2025 RPAY – Beryl Ball, CAPTRUST

Business at a Glance as of 12/31/24

• Location: Richmond, Virginia
• How many plan assets do you have under advisement? $7.78B
• What is your median plan size (in assets)? $90.84M
• How many plans do you have under administration? 65
• How many participants in total do you serve? 87,948
• Parent firm: Not applicable

PLANADVISER: Tell us about your practice and how you got into advising retirement plans.

Ball: I began my career as a Spanish teacher in Richmond, Virginia. I took my interest in impacting people’s lives in a different direction and transitioned to the business world. I started in human resources at an insurance company, and I eventually became the human resources director, focusing on compensation and benefits.

I then moved to a large regional bank, where I oversaw the bank’s retirement plan, including 401(k), pension and nonqualified plans. Later, I managed the bank’s Institutional Trust division, where I oversaw the sales, relationship management and participant engagement for the bank’s 401(k) offering to its commercial clients.

In 2008, following the banking crisis, I joined CAPTRUST, marking the start of my career as a retirement plan adviser. Despite starting with no clients, I leveraged CAPTRUST’s robust support and expertise to attract and retain clients.

Each step in my career gave me the foundation to offer a truly holistic approach to my retirement plan clients. Teaching taught me the importance of clear communication and education, vital when explaining complex retirement plan concepts to clients and participants. My experience in human resources and benefits management provided me with firsthand knowledge of the administrative and fiduciary responsibilities involved in managing retirement plans.

As an adviser, I draw upon these diverse experiences to offer insightful, comprehensive advice that truly influences the lives of plan sponsors and participants. My focus includes plan design, governance, recordkeeping oversight, fee analysis, investments and, most importantly, improving participant outcomes and retirement savings.

PLANADVISER: What challenges do you think the retirement plan industry faces, and what role do you have in addressing and confronting those challenges?

Ball: Mitigating conflicts of interest: As an adviser at CAPTRUST, I uphold a strict “No Golf Ball Rule,” meaning I accept nothing of any value from an investment manager or service provider. This includes any type of pay-to-play arrangement, sponsorship of company events, meal, trip or corporate swag—not even something as seemingly insignificant as a logoed golf ball. I ensure that all CAPTRUST internal events are financed by the company, not by recordkeepers or investment firms.

I also mitigate any conflicts by charging flat fees, ensuring that no growth or decline in assets and no decisions about investments create a conflict of interest.

Robust Plan sponsor support: Retirement plans are just one area of concern for generally understaffed human resources teams, especially among nonprofit organizations. Their responsibility to ensure that their plans are following ever-changing regulations while remaining competitive in their industry is extremely challenging. My role is to serve as an adjunct to their staff: keeping the program in compliance, responding to their and their employees’ questions, providing orientation and offering enrollment assistance for new employees through CAPTRUST at Work.

Plan participant results: Although data about investment and retirement outcomes is available through recordkeepers, specific strategies to impact those results through participant behavior is often lacking. Conducting annual strategic planning with retirement plan committees is a key part of my role. Reviewing data about appropriate investment choices by participants, along with participation and deferral rates, is the starting point for designing and implementing targeted communications and advice programs to impact those results.

PLANADVISER: What type of plan sponsor is your typical client (location, size, industry, design elements, etc.)? Please describe your average service model and deliverables.

Ball: My typical client is in the Mid-Atlantic Region, has assets between $50 million and $500 million, and operates as a nonprofit organization. These clients include both public and private universities, municipalities, K–12 private and public school systems, and associations. I meet with each of my 30 clients every quarter: in February, May, August and November. Each meeting focuses on five key topics: fiduciary governance, plan design, investment management, vendor management and participant engagement. All materials are distributed one week in advance. Prior to each meeting, I ensure that I have met with any new committee members, provided them with fiduciary training and oriented them to plan documents and previous meeting minutes.

