Higher education retirement plan sponsors are looking to plan advisors to improve retirement readiness—and to make plans into employee recruitment and retention tools.

So says a survey from Transamerica Retirement Solutions LLC, which found that higher ed institutions rely on a plan advisor or consultant to help with investment selection, investment monitoring, and plan compliance.

Eighty-one percent of institutions with advisors tend to have an investment policy statement in place (considered an industry best practice, although it’s not required under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act), compared to just 56 percent for plan sponsors that do not have an advisor. Smaller institutions of 5,000 or fewer participants tend to often rely on their advisor for an even broader range of services, such as acting as a plan fiduciary or assisting with plan design changes.