A 401(k) that
works as hard as
the business.

Investment policy statements, committee charters, documented meeting cadence, and trustee minutes, the architecture that makes a defensible governance process actually defensible if a participant complaint or a DOL audit ever arrives.

Annual fiduciary training for committee members, a structured process for evaluating and recording every plan decision, and the procedural discipline that turns good intentions into a documented record.

When mistakes happen, late deferrals, missing notices, corrective contributions, vesting schedule errors, we lead the correction work through VFCP, EPCRS, and DOL programs with the judgment that comes from having handled it before.

Two engagement models, depending on where the plan committee wants to draw the fiduciary line. Under a 3(21) co-fiduciary engagement, the committee retains final authority on every fund decision and we provide the independent analysis, recommendation, and documentation behind it. The accountability stays with the sponsor; the technical lift comes off their plate.

Under a 3(38) discretionary engagement, we assume full discretion over the selection and ongoing monitoring of the investment lineup, QDIA, target-date suite, and the underlying funds, reducing the fiduciary burden on the plan sponsor in writing. The committee delegates the investment decisions; we own them, document them, and stand behind them.

Either way: quantitative screens on fund performance, expense ratios, manager consistency, and peer-rank stability run on a regular cadence and documented in writing. Qualitative reviews on tenure, philosophy, and organizational stability complement the numbers when the numbers alone don’t tell the story.

QDIA design and target-date suitability mapped to your participant demographic, recordkeeper-platform fund analysis with transparent share-class comparison, and independent menu construction documented to hold up to scrutiny.

Custom-built education modules tailored to your workforce, not generic financial-literacy slides borrowed from a recordkeeper’s library. We meet participants where they are, in the language they actually use, on the questions they actually have.

One-on-one planning sessions for employees at every level, enrollment, deferral optimization, beneficiary updates, rollover decisions, retirement-readiness conversations. The kind of attention most plans only offer to executives, extended across the participant base.

Group sessions paired with quarterly campaigns: financial wellness, market commentary translated for plain English, and the kind of engagement that turns a 401(k) from a line-item benefit into something employees notice and thank the company for.

A complete plan-document review and optimization, safe-harbor elections, vesting schedules, profit-sharing allocations, automatic enrollment, automatic escalation, Roth elections, and loan provisions all evaluated against current best practice and the company’s specific demographics.

Benchmarking against industry peers using anonymized aggregate data: how the plan compares on participation, average deferral, employer match, employee tenure, and feature-richness. A clear view of where the plan stands and where targeted upgrades produce the most retention value.

Cash-balance overlays, new-comparability allocations, non-qualified deferred-compensation plans, and other advanced design strategies engineered to maximize owner benefit while keeping the rank-and-file plan strong, design that serves both ends of the org chart.

Recordkeeper, custodian, TPA, and 3(38) discretionary advisor performance and fee monitoring on a defined cadence, benchmarked against current market every cycle, not just at hire. Revenue-sharing, ERISA-budget activity, and indirect-fee arrangements made transparent.

Formal RFP processes when warranted, typically every four to six years or following a material service breakdown, with full vendor evaluation, scoring matrices, finalist presentations, and a committee-led selection that holds up to fiduciary review.

Access to institutional share classes, fee credits, ERISA-account rebates, and other resources that smaller plans rarely know to ask for. We negotiate at a scale and with a vocabulary most plan sponsors can’t, and pass the savings through.

Non-qualified deferred-compensation plans (NQDC), design, financing, distribution-trigger structuring, and informal-funding strategy across rabbi trusts, COLI, and other vehicles. The plan that lives where the qualified plan can’t reach.

M&A retirement-plan coordination, pre-deal plan termination decisions, plan merger logistics, due-diligence support on the seller side, and post-close plan integration on the buyer side. The retirement plan is rarely the deal-killer, but it’s often a deal-delayer when no one has planned around it.

Executive carve-outs, top-hat plans, key-employee retention structures, and the planning specific to executive teams that goes beyond what a qualified plan can do, designed to attract and keep the people the company can least afford to lose.

ERISA compliance run as a calendar discipline, non-discrimination testing, top-heavy testing, ADP/ACP testing, 415 limits, fidelity-bond verification, and the operational checks that keep the plan in good standing year after year.

DOL and IRS reporting handled cleanly: Form 5500 filing, summary annual reports, summary plan descriptions, and timely participant disclosures (404a-5, QDIA notices, safe-harbor notices, automatic-enrollment notices). The notices land on time, every time.

Annual CPA audit support, preparation packets, schedule of investments, contribution and distribution reconciliations, and direct support to the auditor so the company’s CFO and HR don’t carry the audit burden alone.