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President
Lockton Financial Advisors, Washington, D.C.

Master Consolidator of Retirement Programs

Several winners in the benefit category this year earned their laurels helping clients integrate acquisitions or sever a spin-off, so there is a poetic symmetry to having one winner whose client was the divested company. That's Thomas A. Clark's client.

"We were the ones cut loose," said the benefits manager of a large high-tech company. "Tom played a key role in rebuilding our 401(k) plan from the basic asset transfer to the investment choices that we were going to be able to offer our employees."

Just keeping the spun-out company's benefit programs running without a hitch would have been an accomplishment in and of itself, but Clark got extra credit for tough negotiations on rates. "Tom did a great job of renegotiating the service fees and administrative costs," the client said. "Our employees enjoyed a significant cost savings over their peers in the industry as a part of a large organization, and Tom was able to secure those same rates and costs even though we're now a much smaller company."

Those same negotiating skills got kudos from another client for which Clark managed a short-term, complex project to consolidate multiple retirement plans as private investors were buying out a publicly traded company. Unbeholden to stockholders means the private equity world moves more quickly than the public arena, and benefit managers cited Clark's ability to keep pace. In the event, Clark consolidated six programs into one and saved more than $500,000, completing the review, negotiations, and execution in about six weeks.

Principal
Aon HewittEnnisknupp, Chicago

A Better State of Affairs

In the wake of the Bernard L. Madoff scandal, the Great Recession, and sweeping changes in state capitols around the country, the care and custody of state retirement funds has been in the spotlight.

When incoming legislators or governors seek comprehensive reports on the security of pension assets, the custodians turn to Jeanna M. Cullins, principal with Aon HewittEnnisknupp in Chicago. "We had a massive fiduciary project to review our entire retirement investment management," said one state official. "We have never done anything like this before. Jeanna's expertise was extraordinary. The review covered not just our assets and procedures but ethics, transparency, and accountability."

The client notes that even with the large scale of the overall review, Cullins was adept at making interim recommendations as one section of the evaluation was completed. "That enabled us to implement best practices in a very tactical and incremental way," said the official. "It allowed us to make continuous improvements and not have to wait for the final report and then try to do everything at once."

In another comprehensive review for a different state in a different region, the supervising official was most impressed with Cullins' attention to detail. "From the proposal to the initial negotiations, to the project and through follow-up input. I was very pleasantly surprised at how well she knew not only the field, but the laws and regulations of our state. Those vary state to state," the official said.

Client Relationship Manager
TrueNorth Inc., Denver

Multi-Faceted Approach Yields Benefits

Participation is the key driver of any benefits plan, and Brian Heinke understands that. "Brian helped us improve the overall success of our retirement program by working closely with our plan provider to develop an education policy," said one senior human resources executive. As a result, participation has jumped by 12 percent over a 17-month period and average deferral rates have also improved, as have plan asset allocation.

Throughout 2010, Heinke's fiduciary and investment support, along with his focus on the importance of fee disclosure, provided insight for the client's retirement plan committee to ensure that the client was providing its employees with a best-in-class retirement program.

A different client lauds Heinke for his negotiating skills, another facet to his versatility. "He sat down and saved us $47,000 right off, which more than covered the administration fee. We never had a broker before but the growing complexity of our program and the growing number of employees in it meant that we needed professional support," the client said.

For all the tough dealing skills that Heinke brought to bear in saving the client money, he was also recognized for a more personal touch, conducting and managing more than 300 one-on-one meetings with the client's employees while the company made a major platform change. "We kept the same carriers, but the custodian of our assets went through a merger," the client said. "Brian was able to manage the whole process, and gave us an objective look at our plan design."

Principal
Mercer, Washington, D.C.

In the Best Position

Muriel Knapp stepped into a real-life scenario that was more like a training exercise, one where more was going on than could ever possibly happen at one time: a changing 401(k) plan, a succession of unsatisfactory and incomplete preceding programs and international operations with multiple levels of management.

For Knapp, it wasn't so much a problem as it was a challenge. She managed to get everyone working together with a more subtle approach, empowering rather than marginalizing management. "Our company had used several investment advisors to evaluate alternative 401(k) plan providers," said the benefits manager for a midsized, multinational company. "The changing environment of 401(k) plans, specifically regarding investment managers, open architecture for selecting investment funds, and transparency on their fees for pricing made it extremely difficult to understand our alternatives."

