PLANSPONSOR - June/July 2018 - 43

try to understand what you seek in your partner. What are the
deliverables that are most valuable to you, your organization and
your participants? That becomes the focus of what you use to
compare providers, and it makes it easier to do your evaluating of
responses and discernment of which candidates rise to the top. "
Consider starting with a template and narrowing or
customizing it based on your plan's issues, suggests adviser
Julie Doran, senior vice president, retirement plan advisory
services, at Sentinel Benefits & Financial Group in Wakefield,
Massachusetts. " What we suggest is that the plan sponsor ask
itself some questions before putting the RFP together, " she says.
" 'What have been your " pain points " for the previous 24 months?
Where is your internal staff struggling with the plan, and how
can a vendor be a better partner for you on those issues?' "
Similarly, Francis Investment Counsel will seek pain-point
information through ongoing dialogue with its sponsor clients,
including at their quarterly committee meetings. " We ask questions
about how the current provider is performing, and, when
you have that dialogue every 90 days, you're going to get a sense
of how that relationship is with the recordkeeper, " Topp says. " We
also do an annual fiduciary review, where we take a deeper dive
into plan statistics and participant behaviors within the plan, to
try to uncover areas for improvement in plan design or participant
education strategy. "
Doran recommends that sponsors also look at data on
employee demographics to help identify their plan's needs. " Of
course, you want to look at the average age of employees, but then
you also want to do a further breakdown of the age distribution
of your work force, " she says. " Many companies have 'barbell'
employee demographics, with a lot of older folks and also a lot of
Millennials. Think about how your plan can meet the needs of a
diverse population. "
Even more crucial than demographics is to study metrics for
employee engagement with the plan, says Brian Hanna, senior
retirement plan consultant at Everhart Advisors in Dublin, Ohio.
That holds especially true for employees' comfort level with technology,
he says.
Employers often make assumptions about technology use,
particularly in thinking that blue-collar workers shy away from
technology and prefer paper instead, Hanna says. " But research
shows that all demographics have smartphones, across the board.
Some employees might not have a computer or use email, but they
use smartphone apps, " he says. " This is an issue of walking the
employer through 'Why have you been doing the things you do?' "
A sponsor's current recordkeeper can provide data on usage of
mobile apps and the participant website, including the number of
unique log-ins each month and data on actions participants take
after logging in such as utilizing a retirement-needs-analysis tool.
How much employee-demographic and participant-usage
data should actually appear in an RFP? " We think that the more
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