Plan sponsor worksheet · Retirement
Twelve questions you should be able to answer about your own plan. Most sponsors can answer four.
If you sponsor a 401(k), you are a fiduciary. That is not a title anyone gave you — it attaches automatically, and it carries a duty to act in participants' interest and to be able to show that you did.
The uncomfortable part is that the duty is about process, not outcomes. You are not required to pick the best funds. You are required to have a documented, repeated process for deciding. Score yourself honestly. Tick Yes only where you could produce the document today.
0 / 12
Answer the questions above
Your score appears here as you go. Nothing is sent anywhere — this page stores nothing and has no form.
| Score | Read |
|---|---|
| 10–12 | You have a real fiduciary process. The remaining value is in benchmarking, not remediation. |
| 6–9 | Typical for a well-run small plan. The gaps are almost always documentation, not decisions — you probably did the work and didn't write it down. |
| 3–5 | The plan is running on the provider's process rather than yours. Common, and the most common place real money is found. |
| 0–2 | You are carrying an obligation you cannot currently evidence. This is worth attention before it is worth shopping. |
If you only fix three, fix these:
| Benchmark fees | Fee reasonableness is an ongoing duty, not a check performed once at adoption. A schedule that was fair at $500K in assets is often not fair at $5M, because many never step down. |
| Write down the process | An investment policy statement and dated committee minutes cost nothing and are the difference between "we were careful" and "we can show we were careful". |
| Look at participation | A plan most employees aren't in is failing at its purpose regardless of how well the funds performed. Auto-enrollment typically moves participation 15–25 points. |
A benchmark against comparable plans of similar size and asset level answers most of Section 1 in about a week. We do that at no charge and it names its comparison set, because a benchmark that won't tell you what it compared against isn't a benchmark.
No obligation attaches to it, and it does not require moving the plan, the provider or anything else.