Leading by Example
CONGRATULATIONS to the 2012 PLANSPONSOR Plan
Sponsors of the Year, whom I am very pleased to introduce
to you in this issue, along with their esteemed peers who
have been recognized as finalists.
The PLANSPONSOR Plan Sponsor of the Year awards are
months in the making. It began last fall, when we opened
nominations for the award, and accepted those nominations
from those across the industry: plan sponsors, recordkeepers
and third-party administrators, asset managers, and
retirement plan advisers. It continued through Thanksgiving
while Plan Sponsor of the Year nominees responded to our
requests for information about their programs, until the first
data mines its plan and reporting from its recordkeeper to
create action plans for increasing employee engagement and
savings in its 403(b) plan.
The profiles of our winners are followed by the finalists in
four of the five categories (there were no finalists for the DB
category), all of which share tales about familiar challenges,
and offer stories about how they met—and succeeded in
overcoming—these challenges.
The profiles of the winners and finalists offer the industry
inspiring stories of plan sponsors in various industries
that have distinguished their programs in unique and
The profiles of the winners and finalists offer the industry
inspiring stories of plan sponsors in various industries that have
distinguished their programs in unique and quantifiable ways—and
with demonstrable results. We all benefit from their examples.
of February when we announced our selections as finalists,
and culminates today with the publication of those we honor
from that elite group as finalists and the five Plan Sponsors
of the Year.
This year, we recognize winners in five categories:
Corporate DC; Corporate DC—Small (less than $50 million
in assets); DB; Public DC; and Nonprofit, or 403(b). In the
profiles of our five winners (beginning on page 34), you
will learn about how the Land O’Lakes Inc. 401(k) applies
the “through” retirement philosophy to much more than the
target-date funds in its DC plan; how Fort Wayne Metals
uses mandatory education meetings, one-on-one sessions,
and retirement-preparedness reports to improve its 401(k)
results; why Hickory Springs Manufacturing Co. looked to
an innovative risk-transfer deal and a new LDI strategy to
keep assets and liabilities aligned; the benefits that Fairfax
County’s deferred compensation plan reaped for the plan
and participants by consolidating to a single recordkeeper;
and how Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center
quantifiable ways—and with demonstrable results. We all
benefit from their examples.
Late this month, PLANSPONSOR and sister publication
PLANADVISER will host their annual Awards for
Excellence dinner. There we will acknowledge—in person—
the achievements of the plan sponsors featured in these
pages, as well as the best-in-class winners in a variety of
key industry categories from our 2011 PLANSPONSOR
DC Survey, and announce our Retirement Plan Adviser and
Retirement Plan Adviser Team of the Year winners, who
will be profiled here in the May issue. (If you are interested
in more information about the event, please contact Carol
Popkins at cpopkins@assetinternational.com.)
I hope you enjoy reading about your peers as much as we
enjoyed getting to know them in our recognition of their
hard work. I encourage all of you with similar encouraging
and inspirational stories to share them with us during the
nomination process later this year. —Alison Cooke Mintzer
