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We know retirement plans like you know your business. From retirement planning to administration, Retirement Plan Advantage employs its resources and know-how to deliver superior value to emerging and middle market businesses. Our understanding of how businesses in this arena operate makes us sensitive to your challenges, and uniquely capable of helping you overcome them. Through a practical, collaborative approach, we help you arrive at the most rewarding plan for your company and employees, implement the plan across your organization, and relieve you from many of the hassles of ongoing administration. Whether you're setting up your first or updating the one you have, we provide consulting and administration for a variety of qualified retirement plans:
Plan Design
The cornerstone of any successful company-sponsored retirement plan is its design. An intelligent plan meets your company and staff needs while incorporating safeguards that help you avoid a multitude of fiduciary and compliance hazards. Retirement Plan Advantage has the expertise to help you create and maintain that winning plan. We'll assist in selecting an initial design as well as recommend modifications based on inevitable business and governing tax law changes. We leverage our know-how with clients that cover a broad range of industries, plan sizes and plan types to design the right one for you. Factors we'll consider in designing your plan include:
- Your industry, business, and organizational structure
- Your budget and financial goals
- Your employee demographics, including ages, goals and level of investment knowledge
- Your views on how your employees should accumulate funds for retirement
Because we don't sell investment products and we're not tied to specific investment or financial institutions, you get objective recommendations on the design and investment structure for your plan. We work closely with your investment advisor to implement and coordinate the appropriate administration and recordkeeping services that align with your goals.
Plan Administration
The positive impact of making good design choices and sound investment decisions for your plan can easily be negated by poor administration or recordkeeping. When other providers offer excuses, inaccuracies, missed deadlines or lackluster response, consider stepping up your level of plan administration and recordkeeping services. You, your plan, and your plan participants deserve expertise that pays off for you now and in the long run. Our administration services include:
- Daily valuation and recordkeeping
- Balance forward administration
- Compliance services
- Trust accounting and plan financial statements
- Benefit distribution calculations
- Government return/report preparation
DAILY VALUATION
Our state-of-the-art, web-based daily recordkeeping system offers a full menu of plan and investment information for you and your participants. Our "open-architecture" trading platform gives you and your investment advisor the ability to customize your plan's investment lineup by selecting mutual funds from different fund families. Participants can access their account balances and enter fund transfers 7 days a week, 24 hours a day through the web site. Plan sponsors have access to overall plan and individual participant information and have the ability to perform certain plan administrative functions through the web.
TRADITIONAL BALANCE FORWARD
Not all plans or plan sponsors need daily recordkeeping. Maybe you have a retirement plan with investments that are trustee-directed rather than participant-directed. Or perhaps your plan has an investment structure that is more complex or diversified. Balance forward accounting is still a popular option for many plans, especially those with pooled or self-directed investment accounts. Rather than having daily access to their account balances, participants receive statements on a periodic basis. We can handle just about any retirement plan structure with our balance forward services and we have emerged as a niche provider in this area of retirement plans.
WRAP SERVICES
If your plan uses a third-party retirement plan product that includes daily participant recordkeeping, we can easily "wrap" the other services you need around that program - typically compliance testing, participant distribution calculations, government form filings, and plan documents. This option gives you the ability to have a local administrator perform and oversee certain functions for your plan, yet have a specific financial institution provide your investment and recordkeeping platform. We work with many large insurance and mutual fund companies that offer arrangements of this nature.
Compliance Services
Company-sponsored retirement plans are subject to a myriad of complicated rules, regulations and administrative procedures that seem to change from year to year. Plans that fail to comply with these regulations risk losing their tax-favored status or can incur certain monetary penalties. This is true even if the compliance failure is due to an unintentional error or lack of knowledge. Because so much is on the line, it's critical that your plan is administered by experienced staff with in-depth knowledge of this highly-specialized field. Retirement Plan Advantage not only performs ongoing reviews of your plan to ensure its compliance, we also alert you to situations that could present problems in the future and recommend actions to help you avoid compliance failures.
Retirement Plan Documents
We offer most types of qualified plan documents and provide customized documents when a specialized plan is called for. We can use our state-of-the-art document generation system to prepare your plan, or, if you prefer, we can work with your legal advisor in creating or revising a plan. We'll also prepare the necessary filing to obtain IRS determination letters.
Consulting Services
In addition to our qualified retirement plan services, we can provide assistance and expertise in these related areas:
- Form 5500 preparation and compliance testing for welfare and fringe benefit plans
- Special retirement plan calculations or projections
- Consulting or calculations for SEP and SIMPLE plans
- Assistance with IRS or DOL audits
- Submissions for IRS plan correction program
To contact Retirement Plan Advantage, click here. |
