Fiduciary Governance

A: We have an internal Technical Services Committee that provides compliance support to the firm’s clients. The Technical Services Committee meets monthly to set firm policy on areas of ERISA technical and fiduciary issues as well as to review specific technical compliance items that clients may be facing. The Technical Services Committee is led by our senior consultant and director of ERISA technical services Greg Johnson, J.D.

A: We believe that an Investment Policy Statement (IPS) is one of the most important components of a well-defined fiduciary governance structure. We believe proper fiduciary governance begins with a clear delegation of authority from the board of directors/trustees, the adoption of a charter that establishes the Committee(s) and assigns roles and responsibilities to individual parties, and ultimately an IPS that guides that Committee in the work that they do. We help clients implement proper governance by providing support in the development of the proper governance documents. For clients with an existing IPS, we will review the documentat the outset of our engagement and make recommendations to the Committee if we believe there are opportunities for improvement. For clients without an IPS, we will provide a draft IPS that incorporates what we believeto be best practices in governance design. Ultimately, the IPS is the client’s governance document, and we utilize our experience to provide input in helping our clients draft an IPS that meets the needs of each client.

A: We have developed formal committee training materials for new committees and new committee members. The focus of those training materials is fiduciary responsibility and best practices in fiduciary governance. Our proprietary fiduciary training curriculum is structured to maintain and develop the committee members' knowledge over time, no matter if the member is new to their fiduciary role or has been serving for an extended period of time. In additional to our fiduciary training program, we provide a wide range of other committee support, training, and education opportunities. On an ongoing basis, we host webinars for clients and prospective clients on a wide range of industry topics. Most clients and committee members use these webinars as an opportunity for ongoing training. We have developed committee education on fiduciary governance, retirement readiness, and investment topics that can be used to educate the committee as a whole, or for new members. Additionally, we support client committees by drafting white papers, FAQs, and other research on topics relevant to clients.