Are you a business owner looking to upgrade your retirement plan?
Discover the advantages of our Advisor-Guided Retirement Plan for your organization:
Custom Solutions for Your Business
Standard plans offer a one size fits all, one-stop shop for plan sponsors where a single company provides most of the plan services. This bundled structure often hides layers of excess fees combined with a typically subpar level of support for employees.
Advisor-Guided focuses on selecting the right team of service providers to best serve your company needs. This creates an opportunity for business owners to select a specialized company for each role. Typically, the investment advisory firm coordinates and leads the team of providers to deliver a seamless plan focused on driving down costs while providing better service and better choices.
Trusted Expertise
Selecting the right team of service providers is key to a successful retirement plan. Since not all plans are the same in size or complexity, we work with a few different providers that we have identified as the top provider in their market. As the advisor on your company retirement plan, GGM reviews the status of your current plan or your company’s needs and will recommend the service provider, or team or providers, who we believe will best suit your company goal.
GGM (Advisor) – Independent Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) led by an investment committee with more than 90 years of combined experience. Our disciplined process applies sophisticated financial analysis in results-oriented portfolio design and investment selection.
PCS (Plan Administrator/Record-keeper) – A conflict-free solution with no funds to push and no hidden agenda. PCS combines state-of-the-art technology with an experienced and dedicated team of retirement plan professionals to deliver the most complete and highest-quality retirement plans available.
Vestwell (Plan Administrator/Record-keeper) – A new kind of digital retirement platform transforming the way plans are offered and administered. Vestwell focuses on streamlining administration, allowing for custom solutions and transparent pricing.
Charles Schwab (Custodian) – Your organization’s retirement assets are held by a leading retirement plan service provider serving 1.6 million workers and $100 billion in assets. Schwab is committed to staying financially strong, focused on long-term strength, and giving their clients peace of mind about the security of their accounts.
Better Service
We also provide regular educational meetings and on-demand assistance for employees, which often result in higher plan enrollment and more satisfied employees.
Custom Plan Design:
Bundled plans are one-size fits all. These out-of-the-box solutions rarely offer customization opportunities. Unbundled solutions, on the other hand, offer the flexibility to create a plan that is most advantageous for both business owners and employees, and aligns with the company’s goals and objectives.
Understanding Your Plan:
In an unbundled structure, the plan administrator is referred to as a third-party administrator (TPA). TPA firms are staffed by industry experts who normally have more experience and knowledge than the staff of a bundled provider. During the transition of plans, TPAs often find basic mistakes that should have been avoided and could potentially have put the plan at risk for penalties and lawsuits. The TPA runs many day-to-day aspects of your retirement plan, including:
- Amending and restating plan documents;
- Preparing employer and employee benefit statements;
- Assisting in processing all types of distributions from the plan;
- Preparing loan paperwork for plan participants;
- Testing the plan each year to gauge its compliance with IRS non-discrimination requirements as well as plan and participant contribution limits;
- Allocating employer contributions and forfeitures;
- Calculating participant vested percentages; and
- Preparing annual returns and reports required by IRS, DOL, and other government agencies.
Better Choices
Access to the Universe of Investment Choices:
Bundled plan providers typically have their own mutual funds. By keeping all the services in-house, the plan provider is motivated to funnel participants into their own funds, thus boosting their assets under management and earning additional compensation. These “in-house” mutual funds may also have above average expense ratios that are deducted prior to reporting performance.
In contrast, most unbundled plans have no allegiances and an open architecture, which ensures plan sponsors access to a broader universe of funds.
Easy To Use Investment Models:
GGM has developed easy-to-use investment models that employees can choose based on their goals, objectives, and risk tolerance. Your participants can be confident a regularly screened and monitored universe of investment possibilities delivers top-tier ranked selections into their portfolio.
Lower Fees
Fee Transparency:
Bundled structures have historically appeared attractive to plan sponsors because they appear to offer “free” administration services, which are lumped in with the record-keeping fee. But in reality, additional layers of fees and potential kickbacks are hidden within the fund expense category, which often is not shown on the statements.
Unbundled plans, on the other hand, provide disclosures of all fees, including recordkeeping, investment and administrative. Unbundled plan providers focus on driving down costs for plan sponsors. A side-by-side comparison of total fees within a bundled plan and unbundled plan would show the true savings a reduced fee structure would have for both employees and employers.
Low Cost Investment Options:
GGM has preferential access to lower cost mutual funds.
Are you a participant in your organization’s retirement plan?
Follow this guide to learn how to setup your retirement account:
Easy to Understand Enrollment Tools
Before you begin the enrollment process, please follow the steps below to help take the guesswork out of setting up your retirement account. Important factors to note are: 1) what percentage of your paycheck you wish to contribute to your account, 2) what is your risk number, and 3) which investment model is right for you.
How Much Do You Want to Contribute?
Determining how much you are comfortable contributing based on both your ability and need to contribute is an important first step when it comes to enrolling in your retirement plan, as there is no one size fits all amount. Generally, participants can invest an annual maximum of $18,000 in 2017, or $24,000 for those 50 or older.
What is your company’s matching policy? Employers typically match 3% to 6% of your salary, but that is contingent on your own contribution. Hint: you should try to contribute at least up to your employer match.
Example: If you make $70k per year and you choose to contribute 5% of your salary, plus your employer matches 3%, you would be saving a total of 8% or $5,600 per year.
You can use the calculators below to see how much you will need to save for retirement, if your current savings are sufficient, and how much your retirement savings are projected to grow based on your individual factors.
What is Your Risk Number?
Determining how much risk you want to take is an important step when it comes to saving for retirement. Usually, the more risk you take, the greater potential for gains. However, striking a balance between “your willingness to take risk” and “your ability to take risk” is a key step.
To help you, we offer a 5-minute Risk Number questionnaire that considers factors such as portfolio size, top financial goals, and time horizon. It illustrates, in real dollar amounts, the trade-off between how much you are willing to watch your account rise or fall in any given 6 month period. Keep in mind, the longer you have until retirement, the less short-term fluctuations matter. After completing the questionnaire, you will have a personalized Risk Number®.
To learn more about your Risk Number and Riskalyze, please watch this short video:
Which investments should you choose?
Not sure how to invest your retirement account? No problem. We have pre-built investment models for you based on your risk tolerance.
Each model has two options: 1) a diversified low-cost index lineup delivering broad market exposure to each asset category, or 2) a diversified lineup of top tier mutual funds selected from the universe of available funds, screened and evaluated on a regular basis.
Let your Risk Number guide you to one of the pre-built models below:
| Risk Number | Suggested Investment Model |
| 1 – 20 | Ultra- Conservative |
| 20 – 45 | Conservative |
| 45 – 65 | Moderate |
| 65 – 99 | Aggressive |
You may allocated 100% towards the investment model of your choice, pick your own allocation, or any combination.
Example #1: Select to allocate: 100% to the Moderate mutual fund model based on a Risk Number of 55.
Example #2: Select to allocate: 25% to the Conservative mutual fund model, 25% to the Moderate index model, 25% to Mutual A, 25% to Mutual B.