Qualified Plan Consulting Group

We provide information and guidance to help you meet your fiduciary responsibilities:

• Retirement plan committee education. We help educate your retirement plan committee to understand not only their responsibilities as a committee member, but the importance of reviewing investment performance, understanding general market conditions and basics of plan governance.
• Legislative consultation and updates. We will keep you informed of significant rule making by the IRS and DOL and discuss the implications of such regulatory changes.

The Qualified Plan Consulting Group can assist you in reviewing your plan design to determine components that best fit the needs of your organization and participants.

The Qualified Plan Consulting Group offers our deep research expertise to your plan.

• Investment policy statement development and review.
• Investment due diligence. Baird’s Asset Management Research team provides coverage of mutual funds, separate account managers and model portfolios, performing over 100 in-person visits with managers and over 300 conference calls annually.
• Investment recommendation and selection.

Your Qualified Plan Consulting Group team will regularly meet with your governance committee to evaluate your investments’ performance compared to your objectives, and provide you with comprehensive performance monitoring reports to document your due diligence.

Understanding the needs of the defined benefit plan or pooled profit sharing portfolio and determining an appropriate asset allocation strategy is one of the most important decisions a plan sponsor will make throughout the life of the plan. Utilizing Baird’s capital market assumptions, our teams will model various asset allocation scenarios to help your committee determine potential strategies based on the unique needs of your plan.

Nothing is more important than ensuring that your employees understand and utilize the benefit offered to them. Successful retirement outcomes are a result of planning and a comprehensive educational process.

For defined contribution plans, our teams may offer periodic enrollment meeting support, annual group educational sessions and one-on-one participant assistance. The Qualified Plan Consulting Group’s depth and breadth of experience ensures that our resources are seamlessly integrated with those of your provider to deliver an educational program that works for your organization.

Our extensive vendor due-diligence process separates us from competing retirement plan consultants. Plan experts at Baird perform extensive due diligence on over 50 record keepers and administrators nationwide to assess commitment to the industry, evaluate services, assess scale, and determine competitive market niche. This process assists your committee to choose and document the most appropriate providers for the unique needs of your plan.

The Qualified Plan Consulting Group will regularly assist your committee to benchmark services and expenses.

Our teams can develop and facilitate a Request for Proposal to compare your current provider with others available in the industry, or to consider changing a current provider. Responses are scored based on success metrics with emphasis on input from those responsible for the plan in your organization. In addition, your QPCG team will offer periodic benchmarking reporting through various independent sources to assist you in your responsibility for determination of reasonable fees.