Legal Consulting and Compliance
What is Retirement Plan Legal and Compliance Consulting?
Mid- to large-sized companies with complex retirement plan designs can rely on legal consulting and compliance service providers to deliver offerings including compliant solutions, existing control evaluation, fiduciary and governance education, advice and guidance on retirement plan tax, ERISA, policies, legal and other plan design matters.
Why is Retirement Plan Legal Consulting and Compliance Important?
Organizations with complex retirement plan designs are responsible for ensuring that plan controls, policies, safeguards, and practices are compliant with tax and ERISA rules and that fiduciaries are informed and properly monitoring activities. Solid governance reduces risk and promotes wise decision-making, disciplined oversight, and compliance.
Legal and compliance consulting service providers can help an organization review a plan’s qualified status, manage pension plan liabilities and risks, evaluate existing controls, stay up to date on industry-leading best practices, develop compliant solutions, advise on tax and ERISA issues, and help create a sound governance and compliance structure that reinforces an organization’s commitment to best practices.
How Can Aon Help with Legal Consulting?
Our attorneys seamlessly partner with actuarial, investment, defined contribution and administration practices to provide one-stop legal consulting services.
Aon’s Retirement Legal Consulting and Compliance team can help organizations develop compliant solutions to IRS and Department of Labor (DOL) issues and keep up with current topics, like cyber security and redeploying stranded assets. Our legal consultants advise you about tax and ERISA issues involving all types of defined benefit and defined contribution plans, including cash balance and 401(k) plans; nonqualified plans and related funding; post-retirement health funding (e.g., VEBAs; and 401(h) accounts) as well as executive compensation programs.
ERISA
Our legal consultants advise you about tax and ERISA issues involving all types of defined benefit and defined contribution plans.
Our Approach
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Confirm Plan's Qualified Status
Our independent review confirms that the plan meets qualification requirements, which is key to supporting future deductions, contractual and audit representations, financial disclosures, rollovers to or from the plan, and responses to any IRS or DOL inquiries.
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Review Nonqualified Plan
We conduct a compliance review of plan operations that may affect your plan, including election changes, delayed commencement, grandfathered benefits, FICA taxes, and plan terminations.
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Manage Pension Plan Liabilities and Risk
We work with our actuarial and investment teams to evaluate alternative tax and ERISA strategies, including lump-sum window and other de-risking programs. We evaluate fiduciary plan governance issues relating to alternative investment strategies to reduce volatility and align assets and liabilities.
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Select Independent Fiduciaries
Our experienced team helps you evaluate and select an independent, third-party fiduciary to help ensure proper management of employer stock and mitigate the risk of benefits litigation.
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Create Lump Sum Windows and Early Retirement Incentive Programs
Aon provides everything you need for a lump sum or early retirement window program — from design to administration to overall IRC and ERISA compliance. We can identify and evaluate financial, accounting, tax, ERISA, administrative and operational issues in a wide range of industries.
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Fund Post-Retirement Health Plans
We work directly with you to address post-retirement health funding arrangements, from designing VEBAs and 401(h) accounts to TOLI funding to redeployment of excess or stranded assets.
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Draft Plan Documents, SPDs and Vendor Contracts
We help you draft individual plan documents of defined benefit, defined contribution, nonqualified plans and related funding arrangements. We have deep experience with vendor contracting on behalf of large employers.
How Can Aon Help with Compliance Consulting?
Our compliance experts are guided by industry best practices. We partner with organizations to evaluate existing controls and help enhance policies and practices in alignment with an organization’s governance.
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Compliance Fact-Finding
To help create a sound governance and compliance structure, our consultants ask targeted questions to uncover needs:
- Do fiduciaries understand their responsibilities, including plan document reviews and compliance?
- Are there sufficient policies, practices, controls and reports to confirm compliance with both tax and ERISA rules, as well as cyber security safeguards?
- Are fiduciaries properly evaluating them with delegated authority to monitor compliance?
- Do fiduciaries monitor compliance and report findings on an ongoing basis?
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Fiduciary Training
Good governance means ensuring that fiduciaries are informed and properly monitoring plan activities. Aon consultants provide fiduciary and governance education and training to help clients understand their role in managing the assets on behalf of plan fiduciaries in a prudent manner. Our team offers:
- Customized Fiduciary Reviews: We review internal controls, risk management processes, due diligence procedures and investment policy compliance.
- Governance Diagnostics: We assess your decision-makers, the value of the information they receive, and their level of delegation, oversight, compliance and reporting.
- Board/Committee Self-Assessments: Members identify strengths and weaknesses to help refine problem-solving, set priorities and create a tangible action plan.
- Documentation Reviews and Advice: We help you determine the best approach to improving compliance operations.
Product / Service
Pension Risk Transfer
