Plan Design

Today's difficult economy and volatile financial markets demand that employers plan carefully and creatively to ensure that the design of their defined benefit (DB), defined contribution (DC) or hybrid plans, as well as other retirement income programs, will meet their goals and employees' needs over the long term.

Retirement plan design "fads" may come and go, but our consultants will never jump to conclusions about clients' needs. We approach a retirement plan design project — whether for DB, DC or hybrid plans — utilizing our proprietary plan design software and conduct a comprehensive process that involves the following steps:

• Gathering essential facts about current plans and member demographics as well as the over-arching employee benefit, HR and business frameworks in which those retirement plans operate
• Creating retirement objectives and philosophy, including behavioral economics
• Analyzing the gap between the current state of the retirement plan and the objectives
• Creating alternative design options to close the gap
• Narrowing options to the "short list"
• Conducting a demographic and financial analysis of the options
• Modifying the options to balance demographic and financial objectives
• Creating the pilot transition design and performing the final gap analysis
• Implementing the new plan design

At each step of the process, our retirement plan design consultants translate complex ideas into clear illustrations so that you do not have to become an actuary yourself to understand our recommendations and their practical implications.