Nobody within the company seemed to be able to come up with a framework in which everyone was comfortable making decisions, the benefits manager said.

To top it all off, the company's senior management team is based outside the United States, which meant that they lacked a background to be comfortable with these issues. It also meant that the U.S. team had little time to explain it to the senior executives abroad.

"What Muriel did was to identify our issues and concerns," the manager said, "and clearly explain and frame our alternatives again, again, and over again with a great deal of patience, and in such plain language as to make it understandable."

Category: Retirement

Across the Boards

Recognized as one of the most influential defined contribution advisors in the country, Muriel Knapp is a frequent speaker at industry events and operates at a high level of engagement with the industry.

Education is a priority with Knapp, as evidenced by her multiple designations: the ChFC, CLU, CRC, CRA and AIF. Knapp is an active member of the American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries and is on the national committee for conference agenda design. She is also an active member of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Human Resources Leadership Forum. Her work involves finding more and better ways to teach, train and connect human resouces professionals in the Washington, D.C., area.

In her work with clients, Knapp has produced in-depth plan reviews to identify ways to improve 401(K) plans. Knapp and Mercer have also provided training to client's investment committees on the topics of plan design, fees and expenses, investments and performance, employee communication and plan administration.

Under Mercer and Knapp's guidance, retirement plan vendors provide quarterly plan reports to in-house retirement plan committees and are dropping unnecessary fees. The result for users of retirement plans are cheaper investment share classes and higher returns.

Plan participants are also aided by a formal education plan on their retirement program that includes web-based training and onsite employee meetings. These resources have enabled the plan sponsor team to reduce its workload by leveraging online resources.

Actuarial Consultant, Principal, and Manager
Aon Hewitt, Lincolnshire, Ill.

Taking Apart and Rebuilding the Pieces

The classic song "Roadhouse Blues" advises, "keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel," and that was exactly what Ornt did when a large client asked her to undo a good portion of the work she had done over the previous few years. The big industrial multinational company switched from an acquisitive strategy to one of consolidation and divestiture.

"We went from accumulating businesses and adding people and programs, to issues surrounding exiting businesses and personnel," said the director of benefits strategy for Ornt's client.

"Yvonne was on top of everything," the director said. "And there were so many moving pieces--divestitures, legacy issues, movements of physical facilities, governance, and even international issues." After spending time and effort putting pieces together as seamlessly as possible, Ornt suddenly was responsible for breaking those pieces apart again as neatly and efficiently as possible.

On a different project for another multinational corporation, Ornt was responsible for developing a multibillion-dollar defined-benefit plan. The plan faced a deadline for funding or it would be restricted and participants could only get half of their lump sum benefit at termination or retirement. The client credits Ornt with helping the program get to the funding threshold, but when it could not she was undeterred and led the effort to communicate the new reality to the participants in a matter of weeks instead of months.

Principal
Aon Hewitt, Chicago

A 360-Degree Solution

Benefit plans are usually lumped in with risk management but are not always handled with a real emphasis on the art of risk management. But that was exactly the point of emphasis for one of Derek Rylicki's clients. "We were reducing the risk in our portfolio by reducing our defined-benefit formula," said the vice president of compensation and benefits for one midsized services firm. "We moved some of the participants over to a defined-contribution plan after extensive modeling of costs and risks. Derek has a knack for looking around 360 degrees for the most cost-effective solutions."

For another client, the reassessment and conversion was not from a defined benefit to a defined contribution but from a defined benefit to a defined benefit plan.

"We went through a forced conversion of some of our management from an account-balance plan to a cash-balance plan that was much less rich," said the senior benefits executive for a large industrial company. "For the lead-in to the conversion Derek did extensive analysis of the potential disruption--a scattergram--and he handled all the complex actuarial factors."

The driver for the conversion was that the company had completed a multiyear course of acquisitions and was ready to consolidate and streamline its benefits program. The conversion covered about 600 managers and executives of all ages, pay grades, and tenures so fairness and transparency were essential.

"It had to be perfect, or there was going to be big trouble," the client said. "And it was executed flawlessly."

Vice President, North Retirement Regional Practice Leader
Aon Hewitt
New York

Senior Vice President
Aon Hewitt
Chicago