Employee Benefit Plans
Retirement Plan Audits
Planning for retirement has gone from guaranteed pensions to individuals planning for their own retirements. Employees are entrusting their retirement savings to 401(k) plans your company provides. With decades of experience helping companies exceed employee expectations, we can help.
It is your company’s fiduciary responsibility to ensure the benefits plan’s accuracy and compliance. Ultimate responsibility rests with the plan’s officers, although they are typically not involved in the day-to-day plan operations. We can help you bridge that operational gap, providing the procedural continuity you need for the benefit plan you want to provide.
Assurance Services
ASL audits defined contribution plans, including 401(k) plans, 403(b) plans, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), and profit-sharing plans. We help our clients navigate and comply with complex IRS and DOL regulations, fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities, and support the interests of their employees.
Specialized Consulting Services
Our team can help you implement the type of benefit plan that is most advantageous for your company. We also assist clients with DOL or IRS inquiries.
We are a member of the American Institute of CPAs’ (AICPA) Employee Benefit Plan Audit Quality Center, which promotes the quality of employee benefit plan audits by providing members with timely communication of regulatory developments, best practices guidance, technical updates, discussion forums and information sharing, and by maintaining relationships with and acting as a liaison to the DOL.
Questions to Ask Yourself
An employee benefit plan audit is required for all large benefit plans with over 100 active participants at the beginning of the plan year.
It is common to have various service providers handling different aspects of the day-to-day plan operations. To ensure effective plan operations, it is important to track who provides services to the plan, i.e. who holds the investments (the custodian), who provides the administrative, operational, and recordkeeping services (TPA/recordkeeper). The Company that sponsors the benefit plan is the Plan Sponsor or the Plan Administrator.
Each plan is governed by its plan adoption agreement. It is critical for plan management to review the plan adoption agreement to ensure compliance with plan provisions to avoid regulatory scrutiny, i.e. what is the plan eligibility, does the plan allow Roth contributions, does the plan have employer contributions, how are employer contributions calculated, etc.
