Spring 2009
Relief for Fiduciaries
When you provide a qualified retirement plan to your employees, you accept fiduciary responsibility for making decisions about the plan and choosing investments.
But many business owners and officers aren’t fully aware of what those responsibilities entail. Compounding the confusion is the sheer number of new laws, regulations and legal decisions that have come into being in the last decade.
Recent studies confirm that plan sponsors may be out of compliance with their fiduciary duties:
- Just 58 percent of the plan sponsors maintain minutes of retirement plan meetings, according to a study done by Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP, Grant Thornton LLP and Plan Sponsor Advisors.
- Fewer than 30 percent reported they had established a clear chain of authority of their plan’s governance committee, according to the same survey.
- Approximately 60 percent of plan sponsors did not realize they were fiduciaries, according to the Durig Capital, LLC website.
- 32.5 percent of plans have no Investment Policy Statement driving their investment decisions, according to the same website.
“Our respondents this year would have difficulty supporting the prudence of their fiduciary decisions in the face of a DOL audit,” said Debbie Smith, an employee benefits practice partner with Grant Thorton, LLP.
The Standard can help you with your fiduciary responsibilities. The Fiduciary Review is our comprehensive review of more than 100 items of fiduciary importance. While no list can claim to cover every possible item the DOL or IRS may scrutinize, the Fiduciary Review provides the process to ensure key items are being reviewed and addressed annually.
In addition, The Standard offers the Fiduciary Manager, a tool that helps ensure you are doing everything necessary to meet your fiduciary obligations.
Even if your fiduciary responsibility regarding the plan’s investment options are handled by StanCorp Investment Advisers, Inc. or another investment advisor, you still need to fulfill other obligations required of retirement plan fiduciaries.
Within the Fiduciary Manager, you’ll find a collection of tools designed to:
- educate you about the actions required of plan fiduciaries, and
- provide an organizational system for keeping track of the paperwork that proves you’re fulfilling those responsibilities.
If you’d like to view PDFs of two of the featured brochures within Fiduciary Manager, click on the links below.
- Protecting Participants, a brochure that explains fiduciary responsibilities for retirement plans.
- Plan Sponsors’ Guide to ERISA 404(c), a brochure describing the requirements of complying with ERISA 404(c) and how The Standard can help you meet those requirements.
If you are interested in scheduling a Fiduciary Review meeting, contact your client service consultant at The Standard. Please allow at least two hours to permit an effective review, plus enough preparation time in advance of the meeting to compile the necessary documents.
