Confidence in your Service Providers

Posted: 
Monday, November 26, 2012

Administrative Retirement Services, Inc. (ARS) assists plan sponsors in all necessary aspects of the plan administration to keep their plan qualified, including updating their plan documents as needed, preparing thorough annual testing, providing administrative reports and Form 5500 annually.

It is not uncommon for ARS to begin a new relationship with a client and find that the plan was not properly administered previously. When this happens, the plan sponsor incurs the cost of fixing the plan if they want to bring the plan into compliance or risks IRS penalties if selected for audit.

Plan sponsors that don’t use ARS should make inquires of all service providers to ensure the services they are receiving are thorough. In addition to providing compliance services are they keeping the company’s data secure? Identify theft has increased dramatically in recent years, it was up 11% from 2008 to 2009. Plan sponsors and investment advisors as plan fiduciaries need to know if service providers are outsourcing services and understand how data is secured. ARS does not outsource administration services or client data. ARS password protects all sensitive data that is e-mailed and has shredding procedures in place to protect client data.