About ACES®:
The basic principle behind ACES® is simple: Education and service are ultimately what make and break relationships with plan sponsors. Providing investment options is just the beginning. To really set yourself apart from the competition, you need to provide information that can help plan sponsors with bigger issues, such as understanding ERISA requirements and boosting employee participation rates.
ACES® organizes these resources for you into three key categories:
Prospecting
Opening a dialogue with retirement plan prospects that can benefit from working with you.
Closing
Setting service expectations and finalizing the relationship.
Monitoring & Servicing
Fulfilling your commitments, earning the confidence of plan stakeholders and laying the groundwork for referrals.
Retirement Tools
So much about the retirement plan business is providing a proper assessment of a plan’s current health to plan sponsors, whether they be prospects or longtime clients. Here we provide tools to aid you in analyzing detailed information on prospects, which aid in the creation and maintenance of investment plan menus, as well as provide plan sponsors with important market and economic updates.
Prospecting
The MPI Investment Analyzer
Unique Institutional-Level Reporting: Our relationship with Markov Processes International (MPI) provides unique institutional-level reporting with detailed reports that present a broad array of objective statistical measures for investment funds, generated using Morningstar data.
Closing
FI360 Fiduciary Score
The fi360 Fiduciary Score is a quantitative evaluation of how well a fund meets a minimum set of due diligence criteria defined by fi360 to reflect prudent fiduciary management. We offer a selection of six custom fi360 reports upon request.
Monitoring & Servicing
Anatomy of a Recession
Dashboard, which is comprised of nine key economic indicators. The Dashboard is designed to provide context around evolving market conditions, and it provides retirement plan advisors with data and analysis that may help support plan sponsors in their investment decision making.
Retirement Resources
Providing investment options is just the beginning. To really set yourself apart from the competition, you need to provide information that can help plan sponsors with bigger issues, such as understanding ERISA requirements and boosting employee participation rates. That’s the real key to building client loyalty and generating referrals. Here we provide important checklists, worksheets, surveys and more to aid you in capturing the information you need to assess and develop solutions and recommendations that truly fit plan needs.
Prospecting
- Quality of Service Prospecting Letter
- Understanding Fiduciary Options Prospecting Letter
- Focus on Fees Prospecting Letter
- Financial Professional Change Prospecting Letter
- Addressing Participant Fee Transparency Prospecting Letter
- Plan Design Prospecting Letter
- Document Checklist
- Common Fiduciary Concerns Questionnaire
- Fee Assessment Worksheet
- Financial Professional Evaluation Questionnaire
- Employee Survey
Closing
- Service Summary
- Education Policy Statement A
- Education Policy Statement B
- Guidelines for Creating a Fee Policy Statement (FPS)
- Planning Calendar
- Finals Presentation Checklist
- Guidelines for Creating an Investment Policy Statement (IPS)
Plan Education
Education is the most visible element of your service to a plan. Here we provide thought leadership, practice management tools, and participant education to help you further engage with retirement plan prospects and clients, covering a wide array of topics including plan governance, plan design, fees, IRS examinations, and even evergreen investment concepts. The better you are at keeping both plan sponsors and participants well informed, the more likely that participation and total assets in the plan may grow over time, cementing your relationship and enhancing the plan’s value to your practice.
Prospecting
Closing
- White Paper: Fiduciary Obligations of Retirement Plan Sponsors
- Investor Education: Understanding Collective Investment Trusts CIT
- Whitepaper: Fiduciary Prudence and Investments: Historical Track Record
- Whitepaper: Fiduciary Guidebook for Target Date Funds
Monitoring & Servicing
- White Paper: The ERISA Fiduciary Investment Process: Historical Returns and Back-Testing as Relevant Factors to Evaluate Prudence
- White Paper: Helpful Tips to Prepare for a Retirement Plan Audit
- White Paper: Fiduciary Prudence and Investments: Historical Track Record
- White Paper: What is Reasonable? Practical Tips for Evaluating Fees and Expenses of Plan Investments
- White Paper: Employee Plan IRS Examinations
- Mastering the Client Review
- Retirement Account Quick Reference Guide
- White Paper: Retirement Plan Governance: Understanding the Role of a Benefit Plan Committee
Retirement Plan Timeline
Being selected as a plan’s Financial Professional is just the beginning. Be proactive in following through on your commitments. Staying ahead of the plan sponsor’s needs is the surest route to keeping them confident that you are the right choice for their plan. Here we provide a reminder of key plan milestones by month for educational initiatives, plan assessments, and other activities you provide.
Additional Resources
Retirement Focus Funds
A summary of fund availability on a wide variety of platforms is included to help you select the appropriate funds for your retirement plan clients.
Product Availability Guide - Collective Investment Trusts (CITs)
A listing of available collective investment trusts, including CUSIPs and expense ratios, currently available through our partnership with Wilmington Trust, N.A.
Product Availability Guide - Collective Investment Funds (CIFs)
A listing of available collective investment funds, including CUSIPs and expense ratios, currently available through our partnership with Hand Benefits & Trust.
Retirement Plan Advisory Group Scorecard
A valuable tool designed to provide clients with an independent assessment of the management and performance of select funds available for inclusion in qualified and non-qualified plans.
Contact Us:
Retirement Sales Support
(866) 807-0886
retirementsales@leggmason.com
All views expressed are subject to change. These are the general views of Legg Mason, and they are provided for educational purposes only and should not be construed as a forecast of future events. All references to third-party corporations and websites do not constitute a recommendation or endorsement by Legg Mason Investor Services, LLC.
Franklin Resources, Inc., its specialized investment managers and its employees are not in the business of providing tax or legal advice to taxpayers. These materials and any tax-related statements are not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used or relied upon, by any such taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding tax penalties or complying with any applicable tax laws or regulations. Tax-related statements, if any, may have been written in connection with the “promotion or marketing” of the transaction(s) or matter(s) addressed by these materials, to the extent allowed by applicable law. Any such taxpayer should seek advice based on the taxpayer’s particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.
Financial advisors should consult their own firm’s policies and procedures before applying any ideas presented.
