Who offers 401k?

31st Oct 2009 by Joseph Pousada

If you are a business and are looking to offer a 401k plan to your employees your first step would be to contact your broker/dealer, bank, or insurance company. You may want to contact more than one and get information on their 401k prototype plans. These plans are pre-approved by the IRS and are typically administered by the financial company offering them. If you decide that these plans do not suit your needs, you may also contact your attorney who would specialize in retirement plans to draw up a customized plan to submit for IRS approval. Once you have the approval form the IRS, you could administer the plan but the assets would still need to be held at a broker/dealer, bank, trust or insurance company. Ask your broker/dealer, bank, trust or insurance company about their non – prototype plans and review with them if they are able to accommodate any special needs that you have. You may need to confirm they will be able to accommodate all data transmissions you send to them because your business uses specialized software and what method they can accommodate for transmission. (I.e. send them certain types of files via email or maybe a local firm that will accommodate you sending information via a portable device in person.) Also, ask about what the cut off times would be for sending information for the year end statements and confirm that they can reflect all activity you transmit to them including commodities/futures, rights, derivatives or any other product your plan will trade.

This answer is the subjective opinion of the writer and not of FinancialAdvisory.com