We can help you protect yourself from fiduciary risks, lessen your administrative burden, and position your plan to function more effectively to meet your company’s needs and objectives. With Global View Capital Advisors, we can help you separate yourself and provide a group retirement plan which can help protect you and your employees. This is not your same old commoditized plan offering.
Set Up a Free Discussion — About Your Company's 401(k)
Uncertain Times for the Fiduciary Plan Sponsor
Seeing the effects of the recent pandemic on markets, these uncertain times have brought concerns reminiscent of the global financial crisis of 2008. Like the financial crisis, the pandemic, which can be referred to in the financial industry as a “black swan” event (an unpredictable event that brings potentially severe financial consequences), has caused many to look for ways to protect themselves from the downside risks.
With 401(k)s often being the second largest asset most people have after their home, protecting retirement savings is a big concern during this period of continued uncertainty. As important as it is to protect your own as well as your employees’ accounts against ongoing market volatility, you also need to address the risks involved when you offer a plan to your employees in the first place. As a business owner and plan sponsor, you incur duties as a fiduciary. This is where we can help.
A Fiduciary Can Be Held Personally Responsible
In a whitepaper released by Chubb and Groom Law Group, they discuss the surge in ERISA litigation against fiduciaries of employer-sponsored retirement plans, regardless of size, that spans across many types of companies, industries, and institutions. Although the responsibilities and liabilities that come with being a fiduciary on a plan should, and certainly need to be, addressed when vetting providers and advisors in the marketplace, these, unfortunately, are not commonly discussed. This leaves plan sponsors mostly unaware of the risks involved when they offer a plan, leaving them ill-equipped to take the necessary steps in mitigating potential liability.
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In this challenging labor market, would you like to offer a plan that stands out?
Are you interested in ways to better protect yourself and your company, while enhancing your plan for your employees?
If you’re like most business owners or executives, you or your team are likely already overloaded with day-to-day responsibilities. Because of this busyness, we’ve found it’s very easy to have risks and exposures related to offering a plan that companies, or those in charge, aren’t even aware of.
How to Protect Yourself
When looking for way to help protect yourself as the plan fiduciary while enhancing your plan for yourself and your employees, please consider the following key points. Here are ways you can differentiate your 401(k) from the standard, commoditized 401(k) plans common in today’s marketplace:
Proper Retirement Plan Design
We help businesses design a plan that helps address their business’ needs. It is always about designing the right plan, not just buying a ‘standardized’ solution. We help you tailor your plan according to your needs and objectives. An example may include allowing higher contributions to the business owner, key personnel or those next-in-line. Another aspect might be structuring the plan better to add incentives for your key employees as a means to help retain them.
Protection for the Business Owner, Plan Trustee or Plan Fiduciary
There are strict requirements regarding your fiduciary oversight and ongoing responsibilities to monitor the plan’s investments and how your plan benchmarks. All too often business owners and plan trustees have a misconception that this is already ‘being done for them’, leaving themselves exposed to the inherent risks that come with offering a plan to their employees.
But the reality is the business owner or plan trustee(s) are still on the hook for these responsibilities. By allowing us to evaluate your plan, you will have, at minimum, a well-thought-out evaluation of, and recommendations for, your plan, which leaves a written document trail as evidence of the fiduciary process. This aspect of helping alleviate fiduciary exposures and helping protect the company and its trustee(s) is not common in most 401(k)s today.
Access to Tactical Management to Provide a Defensive Strategy to your Employees’ Accounts
Having a defensive strategy in your employees’ accounts can help reduce risks of losses during major market downturns like the ones experienced in 2008 and most recently, the declines caused by the COVID-19 health crisis. This allows employees to participate when markets are favorable, but then provides them with defensive action when markets are unfavorable, helping employees’ retirement funds be better protected.
This is especially important because significant losses could really set employees back, many of whom are already ill-prepared for retirement. This one aspect alone makes Global View Capital Advisors much different than many other 401(k) plan providers.
Dedicated Support and Access to Individualized Financial Advice
Rather than just being directed to a 1(800) number when administrative questions arise or for your employees to be sent to a website only to get generic answers that often don’t satisfy, part of our duty in servicing our plans is ongoing personal support to you, your delegates, and your employees. That means having dedicated account and relationship managers, in addition to having access to our licensed advisors for one-on-one financial strategy meetings for your employees, done either on- or off-site or even virtually.
These individualized planning meetings are a unique aspect of our service offering because our licensed advisors can actually render advice and guidance to your employees on financial matters beyond just their 401(k)s. This includes discussions around budgeting, proper insurance protection, ensuring adequate reserves and most importantly, properly planning for their future with a focus on providing clarity on the steps they need to do. This focus around increasing participant education helps your employees become better engaged and can help improve plan participation as well. The individualized planning sessions come at no incremental costs to your employees and is part of our service to our clients.
We have the expertise, experience, and capacity to provide this guidance to you.
If there is a facet to your current plan you would like to have evaluated or done better, let us help you. If you’re like most companies, you or your team are likely already inundated with day-to-day ongoing responsibilities, so allow us to save you time by letting our team do the research on your behalf.
Here’s the Best Part:
Our process of evaluating plans and making the appropriate recommendation(s) is complimentary, and doing this shows that you are concerned that your fiduciary responsibilities are being met.
About Chad Albano
Chad Albano is an Executive Director and part of the Advisory Board of Global View Capital Advisors. He is a Fiduciary Planner who believes in empowering clients by providing them with education, whether it’s advising individuals and families or executive teams at companies.
In his role at Global View, Chad has 3 main areas of focus: Planning for Baby Boomers and pre-retirees, helping companies improve their 401(k) plans and protecting plan sponsors from fiduciary liability, and working with business owners and management teams fill the gaps in their succession plans, key person protection, employee retention and incentive plans.
Prior to his current role, Chad had over 10 years’ experience in various roles within corporate finance and accounting, ranging from tax, financial reporting and planning, distribution, and manufacturing, so he understands the demands on business executives and owners. Chad holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in accounting from the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater and passed the Uniform CPA Exam in 1999.
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