Employee Benefits
AGF Advisors is primarily focused on benefit plans and works with high visibility clients like the Los Angeles Country Club and the world famous Magic Castle in Hollywood. Providing a competitive benefits package while controlling costs, is a challenging mandate for most employers today. To meet that challenge, we provide solutions that work with our independent, transparent, flexible, personal touch service model and cost savings opportunities that can be achieved by combining services under one roof. Our services include 401(k), 403(b), 457, ESOP, and deferred compensation plans. Apart from the AGF Advisory services, we offer group life and health insurance plans. The health plans are offered through our strategic partnership with a national health benefit consultant who has extensive experience and shares our vision and philosophy. Furthermore, we provide peace of mind for our clients by implementing plan best practices and sharing their fiduciary responsibility.
Experience the Benefit of our Consultative Approach
AGF Advisors uses a consultative approach and its extensive industry knowledge to determine your needs and make recommendations to either improve your existing plan or conduct a new vendor search to find the best value service combination that fits your organization. AGF works with a team of seasoned professionals to assist with the plan design and attract valuable employees. We also provide award winning bilingual employee education and individualized guidance to help employees better utilize their benefits package and retire with dignity. Our process begins with a thorough needs assessment to determine the service gaps of your current plan and work to correct and improve service.
Comprehensive Consulting Services
As an independent advisory firm, AGF is not tied to any product, provider or brokerage firm offering. This is an important advantage when helping companies choose the providers and services that offer the best solutions. You benefit from not only our objectivity and experience but also from the relationships we have built in the industry over the years, including on-site visits to provider headquarters to “look under the hood and check the tires” as an added step in our due diligence process. While our services are discussed in detail in our Engagement Agreement, they are summarized as follows:
- Strategic Plan Review
- Plan Design and Contract Analysis
- Plan Benchmark and Vendor Search
- Investment Due Diligence and Investment Policy Statement
- ERISA and 404 (c ) Compliance
- Management of Conversion Process
Personal Touch Service Model
The majority of our clients are in high-touch service industries and require a partner with the same philosophy and attention to detail. Two very important differences are that our sales team is also your service team, meaning that the most experienced people in our company will be delivering the services and that we have a low client to advisor ratio, which means more attention to you as you are a big fish in our pond. Our clients will tell you that they hear from us frequently and that we are proactive in the services we provide. Some of our on-going client servicing include:
- Oversight and monitoring of plan investments
- Monitoring of provider services
- Periodically benchmarking your plan to ensure it’s still the best option for participants
- Providing regulatory updates and guidance on compliance
- On-site visits to hold group meetings and benefit fairs
- On-site visits to work with participants individually
Obtain Peace of Mind by Implementing Best Practices
The regulatory waters have become more difficult to navigate with significant new oversight and requirements. We will help you meet Department of Labor guidelines and avoid costly penalties and fines by helping you stay on course and remain compliant through our repeatable, documentable process.
Another key difference is that as advisors under the Advisors Act of 1940, we have higher due diligence requirements in our capacity as co-fiduciaries as we are to “act in the best interest” of the client, and have a “duty of loyalty” to them. This pertains to ALL our services, not just the investment line up. Are you a plan fiduciary and do you know your duties under ERISA? Read More
Also, we partner with a national health benefit consultant with extensive experience to provide an added resource in helping our clients navigating the complex new medical plan regulations.
Retirement Plans
Our mission is to partner with sponsors to achieve the pillars of a successful defined contribution plan
Whether you’re organized as a company or public institution, we can help employees maximize the use of their 401(k), 403(b), or 457(b) plan. According to Fred Reish, Esq. one of the most recognized voices on ERISA and retirement plan best practices, the three pillars of a successful defined contribution plan are: high participation levels, increased deferral rates and quality of participant investments. We have obtained positive results for our clients by starting with a smart plan design to ensure desired results and avoid potential problems, selecting an appropriate investment line-up to match employee demographics, and providing bilingual award-winning customized enrollment meetings and individualized investment guidance and advice to help employees retire with dignity Read More
Using Deferred Compensation, Cafeteria, and Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOP’s) to help key executives, business owners, and employees
Every business has specific needs and unique employee demographics. We work to understand your needs and find solutions that help attract and retain valuable employees. For example, you may want to reward key executives with a deferred compensation plan where additional money is set aside for their retirement, or provide flexibility for all employees using a commonly underused 125 or “cafeteria” plan. A flexible spending or section 125 of the U.S. tax code plan allows employees to withhold a portion of their pre-tax salary to cover certain medical or child-care expenses. Furthermore, owners of closely held businesses are often surprised to learn that employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) are not just for large corporations. In fact, very often there are more compelling reasons for a private company to adopt an ESOP than there are for a large public company. An ESOP is one of the most powerful planning tools available to a business owner and ESOPs are an excellent alternative to the traditional ways for businesses to raise liquidity.
