While this list is not exhaustive, it’s a good reference for areas of focus for your plan review. USI Consulting Group (USICG) finds compliance issues in at least a third of the plans we review. USICG’s compliance experts can assist you with the review process and with correcting any found errors.

Create Your Compliance Checklist for 2024

A compliance checklist serves as a guide throughout the year. To help you create your own compliance checklist, USICG has summarized all 2024 compliance deadlines and action items, including detailed 2024 retirement plan compliance calendars:

We recommend including everything from documentation and benefit calculations to day-to-day administrative processes on your compliance checklist. Once you have a checklist, set a timeline for completing a compliance review. These can take between six weeks and six months to complete.

Get Started With These 10 Tips

If you’re not currently using best practices — or you’re unsure if you are — consider these top 10 tips for maintaining retirement plans:

1. Select and monitor plan investments regularly
2. Perform ongoing monitoring and reporting, including on investments and participant activity
3. Continuously check and benchmark plan expenses
4. Grasp your fiduciary role and responsibilities
5. Stay on top of regulatory updates and new regulations, including specific plan design and documentation requirements from SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022
6. Secure protection and mitigate risk through fiduciary oversight
7. Prepare for an audit with an independent operational compliance review
8. Understand the impact of retirement plan design and offer a competitive retirement program
9. Oversee the day-to-day plan administration, including reporting and recordkeeping requirements
10. Help employees improve retirement readiness by developing and implementing a successful financial well-being program

Case Study: Reducing cost and risk with an operational review

A company recently engaged USICG after it discovered operational issues causing delays in its automatic enrollment process. USICG performed a full scope review of all functions related to the 401(k) plan to determine the level of document and operational compliance.

Using documentation and reporting provided by the company and the plan’s recordkeeper, USICG completed a thorough review of the following areas: eligibility and entry dates, reconciliation of employee contributions from payroll to recordkeeper, timing of contribution deposits, definition of plan-eligible compensation, and participant distributions (including force-outs and hardships).

USICG presented a report of its findings for each area of review, including a list of participants impacted. The report included recommendations for day-to-day plan administration to ensure regulatory compliance with the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and the Internal Revenue Code going forward.

Further, USICG assisted the company with correcting the discovered errors by utilizing the voluntary correction procedures available through the DOL and IRS, reducing the correction cost and avoiding penalties had the errors been identified under IRS or DOL audit. By bringing the plan into compliance, the company was able to mitigate future risk of negative findings under audit.²