Your Fiduciary Responsibility with ABA Retirement

Amplify your investment fiduciary protection to minimize your firm’s risk. An Employer’s decision to sponsor a retirement plan typically brings with it certain fiduciary responsibilities under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). These responsibilities include:

The selection and monitoring of service providers for your plan such as recordkeeper, administrator, trustee and custodian, along with their respective fees’ reasonableness.

The selection and monitoring of brokers, consultants, investment advice service providers, along with monitoring associated fees.

The selection and monitoring of investment managers, investment options available in the plan, along with monitoring of investment expenses.

Under most retirement plan platforms available in the market today, the trustee does not have discretionary authority over the investment of plan assets. Instead, the trustee is a so-called “directed trustee,” meaning that another fiduciary, such as the employer, has responsibility for directing the trustee as to the investment of plan assets. In such cases, the employer retains the fiduciary responsibility under ERISA for investments.

Through its unique design, the ABA Retirement Funds Program provides employers with the highest standard of investment fiduciary protection under ERISA.¹ 

If you’d like to hear more about the Program and how we can help you and your employees to a secure retirement, please use the form below and one of our representatives will call you personally to discuss.

¹  For more information about the Program’s investment fiduciary oversight, refer to the Annual Disclosure Document (2024) – “ERISA and Fiduciary Obligations”
² Subject to acceptance by ABA Retirement Funds