Hospital Plan Committee Needs Guidance

A hospital plan committee which had a good relationship with their recordkeeper needed guidance. They were concerned with:

• Putting the whole picture together and making strategic decisions

• Ongoing investment advice and monitoring

• Getting an overview of the marketplace and ideas on how they could make their plan more effective

The plan committee felt confident they had the right plan vendors in place with a great account executive, they felt good about their onsite education approach and offering one-on-one meetings, and they felt good about the breadth and amount of investment options available.

What they didn’t feel good about was putting it all together. Part of the problem was that the committee was delegated the authority to monitor the plan and make decisions, but there was no clear direction on their roles and responsibilities.

How we developed the solution:

Committee Engagement

Our first goal was to derive expectations for the committee, how they functioned, and the goals for the plan. Using our proprietary methods, we established a committee charter to help guide the plan review process and better outline the committee’s responsibilities. We also designed a quarterly review process that would make sure we hit major topics concerning the plan throughout the year and integrated fiduciary training along the way. 

Investment Monitoring

We amended their investment policy statement and aligned the quarterly monitoring process to streamline the investment review meetings, making sure to include mid-quarter fiduciary update bulletins as necessary.

Retirement Planology stepped in to act as a fiduciary to the plan, performing ongoing review and monitoring of the investments and advising on what to do next. 

Expertise and Guidance

The committee was worried they were not using the plan to its fullest extent and wanted to make sure that their plan was remaining a competitive benefit compared to the marketplace and peer plans. We presented and discussed a number of different trends we saw in the marketplace and among other clients with the committee and built in time on future agendas to review overall trends. This led to a lively discussion that also helped form solid goals for the direction of the plan and measuring its success. 

In addition, we reviewed their plan operations processes to see how they could better leverage their vendors and make their plan auditors happy at the same time! Together with the recordkeeper, we implemented some of their optional services to significantly reduce workload on the HR staff and streamline procedures.