Stone Hill Fiduciary Management is a strong, capable, and independent ERISA fiduciary that manages retirement plans on behalf of our clients. We protect boards of directors and trustees, corporate officers, firm partners, retirement plan committees, and other plan sponsor fiduciaries.
Shared Plan Governance: We have the expertise and processes in place to manage plan administration and plan investment. We have very strong fiduciary capabilities and the multi-disciplined experience to share fiduciary governance responsibility with plan sponsors. The current regulatory environment makes it difficult for an investment advisor to adequately represent plan sponsor interests unless the advisor is an ERISA fiduciary.
Board of Director Liability: We facilitate board monitoring by issuing an annual certification letter documenting best fiduciary practices. The board has the ultimate legal responsibility for retirement plan management and may delegate fiduciary responsibility to a retirement plan committee that appoints Stone Hill Fiduciary Management as Managing Fiduciary and Named Fiduciary.
Plan Committee Responsibility: The plan sponsor retains the residual responsibility to prudently select and monitor the performance of the Named Fiduciary. We facilitate retirement plan committee monitoring by conducting in-person quarterly meetings where we provide quarterly monitoring reports that document fiduciary decisions for review and approval.
Plan Fiduciary Best Governance: Plan sponsors may have to explain, if not defend, their actions in retaining service providers if they do not conduct a full request-for-proposal process to test the marketplace for retirement plan services every three years.
Plan Transactions: Recent lawsuits have alleged that plan sponsor boards, officers, and other in-house plan fiduciaries have breached their duties by failing to investigate plan transactions. Plan sponsors must identify conflicts of interest and potential self-dealing and make judicious fiduciary decisions in the best interest of the plan and plan participants.
Managing Fiduciary: We are responsible for daily plan operations and service provider selection and retention. We delegate (1) plan investment custody to a non-fiduciary custodian, (2) plan trusteeship to a directed fiduciary trust company, (3) plan administration to a non-fiduciary third party plan administrator, and (4) plan record keeping to a non-fiduciary service provider. As Managing Fiduciary, we monitor non-fiduciary service providers and directed plan trustees.
Reasonable Compensation: Our clients receive clarity under our fee arrangement. To ensure that we avoid any conflicts of interest, we do not accept compensation, solicitor fees, or brokerage commissions from third parties. Likewise, to avoid inflated client fees, we do not pay compensation, solicitor fees, or brokerage commissions to third parties.
Value-Based Advisory Fees: Plan sponsors deserve high caliber investment advisory services without the high basis point fees charged by traditional investment firms. Our fee for plan investment and plan administration fiduciary services approximates what other retirement plan professionals charge for advisory services limited solely to plan investment.
We help alleviate the plan sponsor’s concerns regarding plan compliance and their fiduciary liability.