Retirement Plan Consulting

Retirement plans designed with purpose.

We work with companies looking to elevate their employee retirement plan and explore options to reward and incentivize key employees through tax-advantaged saving vehicles. Most come to us for a second opinion on fees, investments, or service. Some just want an advisor who shows up more than once a year.

Next Steps How we work

In brief

Pointer serves retirement plans as a 3(21) or 3(38) fiduciary, working with RPAG, a national alliance of retirement plan specialists. We're Wisconsin based but work with plans nationally. While most of our work is with established plans, we help young companies launch their first plan too.

Section 01A Second Opinion

How is your current plan holding up?

Plans that have been running for years tend to pick up problems nobody notices day to day. Fees that haven't been checked against the market, funds that stay on the menu out of habit, committee files with gaps. Check any of these that apply to you.

Exhibit 1. Plan health indicators

Our plan fees have not been independently benchmarked in the last three years.

Our investment menu has not materially changed in years, and we are not sure why.

We could not quickly produce committee minutes, our IPS, or fiduciary training records for an auditor.

Our advisor shows up once a year, presents a report, and leaves.

Participation and savings rates have plateaued and nobody owns the problem.

Employees have no one to call with real financial questions.

Check any that apply.

Section 02Our Process

The six areas we cover

We provide comprehensive consulting around the key aspects of retirement plan management. Open any area below for the details.

We maintain your plan documentation, run independent benchmarking, train your committee, and support you through audits. We can serve in a 3(21) advisory or 3(38) discretionary role, depending on how much responsibility your committee wants to keep in house.

3(21) investment recommendations or 3(38) discretionary management
Independent plan and fee benchmarking
Fee policy development and vendor due diligence
Access to collective investment trusts
Committee training and audit support

Our analyst team handles the heavy lifting of QDIA assignment, menu design, and investment selection, combining a proprietary quantitative Scorecard with qualitative review and direct manager access. The full process is laid out in Section 04 below.

Proprietary quantitative fund Scorecard
Committee of CFA charterholders
Custom benchmarks and peer groups
Direct manager interviews
QDIA and target date suitability analysis

If your plan design hasn't been revisited in a while, it may not match what your organization looks like today. We review match design, safe harbor strategy, profit sharing, and automatic provisions against your current goals, weighing participation, testing requirements, cost, and recruiting value.

Match analysis: traditional, stretch, and safe harbor structures
Profit sharing and new comparability design
Nondiscrimination testing strategy
Automatic enrollment and escalation provisions
Retention and recruitment alignment

We act as your single point of contact for administrative tasks and questions. We work directly with your recordkeeper, third-party administrator, auditor, and payroll team, so day-to-day plan operations don't land on your HR staff.

Coordination across recordkeeper, TPA, auditor, and payroll
Operational issue resolution and escalation
Required disclosures and notice management
Plan document maintenance

The hallmark of our wellness program is year-round concierge support. Financial needs don't happen on pre-determined timetables, so we give employees direct access to our financial professionals whenever questions come up. This is the part of our work we're best known for, and it gets its own section just below.

One-on-one employee meetings, year round
In-person enrollment and group education
Quarterly webinars and periodic newsletters
Executive consultation for complex situations
Automatic provisions that overcome inertia

A benefit package can go beyond the core retirement plan. For companies with highly compensated employees or owners planning for succession, we look at cash balance, deferred compensation, and other executive benefit options.

Cash balance pension design
Nonqualified deferred compensation
Executive benefit strategies
Supplemental insurance review

Section 03Employee Education

The part our clients talk about most

Ask our plan sponsors what stands out about working with us and this is usually the answer. Your employees can reach a financial professional all year, not just during annual education events. We help employees with all kinds of financial questions, about their retirement plan or any other topic they need help with. It's high level financial support without additional fees.

Concierge One-on-One Meetings

Any employee can sit down with us, in person or by phone, about the plan or about money in general. A budget question in March gets the same attention as an enrollment question in November.

