Working with clients to build
strong fiduciary governance structures.
Proper governance is well-documented, identifies the parties involved with the plan, delegates responsibilities to the appropriate parties, and creates a process to make decisions about vendors, services, fees, and investments.
Fiduciary governance structures are as unique as the organizations that utilize them. Multnomah Group assists clients with the development of structures, documentation, and processes in:
We developed an Annual Fiduciary Program to help our clients manage their ongoing fiduciary responsibilities. Our service model is structured to address the major components of a sound fiduciary governance program over the course of our quarterly meetings throughout the year.
The following is a brief outline of the typical focus of each quarterly Committee meeting:
In addition to the services we offer to help plan sponsors with their fiduciary duties to their plan, we create and share resources throughout the year that help navigate to the responsibilities facing plan sponsors as it relates to their retirement plan benefit programs.
A: We have an internal Technical Services Committee that provides compliance support to the firm’s clients. The Technical Services Committee meets monthly to set firm policy on areas of ERISA technical and fiduciary issues as well as to review specific technical compliance items that clients may be facing. The Technical Services Committee is led by our senior consultant and director of ERISA technical services Greg Johnson, J.D.
A: We believe that an Investment Policy Statement (IPS) is one of the most important components of a well-defined fiduciary governance structure. We believe proper fiduciary governance begins with a clear delegation of authority from the board of directors/trustees, the adoption of a charter that establishes the Committee(s) and assigns roles and responsibilities to individual parties, and ultimately an IPS that guides that Committee in the work that they do. We help clients implement proper governance by providing support in the development of the proper governance documents. For clients with an existing IPS, we will review the documentat the outset of our engagement and make recommendations to the Committee if we believe there are opportunities for improvement. For clients without an IPS, we will provide a draft IPS that incorporates what we believeto be best practices in governance design. Ultimately, the IPS is the client’s governance document, and we utilize our experience to provide input in helping our clients draft an IPS that meets the needs of each client.
A: We have developed formal committee training materials for new committees and new committee members. The focus of those training materials is fiduciary responsibility and best practices in fiduciary governance. Our proprietary fiduciary training curriculum is structured to maintain and develop the committee members' knowledge over time, no matter if the member is new to their fiduciary role or has been serving for an extended period of time. In additional to our fiduciary training program, we provide a wide range of other committee support, training, and education opportunities. On an ongoing basis, we host webinars for clients and prospective clients on a wide range of industry topics. Most clients and committee members use these webinars as an opportunity for ongoing training. We have developed committee education on fiduciary governance, retirement readiness, and investment topics that can be used to educate the committee as a whole, or for new members. Additionally, we support client committees by drafting white papers, FAQs, and other research on topics relevant to clients.
Senior Consultant and Director of ERISA Technical Services
Consultant & Director of Client Services
Managing Principal
Principal
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