Fiduciary Services

Implement fiduciary best practices & training

It is essential that plan fiduciaries have a well-documented framework for conducting plan due diligence and governance. We work with plan fiduciaries to establish this framework, implement best practices, and ensure that decisions respecting the plan are documented.

As the sponsor of a retirement plan, you have many responsibilities and important decisions to make. You want a plan that can help employees save for retirement, enable your organization to recruit and retain its best employees and meet all fiduciary and regulatory requirements. Fortunately, you do not have to do all of this alone. Your RedStone retirement team will work closely with committee members to ensure that they are trained regarding their fiduciary responsibilities.

Minimize and clarify plan costs

The Department of Labor requires plan fiduciaries to be aware of fees assessed against plan participants and to ensure the "reasonableness" of these fees. RedStone Advisors assists in this process by breaking down plan fees in an easy to understand format. Additionally, periodically we will compare fees to those assessed in plans of similar size to help ensure all are in line with market rates.

Comprehensive Fee Benchmarking

Pricing plan services is confusing, and remains somewhat difficult for plan sponsors to have a clear understanding of the total cost of their retirement plans. Yet Department of Labor regulations under ERISA and, specifically, §408(b)(2), require that plan fiduciaries assess their plans to ensure that all fees are "reasonable" for the level of services received. In order to assist our clients in meeting their fiduciary responsibilities, we believe in complete fee transparency and in providing ongoing fee benchmarking to all of our clients so they understand how their plan fees—and services received—compare with similar sized plans.

We have multiple benchmarking resources at our disposal including Fiduciary Benchmarks an industry leader in retirement plan benchmarking. Fiduciary Benchmarks, Inc. (FBi), will provide more extensive benchmarking reports on an annual or bi-annual basis that go into great detail. FBi is a leading authority on fees, participant success measures, support, and services for defined contribution plans. FBi's proprietary software and database of current plan information is used to build the comparisons in these reports. The Fiduciary Benchmarks Fees, Plan Design and Participant Success Measures Report provides comprehensive "apples-to-apples" comparisons of a plan's fees, design, and participant success measures. Your plan will be benchmarked to other plans that are similar in terms of total plan assets and number of participants, but will look at plan design attributes and complexity in addition to overall cost comparisons—all of which are placed into percentile rankings. Fees for your plan will be broken down by source and by service provider, and compared in a color-coded bar chart to show exactly where your fees fall in the overall spectrum of fees nationally. Relative plan complexity will be analyzed to estimate the approximate impact of complexity on cost.

Proprietary Plan RFP Provider Analysis

Frequently plan fiduciaries are faced with selecting a new service provider (e.g. record keeper, third party administrator, etc.), which is a fiduciary act. There are many factors to consider in the selection process such as the cost of services, the level of services delivered, and a service provider’s ability to meet the needs of the retirement plan. RedStone assists plan fiduciaries in documenting their due diligence process by soliciting Requests For Proposals (RFP) from various providers, formalizing the evaluation process, and providing Redstone Advisors’ recommendation in a written report. Our provider analysis assists plan fiduciaries in documenting the comparison of plan providers across both quantitative and qualitative factors.

Monitor Service Providers

After a service provider for the plan has been chosen, plan fiduciaries have a responsibility to monitor the service provider to help ensure that the fees assessed against plan assets are reasonable given the services offered. RedStone Advisors remains abreast of changes in the retirement plan industry and is proactive in suggesting changes in service providers when necessary and in a proactive manner.

During our annual comprehensive review of your plan, each service provider is evaluated to determine if they remain competitive and to determine if the agreed upon services are being delivered. Areas for improvement are identified and discussed with each provider. Our proprietary Advisory Services Review (ASR) assists plan fiduciaries in their evaluation of the services we provide to the plan and includes:

• Plan Summary – an overview of the plans design
• Summary of Fiduciary & Non-Fiduciary Services – Lists the services offered by RedStone and whether or not they are being used
• Plan Cost Analysis – Summary of plan costs and how they are paid
• Plan Service Instances – Lists total activities for the plan at the sponsor, participant and provider level
• Service Details – Shows each specific instance Date, Service Type, Contact, Topic

Streamlining Plan Administration

Let’s face it, your organization doesn’t exist solely to run a retirement plan. We understand that administration of your retirement benefit needs to be simplified and that unnecessary time spent on administration has an impact on the bottom line. RedStone works closely with your recordkeeping platform and Third Party Administrator (if applicable), to ensure that roles are understood and that together we are taking as much off your plate as possible. Simply put, our clients expect us to help them make the administration of their plan simple.

Online Document Storage Vault

The Employer Document Vault is an online enterprise-level document storage system that can support tens of thousands of client records and millions of documents. A well-documented fiduciary process is essential for plan fiduciaries. RedStone Advisors assists plan fiduciaries in documenting their process.