401K Plan Sponsors and Trustees
Reduce Plan Trustee Liability
How much liability exposure do your Plan Trustees and Sponsors have?
As captain of your ship, you want to operate with the assurance your ship will not run aground or risk sinking.
The February 2008 Supreme Court ruling of LaRue vs DeWolff established a legal precedent, allowing plan participants the right to personally sue Plan Trustees for plan mismanagement. This case has changed the entire landscape of the 401k industry, approach to plan management and oversight.
At Victory Wealth Partners, it’s all hands on deck when it comes to your compliance responsibilities. Initially, we conduct a compliance assessment to identify plan deficiencies, provide corrective recommendations and required supporting documentation. Victory assists Plan Trustees in the implementation, documentation, and monitoring of the plan, while providing future recommendations for smooth sailing.
Best Practice Standards
Are you familiar with the industry’s Best Practice Standards?
The Foundation for Fiduciary Studies (fi360.com), the global authority on fiduciary responsibilities has identified 22 Best Practice Standards for managing company retirement plans. These standards have been fully endorsed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). Each standard is fully substantiated by legislation, case law and regulatory opinion letters. If you can document that you have implemented these standards, then you would have taken the right steps in meeting your compliance responsibilities.
Victory Wealth Partners has earned an official Investment Advisor Certification Validation from the Center for Fiduciary Excellence (CEFEX). CEFEX (Cefex.org) is the global financial industry standard of fiduciary audit and compliance review best practices.
In addition, Victory’s investment management team received formal industry training from The Center for Fiduciary Studies to master and implement a sound fiduciary investment process. Our senior management holds either an Accredited Investment Fiduciary (AIF®) or Accredited Investment Fiduciary Analyst (AIFA®) professional designation.
These Best Practice Standards are the cornerstone of Victory Wealth Partners’s entire practice and will keep your ship away from rocks and shoals that could sink even the sturdiest of vessels.
ERISA 3(21)(a)ii Advisor Services
Share Compliance Responsibilities
Does your advisory firm share your compliance responsibilities or are you sailing alone?
Victory Wealth Partners is an ERISA 3(21)(a)ii advisory firm which will help you understand the various compliance issues and who should be the responsible party. Victory will also share some of those responsibilities with you and document the completion of them. We will not only update your plan to current standards, but we will continue your adherence to new compliance requirements. We will help navigate your plan through required course changes; educate you on your compliance responsibilities; assist in implementation and documentation to maintain plan integrity.
Documentation
How well do you document your decisions, actions and meetings?
It is not enough to simply implement appropriate plan actions. You must be able to properly document your responses. We provide detailed minutes of all meetings we oversee. As your ships co-captain, Victory Wealth Partners will properly document our actions and responses in your log book.
Benchmarking
When was the last time you conducted a competitive analysis of your company’s 401K plan vs. a comparable plan?
Victory Wealth Partners will fully benchmark your plan against other similar sized plans, comparing your ship against other vessels in the same class. We conduct a comprehensive competitive analysis comparing, plan administration, recordkeeping, plan trustee education, investment management, participant education, and advisory services, which will help satisfy the new Department of Labor requirements.
ERISA 3 (38) Advisor Services
As the ship’s captain, are you responsible for making the final investment decisions in your plan?
Victory Wealth Partners is an ERISA 3(38) advisory firm, which assumes discretion for selecting, monitoring, and replacing investment options. We take the full investment decision making responsibility from Plan Trustees which transfers their liability exposure to us. Our Investment Models are comprised of low cost mutual funds, ETF’s and high yielding stable value funds. Victory screens all investments according to the criteria established by the Foundation for Fiduciary Studies (fi360.com). Our quarterly monitoring reports provide the captain and crew with the compliance confidence to continue their retirement voyage at full speed ahead.
Investment Policy Statement
As captain of the ship, how do you know if your company’s plan is still on the correct course?
The Investment Policy Statement (IPS) is the business plan which outlines how the plan should be managed. Without it, it is easy to stray from the original charted course.
The IPS provides specific guidelines on how to select, monitor and replace investments offered in the company’s 401k Plan? A quarterly monitoring report should confirm if the selected investments are meeting the criteria established in the IPS. Victory Wealth Partners uses the IPS template created by the Foundation for Fiduciary Studies. It should be reviewed no less than annually. It is critical to have a working IPS to insure your retirement ship stays on the right course.
Plan Design and Service
How important is plan flexibility and service to both you and your participants?
Victory Wealth Partners uses an open architecture platform, allowing us to custom design a plan for you. We can enroll participants on-site and on-line. Participants can make changes on-line or call in and have changes made for them, allowing for a smoother sail.