You can serve the plan without being the investment expert on it.
Most advisors holding a few 401(k) plans are excellent at the relationship and improvising on the investments. That's the exposure. ERISA judges the process — how the lineup was selected, on what criteria, reviewed how often, documented where — not whether the funds performed.
A 3(38) appointment moves that process, the discretion, and the liability that comes with it to a specialist firm that does nothing else. Your name stays on the relationship, the enrollment meetings, and the wealth conversations that follow.
A 3(38) is named in writing and accepts fiduciary responsibility for selecting, monitoring, and replacing the plan's investments. That responsibility is ours, not yours and not the sponsor's.
An IPS, quarterly scoring against it, watch-list discipline, and dated committee materials — the file an auditor or plaintiff's attorney asks for, built before anyone asks.
Fund research, share-class review, benchmarking, and report production are weeks a year. We absorb them so your hours go to households and new business.
Against a specialist competitor, "we outsource discretion to a 3(38) and here is the quarterly report" is a stronger answer than any lineup you'd defend alone.
Who does what, once we're appointed.
3(21) is advice the sponsor can accept or ignore — they still decide, they still own it. 3(38) is discretion: we decide, and we're on the hook for the decision.
The sponsor never sheds every duty — selecting and monitoring the 3(38) itself remains a fiduciary act. We document that review for them too.
A menu built by asset class, not by fund pitch.
We start from the coverage a participant population needs and fill each slot with the best-scoring option available on that recordkeeping platform. Watch it come together.
Illustrative structure using broad asset classes. Actual counts and categories vary by plan size, platform, and committee direction.
The report is the fiduciary file.
Every quarter each investment is re-scored against the IPS criteria and flagged: proposed, watch, or remove. The committee gets the same document we act on — and it lands in the plan file dated and signed.
What a year of 3(38) support looks like.
Or keep the discretion, and use our machinery.
Some advisors have a research process they believe in — or a home-office model they're required to use. In the Independent RIA and Independent Contractor models you can build the lineup yourself and still run it on our IPS, scoring engine, and quarterly reporting.
Send us one plan and see the report.
We'll score the current lineup against our IPS criteria and show you the quarterly monitoring report your client would receive — before you commit to anything.