While it may seem a nuisance to take care in forming a retirement plan committee, decisions made at this early stage will have implications later.(Photo: Fotolia)

NASHVILLE — One piece of advice a plan sponsor may be glad they followed is to create a retirement plan committee.  For one thing, it spreads the fiduciary liability across a greater swath of people, rather than piling it on a lone CFO or HR director who might not even realize the extent of their own liability.

It's true – some plan sponsors don't know they have a fiduciary duty to their plan. In fact, a 2016 AllianceBernstein report on plan sponsors noted, “A troubling 49 percent of plan sponsors do not consider themselves a fiduciary – and that's a double-digit increase from our previous survey.”

A retirement plan committee also lessens the risk of bad or on-the-fly decision-making. There's something to be said for a group of people who need a quorum to vote on a fiduciary matter. “Moreover, committees are more likely to make informed and reasoned decisions pursuant to a deliberate process, consistent with the DOL's emphasis on the fiduciary decision-making process,” says Sheldon Geller in The CPA Journal.