Retirement Benefits Consulting

All-inclusive range of services for retirement benefits

A successful employee benefit plan reinforces a plan sponsor’s business objectives around such issues as recruitment, retention, and productivity. Our retirement team distinguishes itself by exceeding market and industry standards in its approach to the following services:

We provide comprehensive actuarial, technical, and strategic consulting for Qualified and Non-qualified Defined Benefit and Defined Contribution Retirement Plans, as well as other Post-Retirement Benefit Plans on issues including but not limited to:

Plan Design Studies (provide benefit /cost analysis, comparative industry data, benefit adequacy analysis)
Plan Interpretations
Plan Administration
Plan Investment Policies
Frozen pension plans management, i.e., developing the appropriate process for funding, planning, and implementing a plan termination
Search and selection of investment managers, manager of managers, and investment advisors
Forecasting of contribution and expense results based on varying key economic assumptions
Retiree medical and life insurance funding in a VEBA under Code Sections 419A and 512
Non-qualified plans including plan design, 409A compliance, FICA calculations and SEC proxy disclosure

Our retirement practice offers an all-inclusive range of services for defined benefit, defined contribution, and other post-retirement medical plans.

Our team of actuaries, economists, and other retirement experts have a breadth of experience with all aspects of retirement strategy and plan design and can provide comprehensive actuarial, technical, and strategic consulting for both qualified and non-qualified plans.

In addition to the customary actuarial work for funding and expense valuations, we offer a broad range of administrative support, outsourcing assistance, and data services consulting to our clients. We review a client’s entire retirement benefits program and advise on risk management strategies for cost savings and compliance. We are experienced in the benefits’ due diligence process for mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures.

Our retirement team distinguishes itself by exceeding market and industry standards in its approach to establishment and documentation of appropriate actuarial assumptions for defined benefit, retiree medical and non-qualified plans. Its knowledge is unsurpassed regarding defined contribution plan transparency considerations, cost benchmarks, design alterations, and specific vendor capabilities.

We provide consulting on every facet of the 401(k) plan, including:

Request for Proposal for vendor selection
Assistance in vendor selection and management
Detailed analysis of defined contribution vendor fees for transparency, investment, recordkeeping, and other components and consulting related thereto
Benchmarking and evaluation of Best Practices and Performance Guarantees
Specialized studies of transitions from defined benefit to defined contribution programs

We perform annual funding and expense actuarial valuations and work with the plan sponsor to define the best approach to all phases of the valuation process. This includes:

Gathering participant data and reconciling data between years
Providing data edits, questions, and corrections
Gathering asset information and performing reconciliation
Discussing actuarial assumptions for contribution purposes
Developing funding contribution results
Preparing Adjusted Funding Target Attainment Percentage (AFTAP) certification
Calculating FAS #35, FAS #87, FAS #106, FAS #158, and IAS 19 results
Claims analysis and benchmarking for retiree medical programs
Consulting on Health Care Reform issues and compliance including Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage as it relates to retiree medical
Discussing appropriate assumptions with the plan sponsor and its auditors for expense purposes
Preparing financial statement disclosure information based upon agreed assumptions
Preparing expense based on agreed assumptions for prior year and new participant information
Comprehensive final actuarial valuation report
Presentation of results

We prepare and review all required government filings including but not limited to:

Form 5558 request for extension
Form 5500 for both the defined benefit and defined contribution plans with schedules A, SB, C, D, H, R, and T and IRS Form 8955-SSA, if applicable
PBGC premium filings
ERISA 4010 filings
ERISA 4062(e) filings
Reportable event filings and other necessary filings with the PBGC

We conduct and assist with all audits and review to ensure all plans are being properly administered and are in compliance. This includes but is not limited to:

Assisting auditor with written confirmation of all needed information for annual audit
Auditing all needed and appropriate consulting, vendor and other (e.g., Social Security Administration) information, for accuracy, reasonableness, and consistency
Conducting or reviewing all needed Discrimination testing as outlined under 401(a)(4), 410(b), 401(k), and 401(m)
Preparing or reviewing applicable determination filings as preformed on Form 5300
Voluntary Compliance and Plan Fiduciary Audits
Plan Fiduciary Audits
Independent actuarial audits of current actuarial work
Reviewing and updating plan documents, plan amendments, board resolutions, and Summary Plan Descriptions

We review the entire retirement benefits program and advise on risk management strategies for cost savings and compliance, including:

Quantifying costs and risks
Evaluation of long-term costs and future contributions through projections and future planning
A comprehensive review of all retirement programs
Evaluation of strategies that support business goals, organizational goals, and employee retention
Assess your current HR benefits structure, processes, underlying technology, and service providers

As an extension of our client’s benefits team, we work to obtain a deep understanding of our client’s retirement plans and systems platform. We provide strong data analytics support to help manage our client’s strategic initiatives, maintain, or improve data integrity, and promote process efficiency improvements. We develop healthy relationships with our client’s business associates to ensure a partnering approach to projects and initiatives. Rather than reacting to transactional issues, our retirement team employs a holistic end-to-end problem-solving approach to fully resolve root cause issues occurring within a client’s retirement ecosystem.

We perform due diligence to ensure a comprehensive assessment of a client’s plan administration:

Review plan documents and communications to ensure conformity to governing law
Review plan operations, administration, and procedures for conformity to plan documents and communications materials
Review accuracy of benefit calculations in the areas of plan eligibility, service calculations, compensation, benefit calculations and payments, QDROs, and special calculations

We build custom tools and models to systematically monitor data integrity and promote process efficiency:

Auditing and analysis of retirement plan data to ensure cross system data reconciliations
Identifying and resolving data integrity issues to improve systems automation
Strong data analytics to support strategic efforts, manage controls and maintain data integrity
Custom model development to support transitions from manual to automated processes
Systems interface research, evaluation, remediation, and documentation of process flows
Our data management services include but are not limited to
- Data clean-up, data validation, reconciliation of data between multiple sources and vendors, analysis, and integration of conversion data
- General consulting with respect to data analysis, interpretation, and correction strategies

We offer participant servicing and benefit research management:

End-to-end participant research to support benefit determinations by leveraging our client's systems data, plan documents, plan rules, acquisition files, and HR personnel files
Benefit claim and appeal support around researching participant issues and drafting formal responses
Review of service calls to ensure proper handling of participant issues and messaging of the plan

We support general client operations and administration in the areas of:

Vendor and project management support to free up benefit team resources
Develop training materials and conduct training sessions with client's recordkeeper customer service groups to set expectations, drive a client's culture, and improve the participant experience
Special project support ranging from derisking, valuation file clean-up, plan mergers, corporate actions, pension calculation automation, and focused audits
Identify potential areas where savings or ROI opportunities exist across the retirement landscape
Assist and review non-standard benefit calculations for technical and actuarial issues
Review of outsourcing relationships with recommendations for improvements
Auditing of benefit calculation systems for accuracy and compliance

We maintain a comprehensive review and assessment process to support merger and acquisition due diligence which includes:

Data collection for census, SPDs, reports, and calculations
Investment policy and performance review
Assessment of plan compliance with applicable laws
Review of Plan communications
Evaluation and projections of Accounting and Funding costs and liabilities pre- and post-acquisition
Analysis of alternatives for merging and spinning off plans
Analysis of benefits which must be preserved based on applicable IRS rules
Retirement platform onboarding and implementation