Tom Lovett
RECORDKEEPER EMPLOYER: Transamerica Retirement Solutions
TENURE WITH COMPANY: 20 years
BIO: Tom Lovett is assistant vice president, client relationship development and regional field director for Transamerica Retirement Solutions in Baltimore. From 1994 to 1997, before joining Transamerica (then Diversified), he worked for Copeland Co. (now Met Life). Prior to both, he served as a pilot in the U.S. Navy.
CLIENT: Rollins College
CLIENT INDUSTRY: Higher education
CLIENT HEADQUARTERS: Winter Park, Florida
CLIENT PLAN ASSETS: 403(b), about $142 million; 457(b), about $3 million
CLIENT PLAN PARTICIPANTS: 725 fully eligible participants and 1,400 eligible to contribute without the employer match Tom Lovett was assigned to our account in 2014, shortly after we went live with Transamerica Retirement Solutions as our new recordkeeper, and before we started a significant plan overhaul,” says Jennifer Addleman, assistant director of human resources (HR) and benefits for Rollins College.
Lovett quickly noticed that Rollins’ plan committee had a different conception of what some common industry terms—automatic enrollment, re-enrollment and automatic escalation—meant, when it described how it wanted him to update its plan. Lovett believes the committee had heard the different meanings from providers that had bid on Rollins’ business in a recent request for proposals (RFP).
As the dust from the conversion began to settle, the committee members decided to refocus their efforts on adopting some of these plan features. “It was a little plan forensics, listening to what they had heard and what they wanted to do. We sorted through it, and I was able to guide Rollins down the path of what we can do and what we can’t. And where we can’t do something, we found other acceptable alternatives,” Lovett says.
For one thing, Rollins had requested some changes to its online presence that were specific to its website. “For example,” Addleman says, “we wanted to post the summary plan description [SPD] to the website. While this is not standard practice for Transamerica to do, it was able to add the SPD to the general Rollins site, so the participant can see [the SPD] before needing to log in.”
Lovett continues, “We were able to look back operationally at how the plan works, listening to what the client wanted to achieve and then, from a provisions perspective, an operational perspective and a compliance perspective, pull that into a clearly defined strategy and begin implementing it.”
Lovett quickly worked with his team to draft a revised plan amendment to ensure that all applicable changes were captured,” Addleman says.
She and the rest of the Rollins team were glad Lovett had noticed the issues with their proposal and that he took time to verify the intent, consulting with the sponsor about how to make the plan meet the overall objectives. “Tom could have just implemented the changes without realizing they were probably not what we intended, but he was diligent in making sure we were all on board,” Addleman says. —Judy Faust Hartnett
Get the latest news daily