Services

INVESTMENT MONITORING

A proper monitoring process is essential to sustain a retirement plan that keeps pace with the industry. Your offerings will be measured against applicable indices, your administrator’s available offerings and the broad world of alternative investment options.

When it comes to your 401k plan’s investment lineup, why wouldn’t you make sure to offer only the “best-of-the-best” investment funds if you could? We often find that while a plan’s investment lineup was good in the past, the environment changed over time, leaving the plan’s lineup behind.

Our philosophy - Offer a suitable, diverse inventory of historically proven investment choices. Review the offerings regularly to ensure that they remain diversified in a manner that allows plan participants to accurately represent a portfolio they would unrestrictedly build in their personal investment accounts.

PLAN PARTICIPATION

If there were a future threat to the solvency of Social Security, who would suffer the most? Would it be the wealthy? Those just above the poverty line? Chances are, the middle class would likely bear the brunt of the pain. There is a good chance that the middle class worker will be expected to either accept reduced benefits or work much longer to receive them.

Pensions! What ever happened to the pension plan? What happened to working for a company for 30 years, grabbing a gold watch and a pension, then heading off to a comfortable retirement? This scenario is becoming, if not already, non-existent these days. With forecasted Social Security solvency issues and very few companies offering pension plans, the need for a superior defined contribution plan is a must. Furthermore, it is essential that all plan participants be fully educated to the fact that this may be the only financial resource they have to pull from in retirement. The last thing anybody wants is to find this out only when it’s too late.

Additional Benifits

Competitive Advantage. The most valuable resource a company has is its staff. When attempting to attract top talent, a premium retirement plan has been shown to be a deciding factor over 70% of the time. Why risk losing that special new hire to the competition’s better retirement plan…when you could >improve your plan while saving money?

Self Interest. The individuals seeking to defer the largest salary percentage within most company retirement plans are routinely executives and the highly-compensated. With the remaining workforce often deferring a low percentage of their pay, many plans become top-heavy, initiating restrictions on what executives and highly-compensated individuals can contribute. Among other solutions, a compelling education program should mobilize many participants to save more (and more appropriately), thus allowing all participants, including executives and highly compensated employees, to take greater advantage of the benefit you are offering.

PARTICIPANT EDUCATION

CWMI understands that effective communication and education is critical to the success of a retirement plan. We work with plan sponsors to provide a consistent program of investment education and determine the most appropriate means of presentation.

Enrollment specialists conduct initial and on-site enrollment meetings; detailing the plan, answering any questions employees might have and assisting in the enrollment process.

Along with plan-specific educational programs concentrating on general retirement information, we can also offer an array of topical financial presentations to your employees in the form of customized, in-person workshops. Some topics include:

Retirement & Distribution Planning

College Savings

Debt Management

Insurance Exposure Analysis

Estate Planning

The topical workshops have been well-received by both employees and employers alike. These offerings are just another opportunity for you to bring additional benefit to your most important resource –your people.

Please Note: Educational workshops are intended to be informational only and not solicitations of, nor offers for, any product or service.

PARTICIPANT SATISFACTION

Communication is a two way street. There is no better way to gauge sentiment than by simply asking. It is essential that plan sponsors routinely request employee feedback pertaining to the satisfaction with and understanding of the company-sponsored retirement plan. This will accomplish two things…