Institutional Retirement Plan Consulting

Fiduciary: noun, fi·du·cia·ry,
An individual in whom another has placed the utmost trust and confidence to manage and protect property or money. A relationship wherein one person has an obligation to act for another's benefit.

In today's world of increasingly complex regulations and ever-expanding investment possibilities, it’s challenging for small business owners to meet their fiduciary responsibilities as a retirement plan sponsor. Now, more than ever, it’s important to choose a partner with the experience and independence to help you navigate these complexities.

Back in the mid-1990s, when companies shifted from defined benefit pension plans to defined contribution plans such as 401(k) and profit-sharing plans, our firm began offering independent advice to business owners and their employees on self-directing their new retirement accounts. This independent, unbiased advice remains the cornerstone of our fiduciary advisory services to employer-sponsored retirement plans.

Our fiduciary services include:

• Develop or Update Investment Policy Statement
• Plan Cost Analysis & Fee Bench-marking
• Investment Manager & Mutual Fund Research and Evaluation
• Investment Review & Selection--Including Fund Mapping Strategy, if applicable
• Selection of Qualified Default Investment Alternative (QDIA)
• Employee Education and Communication
• Online Due Diligence File--Secure Remote Access of Plan Related Documents
• Plan Vendor Search and Evaluation
• Plan Transition Support
• Development of up to 5 Custom Model Portfolios

The Importance of a Fiduciary

Our approach as a fiduciary is to assist you in adopting industry Best Practices and reduce your administrative responsibilities, while maintaining the flexibility of customized plan features and plan design. Along with mitigating your fiduciary liabilities, we implement a process designed to increase the quality of your investment choices, lower plan fees, and improve plan administration and service. We work to proactively educate you and your employees on issues that impact the security and success of your retirement plan.

Acting independently of the whichever record-keeper or administrator you choose for the plan, we can provide information on which features to include to make your plan competitive and attractive to current and future employees. We have discretion to select, monitor and replace the investment options available to participants, and we use those choices to create diversified, custom model portfolios to meet the needs of participants across the age and risk spectrum. We educate your employees on their investment options and plan features, provide fee benchmarking and quarterly investment reporting, and conduct a comprehensive annual plan review to help you monitor the plan’s success.

At the end of the day, what really matters is that you have a program that allows you to meet your fiduciary responsibilities and provides your employees the opportunity to have a successful retirement.

FIDUCIARY VAULT ACCESS

First National Corporation provides plan sponsors with secure, online access to important plan information. If you are a current plan sponsor and do not have your login ID and password on hand, please contact us to obtain your account information.