Enrollment and group education

In-person enrollment meetings, quarterly webinars, and newsletters through the year to keep the plan in front of your people.

Executive consultation

Owners and executives with more complicated situations have access to professionals with deep experience in complex planning and special situations.

Plan provisions that do the heavy lifting

Auto enrollment and auto escalation, where they fit your plan, so participation doesn't depend on everyone remembering to fill out a form.

Section 04Investment Process

How we evaluate investments

If there is ever a question as to why a fund is on your menu, you should be able to point to a documented process. Here's ours.

A local feel, with a national reach.

The advisors you meet with are the ones doing the work on your plan. Behind us sits RPAG's research group, including an investment committee of CFA charterholders and dedicated ERISA specialists. You get people who know your plan personally, with a national analyst team we can put on any question your committee raises.

Every fund on your menu is scored every quarter.

Each investment runs through RPAG's Scorecard, which weighs style consistency, risk-adjusted returns, peer rankings, and manager quality against custom benchmarks and peer groups built for that fund's category. Funds that slip go on a watch list. We bring the scores, the watch list, and any recommended changes to your committee each quarter, and the minutes document why every decision was made.

The whole menu, not just the funds.

The same process covers your core lineup, target date series, QDIA selection, and stable value. We also review share classes and collective investment trusts on an ongoing basis, so you're never paying retail pricing for a strategy that's available cheaper. When a deeper look is warranted, RPAG's analysts interview the fund managers directly.

Exhibit 2. Three layers of fund analysis

Standard Metrics

Next-Gen Quantitative

Qualitative Insights

Average returns

Rolling returns

Manager tenure

Broad benchmarks

Custom benchmarks

Position-specific decisions

Broad peer groups

Custom peer groups

Analyst turnover

Broad style analysis

Style drift

Fund company history

Alpha, beta

Information ratio

Manager interviews

Standard deviation

Up/down capture ratios

Market cycle analysis, fund flows

Section 05Governance & Stewardship

Where your documents live

Every document your committee is responsible for is kept in our Fiduciary Briefcase, an online, cloud-based storage system with 24/7 access. If you're ever audited, the file is already built.

Governance documents

Plan documents, committee charter, investment policy statement, and meeting minutes, all maintained and kept current.

Monitoring & benchmarking

Quarterly investment monitoring reports and independent fee benchmarking studies that document a prudent, ongoing process.

Compliance materials

Required disclosures and notices, tracked and delivered on schedule.

Participant materials

Education content, enrollment materials, and communication records, all in one place and available 24/7.

Section 06How We're Paid

Fees you can see, start to finish

As a fiduciary, we're held to your plan's best interest, and that includes being straight about our own compensation. Our fees are transparent and spelled out in writing before you sign anything. We don't earn commissions on the investments we recommend for your plan, so there's no hidden compensation working against it.

How the fee is set

Assets under advisement

As your assets increase, fees are reviewed and reduced as your plan scales.

Flat fee

For large market plans, a flat fee is charged based on the size of the plan and scope of work requested.

How it's paid

From plan assets

Deducted from the plan and allocated across participant accounts.

Billed to the sponsor

Some companies prefer to pay plan fees directly. In those cases, fees can be invoiced to your company and paid outside plan assets.

We'll help you set a fee policy and work with you on an arrangement that fits your plan. Either way, you'll always know exactly what you're paying and why.

Section 07Working Together

What working with us looks like

Your plan isn't a set-it-and-forget-it document, and neither is our relationship. Here's the rhythm you can expect once we're working together.

Getting started

Onboarding

We manage the handoff from your current advisor, review your plan documents, and set or refresh your investment policy statement and committee goals.

Every quarter

Review and monitor

We score your investments against the Scorecard, meet with your committee, and document every decision in the minutes.

Every year

Benchmark and reassess

We benchmark your fees, revisit plan design, and refresh fiduciary training. We treat your plan as a living document that changes as your company does.

Year-round

Always available

One point of contact for questions, concierge support for your employees, and a heads-up when tax or legislative changes affect your plan.