Hines Interests LP

NOMINATOR COMMENTS

Hines makes every effort to provide its employees with ample opportunity to save for retirement. The committee introduced new features from T. Rowe Price and regularly considers new fiduciary advice options to help employees make the best choices. Recently, the committee overhauled the investment menu to introduce new lower-cost options and collective investment trusts. It also uses the truest net low cost for participants, by which all revenue sharing is credited back to employees who generated it.

More importantly, I feel that each committee member truly cares about serving as a fiduciary to the plan. No decision or topic is taken lightly, and the members engage in thorough discussion and debate the merits of any decision.

PLANSPONSOR: Please cite any noteworthy initiatives you have taken in the past 24 to 36 months that have produced results to improve your plan, and describe the results.

Hines Interests: Investing for long-term success is a founding principle of our firm that applies to our lines of business, our people and our retirement plan. We understand that enabling our employees to save for retirement by providing a high-caliber defined contribution plan and solid education on how to make the most of it can change their lives for the better. Below are examples of how we have sought to accomplish this:

• Our 401(k) committee, which meets quarterly with our advisers to review fund performance, voted twice in the past two years to amend the plan’s fund lineup. These changes resulted in replacement of underperforming funds (relative to benchmarks), expanded asset classes and index fund offerings, and a shift to a lower share class for one fund;
• Besides performance, our committee also regularly reviews the plan’s fees, which have been lowered twice in the past three years. At the close of the last year’s third quarter, all plan investment expense ratios were outperforming their Morningstar category averages by 0.08% to 0.58%;
• We seek out opportunities to automate and simplify the plan in meaningful ways, such as implementing a match true-up to ensure that employees who contributed enough to receive the full match don’t miss out simply because they didn’t time their deferrals appropriately. This has resulted in 88.8% of active participants maximizing the company match; and
• We look for opportunities to enhance plan participants’ experience, as well as their ability to save for retirement by embracing innovation, employee feedback and industry trends when it’s prudent to do so. For example, in 2023, we implemented new plan design features to facilitate the mega backdoor Roth saving strategy, based on candid feedback from employees in our investment management group. This feedback helped strengthen the case for implementation, and we’re proud that our employees feel enabled to open a dialogue with us about how they feel their retirement plan can better serve them.

PLANSPONSOR: Please explain the ongoing governance efforts of those involved with the plan meant to ensure its compliance and effective operation.

Hines Interests: Besides our quarterly committee meetings, we have monthly operational calls with the recordkeeper, which include a representative from its compliance team. We also work closely with our advisers at Prime Capital Financial and our external ERISA counsel to ensure we remain compliant. We regularly attend conferences and seminars where legal and compliance information is presented to keep us informed on all relevant topics.

This year, for our Plan Sponsor of the Year profiles, we are publishing Q&As based on the finalists’ applications and nominator comments. Responses are edited and may be paraphrased. In cases where the finalist self-nominated or, on its application, referred judges to the nomination for the answer, we have attributed those nominator answers to the plan sponsor.