Retirement plan consultants help avoid 401(k) compliance issues

Client Description

A commercial business in New England with approximately 400 employees.

Problem/Issue

The CEO wasn’t confident that the subsidiary’s 401(k) plan was being tested and operated correctly by its third party administrator (TPA), but he didn’t want to do an extensive review of the subsidiary’s plan.

BerryDunn's Solution/Approach

BerryDunn Retirement Plan Consultants determined that a mini-review would provide the plan fiduciary with enough information to assess if and where problems existed and – most importantly – what they could do about them. To do so, the consultants conducted a detailed review of the plan’s documents and the administrator’s compliance testing from the prior year

Outcomes

The client was correct; our experts confirmed that the subsidiary plan was not being tested correctly by its TPA. The TPA had not considered all of the controlled group’s employees when performing the annual coverage test. There were also inconsistencies between the 401(k) plan document provisions and the subsidiary’s operational practices.

BerryDunn provided a detailed report summarizing the issues and deficiencies. The CEO had the coverage testing re-done, changed TPA providers, and used BerryDunn’s recommendations regarding document provisions and operational practices when restating the plan with the new TPA, gaining control over a significant component of his company's fiduciary responsibility.