PLANSPONSOR - April/May 2019 - 61

Individuals
Michele Haley
She helped the plan sponsor with a voluntary corrective
action to mitigate incorrect employer contributions
RECORDKEEPER COMPANY: Ascensus
CLIENT: Duo Security Inc. (purchased by Cisco in October 2018)
CLIENT INDUSTRY: Technology/Computers/Software
CLIENT HEADQUARTERS: Ann Arbor, Michigan
PLAN ASSETS/PARTICIPANTS: >$10mm - $25mm/825
BIO: Michele Haley, a client relationship manager with Ascensus,
in Dresher, Pennsylvania, has worked for the firm for 17 years and
in the retirement plan industry for 32. She has a B.A. degree from
Pennsylvania State University and manages around 35 large plans.
E
ric Rosenberg, payroll manager for Duo Security Inc., a data
security platform provider, says, " Michele Haley has been
our plan contact as we grew from a small company to an international
organization of over 825 employees in just a few years.
During this hyper-growth, she has always been a phone call away
to answer our questions, assist with one-off situations, and has
been a critical component in ensuring our third-party annual
401(k) audits have gone smoothly. "
In particular, during the last year, Michele, a client relationship
manager with Ascensus, worked closely with Rosenberg
as Duo took a voluntary corrective action to mitigate incorrect
employer contributions affecting a sizeable number of current
and past employees, plus summer interns.
" We had no idea where to start in this process, and Michele
was instrumental in taking us through it, step by step, ensuring
we completed the actions in a timely and efficient way, " he says.
Part of the correction involved Duo automatically enrolling
workers into its 401(k) plan upon hiring. The sponsor had been
unaware its plan documents called for summer interns to be
included. For 2016 and 2017, the two years the company employed
interns, they were not auto-enrolled or invited to join the plan.
" Once the plan was large enough that we needed a 401(k)
audit, it rose to the surface that our plan documents did not
exclude the interns, " Rosenberg says. " The first thing we did was
to amend the plan going forward. "
" When Eric presented these corrections to me, " Haley recalls,
" I focused on quickly gaining a complete understanding of the
plan failure. There were many participants involved, and it was
important that the adjustments be processed on a timely basis. "
The correction was complex, both Haley and Rosenberg
note. Some contributions had to be made, and some had been
overstated and had to be removed. " We needed to calculate earnings, "
Haley says. " The adjustment steps had to be communicated,
organized and well-documented for audit purposes. We
were able to complete the correction in about a month. " -JFH
Kelly Jennings
She helped the plan sponsor transition to a new
retirement plan provider
RECORDKEEPER COMPANY: Newport Group
CLIENT: American Efficiency Services
CLIENT INDUSTRY: Utilities
CLIENT HEADQUARTERS: Woodbine, Missouri
PLAN ASSETS/PARTICIPANTS: $1mm - $5mm/23
BIO: Kelly Jennings has been a relationship manager in Newport
Group's Fresno, California, office since 2011. She works on the
platform of Verisight Inc., a company in the Newport Group, and
provides retirement plan services to over 80 plans.
W
hen American Efficiency Services (AES) decided to
outsource its accounting department and change its
401(k) retirement plan provider, in January 2017, it believed the
process would be simple. Payables, receivables and payroll would
go to Webster Rogers Financial Advisors and its 401(k) plan to
the Newport Group.
" We underestimated and failed to understand how large the
requirement was to transition everything on the 401(k) side, "
says Robert Mechem, managing partner at AES, which provides
guaranteed leak detection, tube cleaning and industrial inspections
to a variety of industries including electrical generating,
petrochemical, food processing, pharmaceutical and ethanolproducing
facilities. While the company had decided how it
would manage the accounting services conversion, little had
been arranged concerning the 401(k) plan.
Newport Group Relationship Manager Kelly Jennings was
placed in charge of aiding the plan sponsor with the transition,
and through her and her colleagues, the conversion was
successfully made. Jennings' team assured the sponsor that the
plan would stay in compliance and the team would make for a
seamless conversion. Aside from assisting with these tasks, she
educated employees about the new fund lineup and their investments,
plus on how to use the redesigned web platform.
The completion of all documentation-including census
and compliance testing-was managed by Jennings, so the
company could focus on its business and the accounting transition.
Jennings would reach out to the plan sponsor regularly,
ensuring that any audit requirements were met.
Whether for facilitating the conversion or helping to educate
a new hire, the plan sponsor praises Jennings and her team for
their consistent availability-since the conversion, in 2017, she
has continued to ensure that the plan runs efficiently.
Mechem says, " The level of detail and efficiency in which
Kelly and her team operate indicates we made the correct move
and should have done it much sooner. " -AU
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