If your benefit plan was audited, then you likely spent hours going through files pulling basic information for your auditors. You may have pulled files from storage or from different offices. Worse, you may have educated your plan auditors on the basics of the plan when they had a plan document and summary plan description to read, which you gave them. You may have even found yourself researching payroll records for various employees for the entire fiscal year to determine why their employee contributions are different than the ones calculated by the auditors. Read the rest of this entry »

You have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that plan fees are reasonable as a plan sponsor. The best practice for meeting this fiduciary obligation is to go shopping. Ask a variety of potential vendors the same questions about what they charge for the services they provide. Obtain bids from the most promising vendors and chose your favorite.

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