Products & Services

Retirement Plan Design, Compliance and Administration

Plan Design Process

Plan design process begins by listening to you and your client’s needs. Are you in a high-growth period, possibly expanding to new states, or gearing up (or down) to restructure the organization’s leadership? This matters when creating the best plan design possible for your company. After careful review and consideration of your needs and review of current rules and regulations – with an ear on potential future legal changes — we craft a retirement plan design that works for you. Once we all agree that it meets your business objectives, we create the Plan Document, Trust, and request a trust identification number from the Internal Revenue Service.

Plan Administration and Compliance Services at a Glance

Plan compliance and administration are critical parts of a successful retirement plan. Once the design aka “foundation” is in place, our job as TPA’s is just getting started. Annually, we request information from you and find out if there have been changes within your company that can influence the effectiveness of your company’s retirement plan. This consistent monitoring is why having an ERISA specialist on your team is important to ensure that opportunities are not missed.

Investment Advisor Services

You’re a fabulous wealth manager and do a great job investing your client’s money—all but their retirement plan assets. Many investment advisors aren’t comfortable handling a client’s retirement plan assets even if they effectively manage the rest of the client’s investments.

Why? Because they lack the infrastructure to support a retirement plan’s compliance and administration, making investment advising for retirement planning more complex and time consuming. When you partner with Pelion Benefits, that’s no longer a problem thanks to our retirement plan infrastructure services.

We offer an open architecture plan design with Charles Schwab as the investment custodian, where an advisor can choose the plan investment options lineup, compensation, and plan fees.

We can also provide a custodian record keeping option with the following investment companies.

American Funds

Lincoln Financial

Nationwide

The Standard

John Hancock

Matrix

Securian

Transamerica & More

Internet Access Service and Daily Valuation

Retirement plan administration and record keeping services continue to grow and evolve. While increased regulation and compliance has made plans more complex to administer, Pelion’s state of the art technology enhances our ability to provide the highest level of service combined with the professional expertise that our clients and participants demand.

Pelion performs daily valuation of all plan accounts. Daily valuation is the daily assignment of value to each participant’s investment, where participants’ accounts are tracked in units. By keeping investment values up to date, participants can easily obtain current information on their account though a company website or a dedicated plan representative.

Specifically designed to handle the complexities of daily valued plans, Pelion Benefits, Inc. offers:

Easy employee and plan level queries

  • An upload of investment fund prices for a majority of publicly traded assets
  • Electronic transaction import or export of data and fund transfers
  • Electronic confirmation of trades
  • Capability to create user defined data links and file formats for seamless payroll processing

Participant Support Services

Pelion Benefits, Inc. utilizes SmartPlan online video enrollment and educational tutorials. Enrollment Booklets with investment performance data are also available when required.

During normal business hours, participants have available to call a free hotline to obtain general information regarding their plan, or to get assistance when using our interactive Web site.

Administration Services

Once you adopt a Benefit Plan through Pelion Benefits, all administration including employee contributions, asset allocation, financial statements, distribution, and loan processing, along with direct participant services are performed by PBI’s experienced team.

Plans Document Services

PBI works with plan sponsors to design and draft customized plan documents as well as Summary Plan Descriptions. We handle all IRS and/or EBSA plan submissions including amendment and terminations. We work to ensure that plan documents are consistent with plan operations and free of any defects in the event of an IRS or DOL audit we assist plan sponsors.

We provide comprehensive administration and actuarial services for the following: We offer 401(k), 401(a), 403(b), 457, Defined Cash Balance, Target Benefit, Profit Sharing, Money Purchase and Healthcare Reimbursements Arrangements (HRA)’s.

Our services include an annual actuarial valuation report for plan funding, annual participant statements and benefit certifications when participants terminate, become disabled or retire.

Pelion Benefits, Inc. offers comprehensive discrimination testing and prepared signature ready Form 5500 and required attachments for submission to the EBSA as well as Summary Annual Reports (SARs) for distribution to participants.

Recordkeeping Services

Pelion Benefits, Inc. utilizes Relius™ Administration by FIS, to provide a daily valuation for defined contribution plans including fully interactive participant and plan sponsor web applications. Participants may view account details including transaction history, loans, individual rates of return, web/automated telephone system changes, as well as Morningstar performance information and prospectuses for each mutual fund or ETF available under their plan. They may also change investment elections, make transfers, request loans and print statements on demand.

Plan sponsors have access to the most recent versions of all plan documents and forms such as the Summary Plan Description, enrollment forms, and beneficiary designation forms. Plan sponsors may view plan level account details including transaction history, web/automated telephone system changes and employee census information. They may upload files containing plan information such as contributions and print reports including termination packages on demand. Plan sponsors may also utilize all the participant functions.

