Fees

Vendor and Investment Fees

Recent ERISA litigation involving plan fiduciaries has focused on the appropriateness of plan fees. There is no requirement to have the lowest possible plan costs.  However, fiduciaries should be able to prove that they know what they are paying and that there is a documented process being followed to assess and monitor plan fees.

The workload for this research is minimal. With your authorization, we work directly with your plan providers to gather the necessary data.

Service Details:

• Vendor Contract Analysis – Our team has decades of experience working in key positions for retirement plan providers.  We understand potential financial pitfalls and where the “hidden” costs are buried.  We can analyze your current or potential contracts and work with your legal counsel to identify and minimize excessive fees and penalties.    
• Investment Fee Analysis - Most retirement plan revenues are derived from various fees imbedded inside the investment options.  Our analysis peels back the layers of fees and summarizes them for you in a Fee and Revenue Disclosure Report.    We deliver this fee disclosure to you annually as part of our overall service offering.   
• Revenue Distribution - Once we disclose what you are paying, we report who is receiving the revenue generated from your plan.  While determining the overall expense is critical, it is equally important to uncover any conflicts of interest among the parties involved with the plan. 

CBA Fees

Institutional Clients:

Institutional clients work with the professionals at CBA on a fee basis.  Our consultants will work with you to determine the most suitable  structure and form of payment is for your plan.      

These fees can be structured in different manners: 

• Billed directly to the sponsor
• Billed to the plan (as an ERISA allowable expense) 

Whatever the type of fee, our compensation is fully disclosed and reported to the committee via our fee and revenue disclosure at least once per year. 

Emerging plans/clients:

We work with a number of plan sponsors that have chosen to engage us under a traditional brokerage relationship.   Although this method  is not preferred by larger companies, many emerging businesses with smaller plans and limited budgets use this method of compensation. 

The plan sponsors fiduciary duty remains the same under this arrangement.  The key to this type of arrangement, is keeping the investment related costs in check and providing full disclosure of all plan related fees and revenues.  

Under this arrangement, we work with the plan vendor to provide a full fee and revenue disclosure to the sponsor including al compensation paid to any vendor and CBA.