KNOWLEDGE CENTER: For Employers

Research shows that employee engagement, participation and satisfaction with their retirement benefits are directly tied with how well they understand their plan and their investments. That's why we opened the Knowledge Center, an online resource for educational materials, videos, and a variety of seminars/webinars to assist plan sponsors and business owners with providing education to employees. Browse the content below and be sure to check back regularly as we are always updating our online resources.

The Library

Stay competitive in the labor market and cultivate a culture of wellness at work.

Provide employees with benefits that are balanced, supporting their social, physical, mental and financial well-being.

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There seems to be an undeniable connection between financial worry and employee satisfaction.

Learn how offering financial wellness programs can help reduce financial stress for your employees.

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Helping employees reduce financial stress can help improve wellness, retention and productivity.

Learn how a financial wellness initiative can have far-reaching benefits for your business.

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How do you evaluate, benchmark and assess your plan investments?

Here’s helpful guidance about your fiduciary duty, plan oversight, as well as available advisory services and protection.

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Is your 401(k) plan designed to maximize savings, optimize tax strategies, recruit /retain top talent?

Explore how defining workplace goals can be a vital first step to building a powerful retirement plan.

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As a plan fiduciary, it is important to pay careful attention to retirement plan fees.

Here are some of the most asked questions about retirement plan fees and how to benchmark them.

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The SECURE Act 2.0 is here.

Learn about its implications for retirement plans, employers and employees.

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It’s important to review your plan regularly to learn if more efficient plan design are options available.

Here are 7 considerations for a rewarding workplace retirement plan.

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Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investments have been all over the news lately.

Learn more about these unique funds and how they may fit within your workplace retirement plan.

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Transitioning to a new 401(k) recordkeeper shouldn’t be a taxing experience.

Here are 4 simple steps to help understand the transition.

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5 financial wellness tips your employees will thank you for.

Here’s how financial wellness programs can help reduce stress and improve employee productivity.

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It takes a village to run a retirement plan.

How to leverage different service providers to help your 401(k) plan run more smoothly.

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The features of a Health Savings Account(HSA) can benefit employees well into retirement.

Find out more about the advantages of HSA accounts.

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There are fundamental building blocks to running a successful retirement committee.

Download our guide to see how it works.

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As a business owner, you have the ability to pull certain levers that can optimize your retirement savings.

Learn how to maximize your retirement savings and help minimize your tax burden.

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Looking for ways to sweeten your recruiting and retention efforts?

These 3 ideas can strengthen your talent management strategy and help your employees save more for retirement.

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Don’t miss out on SECURE Act tax credits and 401(k) plan features for small business.

Find out more about these workplace retirement plan benefits and how they may help your company today.

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Customize your employee education efforts to meet the needs of different generations.

Learn how a customized employee education strategy can help increase participation and promote savings across the board.

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Uncertain times can bring turbulent markets, but it’s important to stay calm and stay the course.

How to encourage your investors to maintain a long-term investment strategy to weather the ups and downs.

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Supreme Court recognizes fiduciary responsibility as non-negotiable.

Hughes v Northwestern case and what plan sponsors need to know.

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A total rewards program can help your employee benefits program stand out.

Learn what to consider and how to get started with a top rewards program.

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If you sponsor a company retirement plan, a “fidelity bond” may be required.

Learn more about the importance of fidelity bonds.

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Create your total rewards strategy to help recruit and retain top talent.

Here are top strategies and ideas for total rewards programs

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Paychecks for Life: What is Guaranteed Lifetime Income?

What you need to know about in-plan guaranteed income

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It’s no secret that inflation is reaching historic levels.

How does inflation affect retirement savings?

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By taking proactive measures, you can help position your 401(k) plan to pass an audit.

Get our Guide to Understanding DOL Audits.

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How diverse is your workforce?

Learn how diversity, equity and inclusion retirement plan enhancements may help drive financial freedom.

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Do you know your retirement plan options?

Take this quiz to help you pick the right one for your organization.

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If the DOL comes knocking, is your plan prepared for an audit?

Be aware of red flags, how to respond and what documents to have ready.

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Where does your retirement plan stand?

Quickly compare your plan against average benchmarks to highlight plan design and success opportunities.

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Employee professional and financial values are evolving, and ESG funds are beginning to represent them in the market.

Will they become part of your fiduciary consideration?

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Choosing mutual funds for your retirement plan?

Make sure you know your share class ABCs.

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Why a Retirement Plan Committee is more Important than ever.

Committee actions (or inactions) can have a huge impact on retirement readiness

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Is it time to evaluate the effectiveness of your company’s retirement plan?

Here are some key data points to help determine whether your plan is performing and meeting its goals.

