EisnerAmper Wealth Management and Corporate Benefits

Businesses bank on the power of 401(k) plans to attract and retain employees. A recent Met Life study shows retirement benefits have become the second most significant recruitment and compensation differentiator after health benefits. But its cumbersome implementation and management, with add-on legal obligations and liabilities, get in the way of delivering cohesive retirement savings and reaping the true employee loyalty advantages.

EisnerAmper Wealth Management and Corporate Benefits (EAWMCB) is simplifying this colossal task, from enrollment and plan contributions to maintaining compliance and answering questions about investment value, with ingenuity and expertise.

“Our goal as fiduciary advocates is to ensure that all cogs within the 401(k) plan management wheel work efficiently, providing clients an optimized corporate retirement plan program, whether it is a 401(k) plan, cash balance pension plan, combo-cash balance 401(k) plan, non-qualified deferred compensation plan, or advanced profit-sharing design plan,” says Marc Scudillo, CEO of EAWMCB.

At the core of EisnerAmper’s mission to help clients’ workforces achieve financial fulfillment is its Corporate Advocacy Retirement Experience (CARE). Through the CARE process, EisnerAmper helps business owners and plan sponsors keep track of the U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) compliance reporting requirements and serves as a liaison between a company and its retirement benefits plan providers. It also effectively embraces fiduciary responsibilities to address the bottlenecks associated with the implementation and ongoing management of 401(k) plans, while educating people at the plan sponsor and participant level to make them feel more confident about their investment decisions.

Demystifying the complex landscape of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, 1974 (ERISA) is one of EisnerAmper’s foremost roles as a fiduciary advocate. The provisions of ERISA Title 1 are divided between the DoL and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), making its regulatory compliance an uphill task. While the DoL is primarily responsible for reporting, disclosure, and fiduciary requirements of ERISA Title I, the IRS handles its participation, vesting, and funding issues.

EisnerAmper’s role as fiduciary adviser ensures that clients can unravel its complicated management with ease. EisnerAmper also acts as ERISA 3(21) investment advisers in a co-fiduciary arrangement and ERISA 3(38) investment managers in a full-fiduciary arrangement.

“Our advocacy process helps clients gain better clarity, confidence, and control of where life intersects with their wealth. In a sense, we assume the role of educators. Our goal is to help those we serve to best understand complex ideas and concepts so they can benefit by applying what we communicate to help clients achieve their best financial life,” says Michael Abate, Corporate Retirement Plan Specialist, EAWMCB.

We assume the role of educators, and our goal is to help those we serve to best understand complex ideas and concepts so that they can benefit by applying what we communicate to help achieve their best financial life

EisnerAmper recently assisted a law firm that was steadily growing through organic growth and acquisition. Since the business was changing, its corporate needs were also changing, necessitating an upgrade in its business plan design. EisnerAmper helped the law firm evaluate the changing needs of its corporate culture and the annual compliance testing issues that arose as the plan demographics changed. By evaluating the many plan design alternatives available to plan sponsors, it was determined that implementation of a Qualified Automatic Contribution Arrangement (QACA) would satisfy the highly compensated employees of the firm and provide a valuable benefit to the non-highly compensated employees, while also attracting new talent.

Such instances suggest how employee benefits are making headway in financial planning. Constantly evolving employee regulations necessitate the need for a bundled service provider that acts as a trusted adviser to seamlessly facilitate employee benefits. EisnerAmper has been fostering that trust for decades.