Benefit plan design | Retirement plan recordkeeping
Flexible spending arrangements (FSA, HRA, HSA)
Retirement plan audit and benchmarking

Benefit plan design

Benefit: 

• Provide competitive employee retirement benefits
  
  
• Support employee recruitment and retention
  
  
• Reward specific groups of employees

Who’s most likely to benefit:

• Any company offering or interested in offering an employee retirement plan

Description:

An organization’s retirement plan should reflect the organization’s goals for that plan. In designing a plan, AGH consultants look first at the plan sponsor’s needs. For example, does the organization seek to create a plan that helps recruit and retain employees? Maximizes shareholder return? Rewards long-term or highly compensated employees?

Our consultants look at the organization’s overall existing employee benefit programs to develop a plan design best complementing them that will also scale with an organization’s potential growth or downsizing. Once an overall framework is established, AGH consultants outline a plan and work with the plan sponsor’s ERISA counsel or a third-party counsel to create a formal plan document and implement it.

To execute, AGH can help the organization put the other three components of a retirement plan in place: recordkeeping, investment management and education. AGH has extensive experience in those areas, but also frequently works with outside investment managers and other providers the organization chooses.

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Retirement plan recordkeeping

Benefit:

• Support employee recruitment and retention with a strong retirement plan providing:
  
  
• Responsive, knowledgeable customer service representatives familiar with each plan sponsor’s needs and requirements
  
  
• Open-architecture structure delivering more than 22,000 investment options the plan sponsor can choose from and work with – not just a single family of investment options
  
  
• Daily valuation of accounts including same-day/late-day trading
  
  
• 24/7 instant access to current participant information via Web and phone access, including investment election changes, account balances, fund returns, loan modeling, investment advice and plan sponsor access

Who’s most likely to benefit:

• Any company offering an employee retirement plan

Description:

AGH offers complete retirement plan services, including plan design and development, and plan recordkeeping and compliance services. Those services can be combined with a plan sponsor’s existing providers (for example, an existing plan document and external investments manager), or bundled for a “one-stop” plan.

Retirement plan recordkeeping, as delivered by AGH, requires a customer-oriented staff, a high degree of technological sophistication to deliver rapid and accurate responses to changes in fund elections, and a thorough understanding of ERISA, IRS, Department of Labor and security regulations. While educating, communicating with and serving your employees’ retirement plan needs, we also deliver peace of mind to the plan sponsor and trustee with preparation and calculation of all qualification tests and limits, a signature-ready Form 5500 and preparation and filing of 1099Rs.

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Flexible-spending arrangements (FSA, HRA, HSA)

Benefit:

• Reduce payroll taxes
  
  
• Support employee recruitment and retention with a desirable employee benefit
  
  
• Offer immediate value to employees at low or minimal cost to employer
  
  
• Offer tax-free benefits to employees
  
  
• Convenience and rapid claims turnaround time through integration with AGH payroll services for seamless contributions to plan and reimbursement for eligible expenses through payroll system
  
  
• Eliminate burden of handling and protecting employee health information in compliance with HIPAA regulations
  
  
• Eliminate employees' paperwork and waiting for reimbursement through use of debit card for eligible claims

Who’s most likely to benefit:

• Any company can benefit, but particularly those with high-deductible and/or high-premium health/dental plans, and/or a significant number of employees with young children

Description:

Flexible-spending plans allow employees to pay certain eligible expenses with pre-tax dollars, thus lowering their taxable income. By contributing pre-tax dollars each paycheck into such a plan, employees can then be reimbursed for certain eligible expenses as they are incurred. Options include paying for health insurance premiums, reimbursement for dependent care, unreimbursed medical expenses and travel expenses.

Employees generally see significant benefit in these plans once they understand the tax savings that can be realized. Yet, the cost to the employer to implement flexible spending (also called a cafeteria plan) is low or minimal – and can even deliver savings in payroll taxes depending on the level of participation in the plan.

With the support of AGH’s plan-reporting technology, flexible-spending plan participants can even log in via the Web for current balance information, claim submission and claim history. 

As an option for flexible spending plans, AGH offers a debit card to handle eligible unreimbursed medical expenses. With this option, employees participating in the organization’s plan for unreimbursed medical expenses receive a debit card which can be used as payment for eligible expenses up to the employee’s maximum contribution during a plan year. This reduces employee out-of-pocket expense and paperwork.

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Retirement plan review and benchmarking

Benefit:

• Potentially reduce costs associated with providing employee retirement plans
  
  
• Potentially increase employee satisfaction with retirement plan through better investment results

Who’s most likely to benefit:

• Any company with a qualified retirement plan

Description:

Ensuring that retirement plans are cost-effective can be difficult, simply because plan costs are hard to ferret out. Some costs may be borne upfront by the plan sponsor. Others may be paid as a percentage of investment earnings and go unnoticed since the participant doesn’t see an out-of-pocket expense. But it’s both good business sense and a plan sponsor’s fiduciary responsibility to make sure a retirement plan’s costs are in line. Industry consultants are predicting an increase in litigation related to retirement plan management, so it’s in the plan sponsor’s best interests to ensure that employees are not penalized financially with returns lowered by high administrative and other fees.

In a plan review, AGH employee-benefits consultants analyze plan documents and investment information to determine the true costs of a retirement plan – both for the plan sponsor and the participants. Those costs are then compared to industry benchmarks and can be used as a negotiation tool. Although margins are starting to come under pressure as more organizations become aware of retirement plan costs, a review and benchmark study could potentially result in netting significant savings even after the study expense.