you hold your employees' retirement savings in trust, and if you handle that money carelessly a court can order you to pay the plan back out of your own pocket. This post covers what the role requires and what to check first.
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What Should an Open Enrollment Meeting Cover?
An effective open enrollment meeting helps employees understand what changed, what their benefits will cost, what decisions they need to make, and when they need to act.
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What Happens If a Committee Doesn't Follow Its Investment Policy Statement (IPS)?
An IPS can work for your committee or against it, and the difference is usually one word. A policy that says the committee will remove a fund is a promise. One that says the committee may remove it is a guideline.
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How Often Should a Plan Sponsor Benchmark 401(k) Fees?
What the law actually asks of your committee on fee benchmarking, where the three-to-five-year figure everyone repeats came from, and how to set a cadence you can defend.
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Directed vs. Discretionary Trustee: What's the Difference?
What separates a directed trustee from a discretionary one, who ends up responsible for the plan's investment decisions under each, and how to tell which arrangement your plan is using.
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Can a Business Owner be the Trustee of their 401(k) Plan?
This post covers what serving as your own 401(k) trustee actually involves, how the role changes once employees join the plan, what you personally take on, and what a corporate trustee does and doesn't change.
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How Do You Build a Benefits Communication Calendar?
A benefits communication calendar works when each message is scheduled for the point in the year when employees can still act on it, and building one takes little more than your plan dates and the nine emails in this kit.
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What Is a Qualified Default Investment Alternative (QDIA)?
A QDIA is the investment your plan uses when an employee never picks one, whether they were enrolled automatically or just skipped the investment election, and only certain investments qualify.
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What Should an Employee Financial Education Program Include?
A financial education program comes down to four things a committee decides: what you teach, how you teach it, who does the teaching, and which participant numbers you check before and after.
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What Events Should Trigger a 401(k) Service Provider Review?
Some things shouldn't wait for the next scheduled provider review. Here are the six events, and what to do when one shows up.
