Products April 24, 2003

Fidelity Reveals Tax-Exempt Plan Comparison Tool

April 24, 2003 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Plan sponsors of tax-exempt retirement plans have a new online diagnostic tool to compare their current plans against similar sized plans from Fidelity Investments.
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Your Ultimate Plan Design is the program that evaluates a tax-exempt retirement plan on more than 35 “best practice” criteria to determine how well it uses those practices.   The tool allows plan sponsors to compare and benchmark their plan against others in higher education, research, public sector, health care, and other tax-exemptareas, or with plans of similar size, based on information from the nearly 14,000 plans and more than 1.8 million participants in the Fidelity tax-exempt marketplace.

After completing the questionnaire, plan sponsors receive a report that shows their plan’s strengths, identifies areas they could improve, and details steps they could consider to enhance their plan based on five key goals and their considerations:

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  • Participation – Matching contributions; online enrollment; withdrawal options; vesting; information about special tax-credits for lower-income employees
  • Diversification – Fund tiering; investments across all asset classes; life cycle funds; planning tools
  • Contributions – Catch-up contributions; rollovers from all plan types; percentage-based deferrals
  • Employee engagement – Online statements; participant Web site; ability to provide more personalized participant communication; targeted educational programs
  • Administration – Sponsor Web site featuring online contribution funding, reporting, service requests, and electronic data remittance

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