Pelion Benefits, Inc.  Services-at-a-Glance

  • Will work with the Employer to prepare the Plan and its related documents. including:
    • Consulting services for plan design and compliance.
    • Providing the Employer with an Adoption Agreement that includes current options available for customizing the Plan in accordance with the Employer’s instructions.
    • Upon receipt of the Adoption Agreement, creating a Prototype or Volume Submitter Plan and Trust Document with Summary Plan Description.
    • Establishing a Plan Services Guide, which includes the forms necessary to administer the Plan
    • Automating all forms for easy downloading
    • Assisting with the Plan submission to the IRS, if appropriate.
    • Plan documents will be updated as legislative changes occur.
    • Ability to administer traditional defined benefit plans, defined contribution plans, profit sharing and 401(k) retirement plans and other types of plan combinations thereof.
  • Perform all coverage and discrimination testing for the Plan as required by the IRS and DOL. This includes, but is not limited to, the following:
    • Annually performing the Actual Deferral Percentage Test (the “ADP Test”) to determine whether the average deferral rate for the highly compensated employees is within the prescribed proportions to the average deferral rate for the non-highly compensated employees. The Employer will be promptly notified in the event the Plan fails the ADP Test. Pelion may run this test during the year to advise the Employer of testing status.
    • Annually performing the Actual Contribution Test (the “ACP Test”) to determine whether the average contribution rate for the highly compensated employees is within the prescribed proportions to the average contribution rate for the non-highly compensated employees. The Employer will be promptly notified in the event the Plan fails the ACP Test. Pelion may run the test during the year to advise the Employer of testing status.
    • Maintaining records for each Participant’s account of the amount eligible for hardship withdrawals, and
    • Annually testing to verify the Plan’s compliance with all the following sections of the Internal Revenue Code: § 401(a)(4), 401 (a)(26), 402 (g), 404, 410(b), and 415.
    • Pelion will perform any other compliance testing deemed necessary to assure the plan is operating in accordance with the Employer’s expectations and current regulatory standards.
    • Distribution Processing
    • Process all requests for distribution, including loans, hardship distributions, and distributions as a result termination of employment of any Participant. Pelion will also perform both federal and state tax withholdings as required.
    • Periodic Plan Evaluation
    • Periodically review the Plan regarding, but not limited to, vesting percentages, contributions, earning, forfeitures, participation levels, and compliance with IRS and DOL regulations.
    • Periodic Employer and Participant Reports
    • Prepare quarterly statements that reflect all financial transactions of the Plan and its Participants. Quarterly statements for the Plan and its Participants will be provided to the Employer. Participants will receive quarterly statements regarding their individual account(s).
    • Quarterly statements include current market values by source for current quarter and year to date. The statement clearly describes beginning balance, contributions, gains/losses, distributions, and other debits, ending balance, vested percent and vested balance for all sources and detailed for each investment.
    • These statements are available online at any time by participants and can be available for plan sponsors and financial advisors.
    • Online the statement can be customized for various time periods.
  • Access to account information via our Toll-free Call Center that can be accessed by telephone during normal business hours.
  • If a Plan is currently with another Third-Party Administrator (“TPA”), Pelion will work with the retiring TPA to arrange the transfer of all data and assets related to and in accordance with the Plan.
  • Prepare and file most documents required by the IRS and DOL regarding the Plan. This includes, but is not limited to, preparing Form 5500 and related Schedules, preparation of all Forms 1099-R and related Forms 945 for distributions made during the year, and preparation of the Summary Annual Report.
  • Process all domestic relations orders regarding the Plan and its Participants.
  • Technical Consulting
  • Provide the Employer with consulting services of an experienced Senior Plan Analyst on our staff regarding Plan formulation, implementation, operation, and compliance.
  • Account Administrator
  • Provide the Employer with Senior Plan Analyst who will act as their key contact and resource at Pelion.
  • Books and Records
  • Maintain the required books and records of all transactions placed through it in accordance with the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”) as well as additional IRS and DOL regulations.
  • Employer and the Plan Participants have 24-hour access to real-time account information, self-directed transactions, on-line enrollment, and participant Plan information via the Pelion designated website based on a daily valuation.
  • Participant Web
    • Internet access is provided for all participants as well as a toll-free number.
  • Web Setup features
    • On the website participants have the following options:

Participant Summary

Investment Information

Participant Enrollment

Personal Information

Beneficiary Selection

Contribution Selection

Investment Options

Prospectus Options

Transaction History

Transaction Options

Confirmation Options

Performance

Reporting

Withdrawals

  • An option for Online Participant Enrollment.
  • Allows those participants not already in the system to login and enroll into the plan.
  • A reminder email will be sent out to those participants that have not completed the enrollment steps.
  • We can require sponsor approval before enrollment selections are submitted
    • Note: Turning on this option will allow the sponsor final approvals before the participants are enrolled into the plan.
  • Notifications can be enabled to e-mail transaction confirmation transactions initiated via the VRU and/or Web
  • Notify Participant – Will generate an e-mail to the participant who generated the transaction
  • Notify Sponsor – Will generate an e-mail to the Plan Sponsor of the plan.
  • Notify Advisor – Will generate an e-mail to the advisor assigned to the plan.
  • Purpose
    • The Fee Schedule Assignments form allows you to designate a fee schedule for the plan and assign the basis for allocating Administrative, Asset, and General or Special fees.  In the plan’s source  definition  (on   the  Account Definitions form) different asset fee rates may be defined for specific sources of money in a plan. We can track 12(b)1 fees and other reimbursements such as sub transfer fees paid to be reimbursed to the plan.
  • Trade Settlement Policy
    • Our general trade policy is to accept web transactions through 4:00 pm EST to be processed the same day. Trades received after 4:00 pm EST will be processed the next business day. This applies only to fund custodians that we have electronic trading rights. All other fund custodian transaction will be processed though 3:00 pm EST.
  • Self-Directed Brokerage Account
    • If the plan document permits this election, participants may choose to have a segregated self-directed brokerage account offered through Charles Schwab. They will receive individual statements on this account on a monthly statement from the custodian as well as quarterly plan statements.