Planning Your Retirement Program
A retirement plan that was compliant at launch doesn’t stay that way on its own. HUB International helps plan sponsors design the right plan structure, manage fiduciary risk and keep administration current as SECURE 2.0 and state mandates continue to shift.
Stay Ahead of Business Challenges
Where plan-sponsor pressure builds
Planning your retirement program advisory work covers four distinct pressures facing plan sponsors today: finding one advisor for fiduciary co-sourcing and provider benchmarking, keeping administration current as regulations shift, defending the plan's process if it's ever challenged and coordinating plan design with health savings account (HSA) integration.
Plan sponsors carrying personal fiduciary liability rarely have easy access, in one relationship, to both a co-fiduciary or discretionary fiduciary arrangement and independent fee and provider benchmarking. Most advisors offer one or the other, not both together.
A plan sponsor holding personal fiduciary liability under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) needs both a fiduciary arrangement that shares that liability and an honest, independent read on whether current fees and providers are reasonable. Finding both from one advisor, rather than piecing them together from separate vendors, is harder than it should be.
A single advisory relationship that offers a documented fiduciary co-sourcing arrangement alongside ongoing, independent fee and provider benchmarking gives the plan sponsor one coordinated source for the two things fiduciary liability most depends on, instead of stitching together separate specialists for each.
Fiduciary liability and fee reasonableness are really the same conversation. The sponsors who treat them separately usually end up with gaps in both.
The plan sponsor has one advisory relationship covering both fiduciary co-sourcing and provider benchmarking, reducing the chance that either responsibility falls through the gap between two disconnected vendors.
Ongoing regulatory phase-in, SECURE 2.0 provisions taking effect over several years, plus a state-by-state patchwork of auto-IRA (individual retirement accounts) mandates, creates a moving compliance target that standard, one-time plan setup simply doesn’t cover on its own over time.
SECURE 2.0 provisions continue phasing in year over year, and state auto-IRA mandates vary by state, creating two separate moving compliance targets. A plan set up correctly at launch can quietly fall out of step with either requirement without an ongoing administrative process built to catch that drift.
Administrative support that treats compliance as an ongoing process, tracking SECURE 2.0 phase-ins and state mandate changes as they happen, rather than as a one-time setup task, keeps the plan current without requiring the employer’s own human resources (HR) team to track every regulatory change independently.
The plans that stay compliant are the ones with someone actively tracking what changed since setup.
The plan sponsor has ongoing visibility into SECURE 2.0 and state-mandate compliance status over time, rather than discovering a gap only when it’s already a problem.
Excessive-fee and imprudent-fund-lineup ERISA lawsuits are a real and ongoing litigation category, and a plan sponsor without a documented, benchmarked fiduciary process has little to point to if the plan’s decisions are ever challenged in court.
ERISA litigation over excessive fees and imprudent fund lineups is an established category of lawsuit, not a hypothetical risk. A plan sponsor who has never documented why their fund lineup and fees were chosen has little to show a court if that process is ever challenged.
Building and maintaining a documented, benchmarked fiduciary process, the kind that shows the reasoning behind fund lineup and fee decisions over time, gives a plan sponsor something real to point to if a claim is ever brought, rather than reconstructing the reasoning after the fact.
Courts have consistently looked for a documented process, not a perfect outcome. The plans in the strongest position are the ones that can show their work.
The plan sponsor has a documented, ongoing fiduciary process they can point to if challenged, rather than needing to reconstruct their reasoning under pressure after a claim is filed.
Plan structure decisions, 401(k) vs. 403(b)/457(b) vs. defined benefit vs. profit-sharing, and HSA investment functionality are typically decided and administered separately, even though both are part of the same employee’s total retirement and health savings picture.
Choosing a plan structure, 401(k), 403(b)/457(b), defined benefit, profit-sharing, and deciding how an HSA’s investment feature fits alongside it are usually handled as two separate conversations, even when an organization’s growth, a nonprofit conversion or an acquisition means both decisions really need to happen together.
Treating plan structure selection and HSA investment integration as one coordinated advisory conversation, instead of two separate decisions made at different times by different people, gives the employer a program that’s designed to work together rather than assembled piece by piece.
Plan structure and HSA design get treated as separate line items far more often than they should be, given how much they affect the same employee’s savings picture.
The employer has one coordinated retirement and health-savings program design, built with plan structure and HSA integration considered together rather than as two unrelated administrative decisions.
Our Areas of Expertise
An approach built around fiduciary discipline at every stage
Generic plan administration treats setup as a one-time task only. HUB structures plan design, fiduciary support, scalable delivery and HSA integration as one ongoing discipline, built to stay current as regulations shift and organizations grow.
Choosing the right plan structure, 401(k), profit-sharing, defined benefit pension, employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) or 403(b)/457(b) for nonprofit and government entities, starts with evaluating a 401(k) plan sponsor's organizational structure, financial capacity and workforce needs together, not selecting a structure off a generic checklist. HUB works through that evaluation directly with plan sponsors, accounting for how growth, an acquisition or a nonprofit conversion might change which structure fits best over time. This grouping anchors HUB’s approach, since the fiduciary support, scalable delivery and HSA integration work described in detail below all build directly on the plan structure decided here at the very outset.
Investment Policy Statement creation and review, fee benchmarking, provider and vendor analysis and 3(21) and 3(38) fiduciary arrangements together give plan sponsors a fully documented process rather than an informal one handled on an ad hoc basis from year to year without much structure. Quarterly monitoring reporting keeps that process current rather than treating it as a one-time setup task performed once and then forgotten about entirely. This is the grouping most directly tied to litigation-readiness, since a documented, benchmarked fiduciary process is exactly what a plan sponsor needs to show if fund lineup or fee decisions are ever challenged in court.
Small businesses often can’t access a cost-effective, well-administered retirement plan at all without pooling resources. A pooled employer plan configuration, available in both sub-100 and 100-plus employee versions, moves most plan administration outside the employer’s own HR team while still delivering a compliant, well-run program. This grouping extends the same fiduciary discipline used for larger plan sponsors down to employers who could not otherwise access it cost-effectively on their own.
HSA investment functionality is often managed separately from the broader retirement plan, leaving employees without a coordinated view of health-and-retirement savings across both accounts. HUB positions the HSA investment account as part of the retirement program’s coordinated design rather than a stand-alone health benefit administered on its own timeline. This grouping keeps plan structure decisions and HSA integration connected, so an organization’s growth or structural change triggers one coordinated review instead of two separate, disconnected conversations handled by different people.
HUB's Impact
Proof this approach holds up under scrutiny
When plan administration falls behind regulatory change or a fiduciary process is never documented, the risk shows up as litigation exposure or a compliance gap discovered too late. HUB's approach is built to prevent that.
Case Studies
Compliance Achieved
Insights for Your Business
Retirement plan insights and resources
