Fiducia Group

401(k) Fiduciary Consulting
Provider Benchmarking
Provider Fee Negotiation
401(k) Fiduciary Audits
Plan Design Reviews
Investment Selection & Monitoring
Investment Committee Oversight
Participant Education & Advice

Eight Penn Center West
Suite 101
Pittsburgh, PA 15276
877-707-9990 (toll free)
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Measuring your Providers…Fiduciary Considerations

Your Investment Provider

Picking an outside fiduciary to assist with the management of your plan and your investment process is an important decision. Unfortunately many of the investment professionals who are serving the 401(k) retirement space do not have the legal capacity to act in a fiduciary role or the credentials to demonstrate their knowledge. Some key questions you might consider asking your current investment advisor or broker…

Has the investment advisor acknowledged their fiduciary status in writing?

Are conflicts of interest and self-dealing avoided? If so, how?

Does your advisor have applicable credentialing to support their expertise?

Are “watch list” procedures followed for underperforming investment options?

Do you know how your advisor is compensated and does this compensation vary based upon investment selection?

Is your advisor also acting in the capacity of a Fiduciary Adviser under the Pension Protection Act of 2006?

These questions are based on one or more fiduciary practices which have been fully substantiated by legislation, case law, and regulatory opinion letters as identified in Prudent Investment Practices for Investment Advisors published by FI360®.

Your Recordkeeper

Certainly you expect high-level service and impeccable quality from your recordkeeping service providers. Understanding their fees, determining fee reasonableness and addressing conflicts of interest are just as critical, however. Periodic analysis of your service providers should be handled in an unbiased manner to address the following fiduciary concerns…

Identification and benchmarking the reasonableness of compensation received by your recordkeeper either directly (billed to the sponsor or participants) or indirectly from mutual fund companies in “soft” dollars or through revenue sharing.

If the provider limits what funds you can choose based on the compensation they receive from the funds, this impacts your ability to offer quality mutual funds in each asset class.