Our award-winning bilingual employee education program helps employees retire with dignity
As the recipients of the prestigious Profit Sharing Council of America Gold Signature Award for Excellence in Retirement Plan Communications, we are in a unique position to help your employees succeed. We have also been recognized by 401(k) Newswire and Employee Benefit News for our pioneering efforts and unique approach in meeting the education needs of a diverse workforce. This is a significant advantage in light of current retirement saving trends. See examples of our Custom Education Materials. Experience the power to reinforce education efforts online with our unique bilingual interactive web tutorial by visiting http://www.buenfuturo.com/member/index.shtml
Retirement Savings Trends
Some of the statistics related to the American worker savings patterns are not very encouraging. According to the research, 71% of employees do not feel confident about a comfortable retirement, and part of the problem is that a majority of Americans have not tried to estimate how much money they will need at retirement. It is, therefore, imperative that plan sponsors embrace a communications plan that goes beyond participation to determine whether employees are actually able to retire or not. Read More
We take a different approach to help employees better prepare for their future
While standard group enrollment meetings are needed and have their place, our decades of experience in the trenches validate the research and show that many employees still don’t know the basics including: target savings, deferral rate needed to get there and most importantly, the needed investment return percentage. As such, many take too much or too little risk and as a result do not prepare properly for their future. We take a different approach, working individually with participants and providing unbiased bilingual investment guidance and advice which has proved to make a difference for our clients. We help employees:
- Envision the future they desire
- Calculate their savings goal
- Determine the deferral amount needed
- Determine the required investment return goal
- Select the appropriate investment mix while also taking their risk tolerance into account
- Help them monitor their investment plan
Employers with a diverse workforce face additional challenges
These challenges include: language barriers, different levels of acculturation and cultural biases that often impede employees from fully benefiting from their benefit plan. According to the research, Latinos have specific financial education needs and financial choices, a “one-size-fits-all” approach to pension plan counseling is not the best approach to raising their financial knowledge*. We help bridge those barriers with our award-winning bilingual, bi-cultural sensitive education and individualized guidance program Read More
Managing costs with a customized education campaign
When a Safe Harbor plan, for example, is not an option due to cost restrictions, a customized education campaign has the potential to deliver the desired results of higher participation and increased deferrals. According to the Watson Wyatt Retirement Attitude Survey, overall generosity of a 401(k) plan has little impact on either attraction or retention due to portability. Instead, enhancing communications is cheaper and in many cases more effective in creating employee loyalty and retention. We provide a Customized Communications Plan that fits your specific demographics with measurable goals and objectives to meet the needs of ALL employees at various life stages, which goes beyond enrollment meetings and standard provider materials.
Retirement Savings Trends – Plan Statistics
Here are some additional statistics related to employee retirement preparedness worth considering:
- A $45 billion a year funding gap between retiree’s essential living expenses and their projected incomes by 2030 – Employee Benefit Research Institute
- Only 2 out of 5 Americans are ready for retirement*
- Only 40% of workers have attempted to identify how much they will need*
- Only 27% of those enrolled in plans increased their percentage of their salary that they contributed to their plan*
- Only 1 out of 4 Hispanic Americans are ready for retirement*
*The Retirement Security Project-National Council of La Raza
Employers with a diverse workforce face additional challenges
Our approach is successful because it makes it easier and more appealing for Latinos to participate in their company sponsored plan. It starts with custom materials, enrollment meetings and individual guidance in Spanish which:
- Simplifies the message and unravels investment jargon into conversational Spanish
- Takes into account their more conservative investment style
- Uses culturally sensitive content—
- Shows how saving for retirement has many benefits for them as well as their families
- Appeals to the sense of community
- Uses tangible themes, graphics, humor and color to convey the message
- Builds trust
- Dispels common myths inherent in the culture
- Contrasts U.S. financial institutions with those of home country