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Not everyone is experiencing economic recovery at the same pace

Help your employees get back on track with their retirement savings despite the K-shaped recovery

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Financial guidance and education can help alleviate workplace stress

Here are some frequently asked questions and ideas to get the discussion started

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Important plan document restatement deadline happening in 2022

Here are some legislative changes and plan design features to consider

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CARES Act aftermath

What Plan Sponsors need to do

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Tapping into retirement savings too early can have long-term effects and undo years of saving.

Learn how employers can help stop retirement savings setbacks.

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Optimizing the approach to private plans during a low interest rate environment.

Consider the advantages and disadvantages of a pension risk transfer strategy.

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Auto features have become a best practice in retirement plan design.

Discover how auto features can help employees build retirement savings more effectively.

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Having a financial wellness program can benefit your employees

5 reasons to rethink financial wellness

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A Non-Qualified Defined Contribution (NQDC) plan can provide unique benefits for your top executives

Discover how NQDC plans can benefit your organization and its eligible employees

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401(k) vs NQDC plans – is it a good fit for your executives?

Five things employees should consider when offered a Non-Qualified Defined Contribution (NQDC) plan

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Boost participation without breaking the budget

Cost effective ways to expand 401(k) participation

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Pros and cons of taking coronavirus-related distributions from retirement savings.

How today’s actions may impact your employees' retirement future.

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Congress Passes $1.9 Trillion Stimulus Through Budget Reconciliation

A summary on how this Act may impact your pension plans

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2021 Consolidated Appropriations Act

Learn how the recent relief provisions may impact your Dc plans.

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Think green! Have you considered 401(k) e-disclosures?

Employers welcome new rule that expands online 401(k) disclosures

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The Butch Lewis Emergency Pension Plan Relief Act of 2021

On February 8, 2021, the House Committee on Ways & Means released important legislation that will affect single employer corporate pension plans if it becomes law.

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ERISA update: 5 big changes Plan Sponsors need to know

What’s on the ERISA agenda for 2021? Here are 5 important changes that plan sponsors should be paying attention to.

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Tracking down your missing participants

Missing participants are an industry-wide problem – find out why it matters and what steps you can take.

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Four Tax Strategies For Employers

As an employer, choosing to offer a 401(k) plan can benefit your employees. Did you know it can also benefit you?

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Is your plan getting the support it needs during this pandemic?

Is your plan getting the support it needs during this pandemic?

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Discover the advantages of adding SuperSaver to your retirement plan design

Learn how this exciting, low-cost plan amendment may be able to benefit your employees.

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Guiding the fiduciary oversight process in 5 steps

Understanding fiduciary responsibility is key for plan sponsors and retirement plan committee members.

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The link between employee productivity, health, and financial stress

Recent research has proven there is a direct link between financial stress and company productivity.

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Coronavirus and Retirement Savings

COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on financial markets, both in the U.S. and abroad. However, by looking back in time, we might be able to educate and inform investor actions today.

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What are corrective distributions and how to avoid them going forward

Non-discrimination testing is an important part of sponsoring a 401(k) plan, but it shouldn’t cause an employer undue stress.

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Lawsuits over the years and what it means for plan sponsors

The barrage of excessive fee lawsuits filed in 2006 started a trend that continues to this day.

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Should you include ESG funds in your retirement plan?

ESG, or environmental, social and governance funds, can be appealing to many investors, including millennials.

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Our 401(k) investments are on the watch list. Now what?

Approach, review, document, and decide

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Items your annual retirement plan review may be missing

As a plan sponsor, you are no stranger to the annual retirement plan review.

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90 - 10 - 90 rule

If you, your plan or your participants suffer from poor participation, low deferral rates or shortsighed investment decisions, you are not alone.

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Does your retirement plan address these 6 essential elements?

Retirement plans come in all shapes and sizes: DC Plans, DB Plans, Non-Qualified, 401(k), 403(b), 401(a), 457, SEP IRA, Simple IRA, Roth IRA, Cash Balance, HSA…and any other number letter combinations that you can think of.

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Cyber-attacks are on the rise. Is your retirement plan protected?

Cyber-crime is on the rise worldwide.

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Retirement plan share classes: Understanding the basics

Choosing mutual funds for your retirement plan’s investment lineup can feel like wading through a sea of alphabet soup.

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Benchmarking your plan is about more than just fees and expenses

It’s about helping you identify opportunities, achieving greater employee outcomes and minimizing your fiduciary risk.

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Risky business: Why plan governance matters

In today’s continually-evolving regulatory and legal environment, it’s more important than ever to make sure your organization’s retirement plan is both effective and compliant.

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Four tips to boost your employees’ retirement outlook

As many employees look ahead to retirement, 47% of workers feel somewhat confident that they’ll have enough money saved to retire on time and then live comfortably.

