Our institutional clients trust us to help solve complex issues that face their business or organization. Leveraging Raymond James’ extensive resources, we provide thoughtful, comprehensive guidance and planning.
Our team assists public and privately held corporations; creates defined contribution and defined benefit pension plans; works with state, county and municipal retirement systems; can help with Taft-Hartley Plans; and also serves insurance companies, hospitals and healthcare providers, private foundations, university and college endowments, and educational institutions.
Retirement plan consulting
With our counsel, we believe our clients experience increased efficiencies, lower administrative costs and more employee satisfaction and participation.
We help our clients develop total retirement plan solutions including:
- Defined contribution plans – 401(k), 403(b), 457
- Defined benefit plans – traditional, cash balance, hybrid
- Money purchase and profit sharing plans
- Nonqualified deferred compensation plans
- Specialty plans for executives and key employees
- Group 529 plans
Our dedicated team specializes in services and education for fiduciaries. We can help business owners and plan sponsors with everything from evaluating numerous plan choices to managing the critical fiduciary duties and responsibilities that come with your corporate retirement plan.
Governance and Policy Development
We understand the importance of the right plan design to benefit both the plan sponsor and participant. As part of our governance process, we assist in the design of an investment policy statement that includes your investment time horizon, risk tolerance, expected return and cash flow needs.
Participant Communication and Education Campaigns
We place great emphasis on participant education by combining traditional hands-on education with targeted campaigns to drive action. We also believe in exploring plan enhancements, such as automatic enrollment or automatic contribution increase options, with the goal of providing the guidance and support participants need to successfully plan for retirement.
Manager Research and Due Diligence
Our extensive, quantitative and qualitative investment manager research and due diligence help identify and select quality money managers to help maximize opportunities in each asset class. We remain unbiased by utilizing fi360 as an outside investment analysis tool.
Investment Performance and Review
Considerable time and effort is devoted to designing investment portfolios aligned with client objectives. We evaluate, research and identify investments and portfolios that meet our stringent standards prior to recommending them.
Our team goes beyond the initial groundwork and recommendations to help you document our investment manager research, portfolio construction methodologies, due diligence data and your plan sponsor decisions. And, of course, we continuously monitor performance, management, fees and other necessary due diligence.
Retirement Plan Fee and Service Audit
The company or organization sponsoring the retirement plan for employee benefits holds the fiduciary responsibility to understand how fees and expenses are being assessed within their plan and to ensure they are reasonable. However, plan sponsors are often unaware of the many indirect fees frequently collected to offset plan expenses, such as 12b-1 and revenue sharing agreements.
In our experience, the majority of plan sponsors don’t know that these expenses even exist or that they can be managed more effectively. Indirect fees can expose plan sponsors to potential conflicts of interest and other fiduciary liabilities, which may be avoided by undertaking a comprehensive audit of their retirement plan expenses, benchmarking the results, and developing explicit cost assignment models and prudent investment policies.
We conduct fee audits for prospective clients on a complimentary basis. Please contact Chris Boyd, Chartered Retirement Plans Specialist® (CRPS®), to schedule a confidential appointment at 615.645.6717 or chris.boyd@raymondjames.com.
Corporate executives
- Concentrated stock positions
- Equity based compensation
- Regulatory requirements/forms filing
- Company trading policies
- Additional corporate solutions
Fiduciary Support
- Governance Framework
- Risk Management
- Fi360 Fund Analysis
- Capital Markets Analysis
- Research and Due Diligence
- Investment Policy Creation and Monitoring
- Participant Education
Investment Management
- Fund Monitoring
- Fund Replacement Criteria
- Asset Allocation
- Portfolio Construction
- Portfolio Management
- Alternative Investments
401(k) Fee and Service Review
When sponsoring retirement plans to benefit employees, corporations have a fiduciary responsibility regarding fees and often aren’t aware of many indirect fees that are collected.
Not only is it important, but it’s the plan sponsor’s responsibility to understand how fees and expenses are being assessed within their plan, to ensure they’re reasonable and to manage them effectively.
Indirect fees offsetting plan expenses include 12b-1 and revenue sharing agreements and can expose plan sponsors to potential conflicts of interest and other fiduciary liabilities. This can be avoided by undertaking a comprehensive review of retirement plan expenses, benchmarking results, and developing specific and prudent investment policies.
Please contact Chris Boyd, Chartered Retirement Plans Specialist, for guidance with this service at 615.645.6717 or email chris.boyd@raymondjames.com.