This year, I also focused on the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022, discussing each optional provision and ensuring that I explained the ramifications of implementing those changes. Most clients have decided to implement penalty-free withdrawals for domestic abuse, federally declared disasters and terminal illnesses. As I review information from recordkeepers, I’ve noted that these decisions are unusual in the marketplace, as most plan sponsors have yet to address these 2024 options. However, 100% of my clients have moved to implement these items, assuming recordkeeping availability.

For my 23 clients who use CAPTRUST at Work, our financial wellness and advice program, we review statistical information at each meeting related to virtual and in-person interactions, financial plans completed and outcomes, including changes in enrollment and deferral statistics. The standard agenda includes capital market commentary, fiduciary training, vendor service and benchmarking of fees and plan design elements.

PLANADVISER: What are three of the most important issues your plan sponsor clients face with their company retirement plans? What actions do you take to assist them in overcoming those issues?

Ball: Issue No. 1—Reducing liability and cost: In the past year, seven of my clients took steps to reduce their investment liability by moving from a 3(21) co-fiduciary to 3(38) discretionary management. This action also reduced insurance costs and provided access to lower-cost investments through our investment lineup at CAPTRUST. Client meetings now focus on plan design, participant engagement and vendor management, instead of investment decisionmaking.

Issue No. 2—Employee participation and deferral rates: In the nonprofit marketplace, it has been common practice for employers to provide nonelective, instead of match, contributions and voluntary, instead of automatic, enrollment and escalation. These practices cause a lack of participation and deferral, meaning participation and savings rates fall short of goals for a comfortable retirement. To address this issue, I have successfully introduced automatic enrollment and automatic escalation at several universities, increasing their participation from less than 40% to greater than 80%. In addition, I have successfully reduced the nonelective contribution rate, adding a match component to the plan design.

Issue No. 3—Participant advice: While plan participants can receive education through their recordkeeper’s online tools, we find that most do not take advantage of these opportunities. To meet the need for financial advice, I’ve successfully added CAPTRUST at Work to for-profit and nonprofit clients, including public school systems and municipalities, where this type of one-to-one fiduciary advice service remains somewhat unusual. Participants can meet face-to-face or virtually and receive actionable advice on financial decisions so they may ultimately retire with confidence. Today, 77% of my clients receive full financial planning and advice from a fiduciary.

PLANADVISER: What’s your favorite book or podcast?

Ball: I routinely listen to and participate in two podcasts:

• CAPTRUST’s “Revamping Retirement” Podcast
  CAPTRUST produces a regular podcast that discusses the opportunities and challenges facing plan sponsors. It focuses on issues and challenges common to plan sponsors and timely topics related to fiduciary process, vendor management and investment oversight. The podcast features CAPTRUST experts, plus a wide variety of guest speakers, designed to support plan sponsors with actionable insights and best practices. My favorite episodes have included “Plan Sponsor Predications for 2025,” “Litigation Trends,” “Empowering Participants,” “Fiduciary Liability with Dan Aronowitz” and “Millennials and Retirement.” The series has 73 episodes so far, each lasting about 30 minutes, so I have an amazing resource to ensure that I’m updated on the latest information I can share with my clients, delivered by outstanding speakers.
• “Benefits Companion” Podcast
  Williams Mullen’s “Benefits Companion” provides plan sponsors with critical information regarding their benefit plans, including retirement plans, in a 15-minute podcast. I’ve been included as a guest speaker along with Williams Mullen’s ERISA attorneys. I’ve spoken on the following topics: “Structuring Benefits to Attract and Retain Talent,” “The Importance of Investment Policy Statements,” “Best Practices for Retirement Plan Committees,” “SECURE Act: New Opportunities for Plan Sponsors and Participants,” “ESG Investing by Retirement Plans,” “Cyber Security Guidance for Plan Sponsors and Participants,” “Cryptocurrency in 401(k) Plans,” “Missing Plan Participants” and “Auto-Portability: A New Way to Keep Retirement Savings Growing.”