For a Pooled Employer Plan to "work", it must achieve "scale". Period.
That means that the PEP should have a minimum of ten adopting employers and at least $50 million in overall assets to effectively be able to share the fixed operating costs of the program.
Required Annual Plan Audit costs can become very inexpensive only if there are a sufficient number of adopters to share in that cost. They can also become a real problem if there are only a few adopters in the plan.
Discounts from other service providers also start to kick in when the plan starts to achieve financial scale. Many PEPs will simply lack the audience or distribution network to achieve a sufficient volume of PEP assets.
As with most arrangements in our industry, more assets and more participants can lead to more pricing concessions. Without this pricing leverage, many of the financial benefits of the PEP can easily disappear.
Merging a non-functioning PEP into one of ours that has already achieved sufficient scale solves this problem for the client and their trusted advisor! The client picks up significant benefits and the advisor can continue to be paid through the PEP recordkeeper or directly from the adopting employer!
We have decades of experience working with multiple employer plan clients, including serving as an ERISA 3(16) Plan Adminstrator for these specific types of programs since 2010! Our affiliates, who are fully registered with the U.S. Department of Labor as pooled plan providers, have established more Pooled Employer Plans in 2021 than any other entity in the industry - over 30!
We work with a variety of "best in class" recordkeepers to deliver a truly custom solution for advisors, clients, and investment management firms. We have extensive experience working with Associations, Payroll Providers, Professional Employer Organizations, and Private Equity firms across the country in this field.
Our TPA affiliate - American Pension Services - has operated as a non-producing third party administration firm since our founding in 2000. We don't do any 3(38) Investment Management work whatsoever. And we "carve out" to the extent available all asset-based TPA revenue sharing from our pricing models.
Should we talk? The next step is up to you!