Products April 7, 2014

Retirement Revolution Integrates ‘SmartPlan’ Solution

Recordkeeping and custodial services provider Retirement Revolution added vWise’s SmartPlan Enterprise solution to its retirement plan product offerings.
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Retirement Revolution offers recordkeeping and asset custody services to registered investment advisers (RIA), third-party administrators (TPAs) and their plan sponsor clients. The SmartPlan Enterprise solution from vWise seeks to provide the benefits of a personal financial adviser to help organizations cut costs while increasing both plan enrollment and participant contribution levels.

“For today’s connected work force, SmartPlan Enterprise provides those benefits of a personal financial professional anywhere, anytime, through a PC, a Mac, or virtually any mobile device,” says Donna Ross, president of Retirement Revolution, which is headquartered in Irvine, California.

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Once the SmartPlan application is launched, the software’s virtual hosts engage and educate plan participants through video-based presentations. The system also guides investors through a customized overview of their specific plan, providing various investment information and decisionmaking support.

Ross says Retirement Revolution hopes the integration of the SmartPlan solution will allow sponsor clients to better engage, educate and assist plan participants without substantially increasing plan expenses.  

“The breadth of Retirement Revolution data passed into the SmartPlan experience ensures participant plan details are presented in a highly engaging format, while keeping TPA workflows firmly in mind,” explains Tony Mingo, vWise president. “Plans established in the Retirement Revolution [system] are automatically established in the vWise SmartPlan system, delivering SmartPlan dynamic video content and rich media messaging directly to the plan sponsor’s busy population of employees, without Retirement Revolution clients lifting an additional finger.”

For participants, SmartPlan Enterprise serves as an online resource center, enabling them to learn about and manage their plans, change their investments, and control contribution rates through virtually any device.

Additionally, because SmartPlan Enterprise software will be launched within the Retirement Revolution system, each participant’s experience will be personalized, and all choices made through the system will be immediately updated in the company’s database.

More information is available here.

Compliance April 7, 2014

DCIIA Offers Q&A About Automatic Plan Features

A paper answering commonly asked questions about implementing automatic features for retirement plans is now available for plan sponsors.
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“Implementing Automatic Features in Defined Contribution Plans: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions” was recently released by the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association (DCIIA). The aim of the paper is to review best practices for implementing automatic features in defined contribution (DC) plans and provide clarification about common regulatory questions that plan sponsors and their advisers may have when putting automatic plan features into practice.

The paper notes that the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA) introduced multiple safe harbors for implementing automatic enrollment in DC plans such as: (1) a safe harbor for preemption of state anti-garnishment laws under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA); (2) a safe harbor extending 404(c) protection under ERISA to automatic features; and (3) nondiscrimination testing safe harbors.

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While helpful in providing comfort to plan sponsors seeking to implement automatic features such as automatic enrollment and automatic contribution escalation, DCIIA contends the introduction of these safe harbors also caused considerable confusion within the DC plan sponsor community. Specifically, this confusion may prevent sponsors from taking full advantage of automatic features and translate into implementation approaches that are unlikely to facilitate adequate income replacement by plan participants in retirement.

The paper covers topics including, but not limited to:

  • Maximum limitations or requirements for automatic contribution escalation;
  • Initial default contribution rates for automatic escalation programs;
  • Tying an initial default contribution rate under an automatic enrollment program into a plan’s maximum matching contribution percentage; and
  • Whether plan sponsors who previously implemented automatic enrollment programs are permitted to automatically re-enroll participants who previously opted out.

The paper is the third in a series. More information about the previous two papers can be found here and here.

A copy of the current paper can be downloaded here.

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