Investment Committee for Retirement Plans

Carolil

I have to set up an Investment Committee to oversee our retirement plan and I'm curious about what other folks do. Can people respond with the following detail and anything else you care to share? i'd also be happy to look at a process and procedure statement if it's easier.

Who is on your committee (staff, managers, President, Board member, etc.)
How large is your committee and how large is your company?
How often do you meet?
What is the role of your committee? (follow investment performance and recommend changes; review plan compliance matters, etc.)

Thanks.

NaeNae55

Our investment committee is the Presiden/CEO, me and a board member (though the board member never attends any meetings), and we have between 20 and 25 participants. Your committee should have 2-3 people, and they should be people who really understand your plan.

We have an investment statement, which our agent helped us devise. It sets out guidelines for us, which helps protect both the plan and the committee members.

We meet bi-annually with our agent (Bukaty Companies in Kansas City) and a representative of the company we invest with (Great West). We started using them in 2003 after I did a serious search for a better fit from our prior carrier. We have been very happy with them.

Our representative and agent report to us the status of our Plan and how it compares to other plans. We discuss such things as Plan growth and participation, as well as online activity by employees and how much employees are vested. We also discuss which investments are passing according to our guidelines, which bear watching, and which are failing. When we have a fund that is failing, they always have replacement suggestions and give us information about the new funds to help us make decisions.

The minutes of these meetings are signed and kept for future reference. Any changes in the plan are duly documented. We decide what changes to make during the meetings, and all we need is a signature of a committee member for us to move forward on the change.

I hope this is what you were looking for.

cnghr

Our retirement plans committee consists of the CFO, me, three board members, and four "at large" committee members, who are drawn from interested parties in the general employee population.

Our committee has nine members, and the company has around 135 employees.

We meet twice a year, once with our TPA and once without. We discuss investment performance, plan growth & participation, how our plan compares with other similarly-situated plans, and we make changes to the plan when necessary if funds are under-performing. We also review the annual audits of the plan and any audit recommendations that we may receive.