Defined Contribution Plan Reviews

The heart of a plan review includes a comparative analysis of your firm's defined contribution plan relative to a broad universe of other defined contribution plans. This will incorporate comparisons of the number and type of investment fund offerings, a fee analysis, trends in the defined contribution industry and plan structure issues.

We also dedicate a significant portion of the plan review to an examination of your plan's current investment options and structure. We will evaluate the plan's current array of investment funds (both the number and the type) and make a recommendation as to the number and type of investment options to offer participants. As a portion of this analysis, we walk through the most commonly offered investment options (by asset class), providing a description of each and their pros and cons, and we provide you with individual recommendations for each asset class. The review of your existing investment options includes a comparison of the options versus their respective benchmarks, as well as rankings versus their peers.

Finally, the plan review includes a detailed fee analysis. The goal of our plan review is to offer your firm a guideline for designing the ongoing structure of your defined contribution plan.  We conduct between fifteen and twenty defined contribution plan reviews and full service provider searches each year.  As a result, not only do we have a sense for what fees are competitive, but we also have strong negotiating power with many of the leading defined contribution service providers.

As a result of the plan review, you will have the best information to help you decide on the number and type of funds to offer, any fund changes that may be desirable and have a base for fee comparisons and negotiations.