PLANSPONSOR - April/May 2018 - 18

Corporate 401(k) <$10mm
PolyQuest, Inc.
W
ith headquarters in Wilmington,
North Carolina, PolyQuest, Inc.,
is a PET resins manufacturer and distributor,
employing just under 100 workers.
Important to the company is offering
great benefits to its employees-and it has
recently become very proactive in doing so.
" We want to educate employees about
the importance of planning for life after
work and give them the best possible tools
to feel knowledgeable and in control of
their finances, " says Kimberly Mueller,
human resources (HR) manager at the
company. " That way, they won't be struggling
to make ends meet or relying only on
Social Security once they retire. "
It only made sense, therefore, that
several years ago, when the PolyQuest
employees expressed disappointment in
the lack of resources available to them in
their 401(k) plan, the company listened.
The HR department " was not as in-theknow
as we should have been about our
plan, and we were not receiving attentive
service or educational assistance from our
provider, " Mueller recalls. Combine those
deficiencies with having an unwieldy
number of unbundled plan providers and
a separate third-party administrator (TPA),
and a change was overdue.
" Considering that we were running a
part of the plan, that felt like a fail on our
end, " Mueller says.
The plan sponsor was also learning of
the upcoming changes to the Department
of Labor (DOL) fiduciary rule, and of
features that many other plans offered. For
all of these reasons, in 2016, the sponsor
decided to make a switch, while keeping
participation rate and a cost-effective,
targeted focus on education in mind.
A Focus on Education
As its adviser, Katherine Medina of Merrill
Lynch, also in Wilmington, helped the
company shop around for a new plan
recordkeeper, one that could support, teach
and benefit participants. By mid-2016, the
plan sponsor had formed an investment
committee, composed of Mueller, the chief
financial officer (CFO) and the controller,
who together worked with Medina to
design a plan for PolyQuest's unique
employee demographics and educational
needs. Today, the plan is bundled, with
MassMutual as recordkeeper.
When the plan went live, at the start
of 2017, the change did not go unnoticed.
Since the company's first education
meeting, given by its new provider,
participation has grown to 85%, with 18
individuals enrolling or increasing their
contributions in that first meeting. This
past January, 10 more employees enrolled
or upped their contributions.
Mueller says much of the plan's
success is due to the one-on-one contact
offered by the team at MassMutual and
18 PLANSPONSOR.com April-May 2018 Art by Chris Buzelli
TOTAL PLAN ASSETS/PARTICIPANTS:
$3.4 million/62
PARTICIPATION RATE: 85%
AVERAGE DEFERRAL RATE: 6%
AUTOMATIC ENROLLMENT: No
AUTOMATIC ESCALATION: No
EMPLOYER CONTRIBUTION: 100% on 3%,
plus 50% on next 2%
Merrill Lynch, which provides PolyQuest's
workers with effective, easily comprehensible
materials. " They're really good at
putting everything in relatable terms for
our employees, " she says. " Just getting
them to see that something as simple as
not buying a pizza every week-the savings
differential of investing that money in
your 401(k) and the compounding of that
amount over 30 years is dramatic. "
The former plan design had no builtin
effort to engage participants, but the new
design includes reaching out twice a year.
PolyQuest hosts informational sessions in
both its Wilmington and its Darlington,
South Carolina, locations. And, as most
employees are shift workers, MassMutual
and Merrill Lynch conduct each session
several times to be sure all can attend.
Employee response has been
http://www.PLANSPONSOR.com
PLANSPONSOR - April/May 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of PLANSPONSOR - April/May 2018
