(Photo: Shutterstock)
You don't have to have an Investment Policy Statement for your 401(k) plan. It's a blade that can cut both ways. Written well, an IPS offers a template to easily protect both the plan sponsor and the plan participant. Written poorly, it exposes the plan sponsor to unnecessary liabilities.
Whether the IPS is crafted well or poorly will depend on who's doing the crafting – and who's not, (see "Who Is Generally Responsible For Designing, Detailing, And Approving The 401k IPS?" FiduciaryNews.com, January 30, 2020).
Let's focus on trying to avoid those unnecessary liabilities. This is perhaps the greatest unforced error when it comes to a 401(k) IPS. It's too easy to treat the exercise of creating an IPS as a statement of elegance, not pragmatism. This is how plan sponsors expose themselves.
Continue Reading for Free
Register and gain access to:
- Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
Christopher Carosa
Chris Carosa has been writing a weekly article and monthly column for BenefitsPRO online and BenefitsPRO Magazine since 2011 and is a nationally recognized award-winning writer, researcher and speaker. He’s written seven books, including From Cradle to Retire: The Child IRA; Hey! What’s My Number? – How to Increase the Odds You Will Retire in Comfort; A Pizza The Action: Everything I Ever Learned About Business I Learned By Working in a Pizza Stand at the Erie County Fair; and the widely acclaimed 401(k) Fiduciary Solutions. Carosa is also Chief Contributing Editor of the authoritative trade journal FiduciaryNews.com and publisher of the Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel, a weekly community newspaper he founded in 1989. Currently serving as President of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and with more than 1,000 articles published in various publications, he appears regularly in the national media. A “parallel” entrepreneur, he actively runs a handful of businesses, including a small boutique investment adviser, providing hands-on experience for his writing. A trained astrophysicist, he also holds an MBA and has been designated a Certified Trust and Financial Advisor. Share your thoughts and story ideas with him through Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/christophercarosa/)and Twitter (https://twitter.com/ChrisCarosa).