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Understanding House Bill 7161 and its impact on your 403(b) plans

Connecticut passed an act that will bring non-ERISA 403(b) plans closer to ERISA 403(b) plans. The new law is the first in the country to require a much higher level of fiduciary standards for these types of plans.

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Choosing the best fee allocation model for your 401(k) plan

We all know that paying for the administration of a retirement plan adds an expense to the bottom line.

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Part 2: The best retirement packages for your HCEs

Now that you've engaged your employees in participation, discover how to optimize their plan under HCE rules.

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Part 1 : Engaging HCE plan participation

Are your most vital employees saving enough for retirement? Ensure that the retirement plans you sponsor are effective and attractive to high-value employees.

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Pension Liabilities

Pension plans have always wrestled with finding an appropriate balance between risk and return in the investment portfolio, and today's investment environment is not making that struggle any easier.

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DOL Fiduciary Rule

In 2016, the Department of Labor issued the final version of its Fiduciary Rule. This new rule is the single biggest change affecting the way investment advisors provide advice to retirement plans since ERISA was introduced in 1974.

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Do Retirement Plans Without Limits Make Sense for Your Bank's Executives?

Since the passage of ERISA in 1974, plan sponsors have been trying to balance the delivery of retirement benefits (defined benefit or defined contribution) between qualified and nonqualified plans. A fundamental objective of either a qualified or nonqualified plan is the deferral of taxes.

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What the Fiduciary Are you Talking About?

Since the passage of ERISA in 1974, plan sponsors have been wrestling with who is and who is not a fiduciary of their retirement benefit plans while also making sure that a plan must have at least one fiduciary named in the plan document.

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CBIA's Executive Compensation Report (8th Edition)

This, the eighth annual survey of compensation and benefits for Connecticut’s top executives, contains information on base salary, total compensation, incentives (short- and long-term), and benefits related to executive compensation.

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CBIA Benefits Survey (13th Edition)

CBIA’s Benefit Survey Report contains information submitted by 297 companies throughout Connecticut. The report is divided into three sections: time off; health and other insurance benefits; and retirement benefits.

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Success Stories

This suburban municipality had multiple pension plans and vendors.

Choosing H&H provided all the services they needed, including easy plan access for their participants.

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Our online pension administration portal was the perfect remedy for this hospital.

The hospital has been using PensionEdge® and the H&H Service Center since 2018, and could not be happier with the experience.

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DROP plans: A flexible plan design to the rescue

H&H showed this municipality how a DROP plan could resolve multiple challenges they were facing.

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With PIM’s help, this plan sponsor has a secure, online pension plan with real-time data, robust reporting and Worktrack to monitor process.

Learn how we helped one client administer the plan while focusing on other HR-related responsibilities.

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Lowering municipal pension costs through cash balance plan design

Learn how we helped one CT town with this innovative alternative that would curb rising pension costs.

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Actuarial services are the talk of the town

Our innovative ‘opt-out’ pension plan design gave this town a solution to talk about.

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New ways to save money during union negotiations

To help this municipal client reduce employee benefit costs, we built an innovate testing solution that proved significant savings over a 20-year period.

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Strategic 403(b) solutions optimize plan savings

Discover how a modernized investment strategy motivated employees to join the plan or increase savings, and achieved significant saving for both the client and plan participants.

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Not-for-profit school & foundation

From benchmarking studies to streamlined plans, our retirement and investment services score an A+

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Plan consolidation to get fueled up over

Learn how creating a modern plan structure for this convenience store and fuel retailer led to a more manageable plan and clearer understanding of its features for employees

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Retirement education to forge ahead

This metal manufacturer is giving employees a better understanding of their retirement plan.

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Weekly Market Review

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At the beginning of every week, our investment advisory team presents the prior week's economic news highlights and financial market data in this convenient and easy to read newsletter.

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Videos

Help your employees understand the value of joining their 401(k) plan
Getting to know your Retirement Plan Committee
Is your plan ready for a DOL audit?
Learn how auto features can benefit you and your employees.
Learn what questions to ask when going through the benchmarking process
Dollar Cost Averaging can help employees stay the course during market downturns
Help your employees prepare for common financial hurdles with 4 actionable steps.
Learn what your employees can do now to help with inflation concerns.
Here’s how you can work to build turnover resistant benefits into your organization’s benefits program.
Connecting your organization to pension technology and resources has never been easier!
Keep doing what you do best. Our 3(38) retirement plan program will take care of the retirement stuff.
A retirement plan should be a valued benefit, not an open door for lawsuits.

Securities offered through Pensionmark Securities, LLC (member SIPC). Investment advice offered through Hooker & Holcombe Investment Advisors, Inc. (“HHIA”), a registered investment adviser.
Hooker & Holcombe (Hooker & Holcombe, Inc., Hooker & Holcombe Retirement Services, Inc. and HHIA) and Pensionmark are unrelated entities.