The Gap
Most hard-working Americans are not saving enough for retirement and will come up short. Even with all of the focus over the past decades, most Americans don't have access to an employer sponsored retirement plan, or aren't adequately saving in their existing plan. This equates to a sizable GAP in American's retirement savings. Get ready for a dose of insightful conversations with Shannon Edwards and her expert guests as they explore innovative strategies to bridge the retirement savings gap. Whether you're an employer, benefits manager, or a financial advisor looking to excel in the retirement plan arena, listening in will help you unlock the secrets to closing The GAP and stay ahead of the future!
The Gap
The Fiduciary Process Made Practical
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Episode Intro: The GAP with Will Hansen
Your 401(k) committee can be doing its best and still be one missing document away from a compliance mess. That tension, doing meaningful work under complicated rules with limited time, is exactly what we unpack with Will Hansen, Chief Government Affairs Officer at the American Retirement Association and Executive Director of the Plan Sponsor Council of America (PSCA).
Episode Description:
In this episode We get practical about what strong retirement plan governance actually looks like: a consistent fiduciary process, clean documentation, and decisions you can defend later. Will explains why “process” is the common thread across the best-run committees, where documentation gaps really start, and how shared drives and scattered emails quietly become governance risks. We also zoom in on one of the most common technical traps for plan sponsors: the plan document, especially the definition of compensation, and how a mistake there can ripple into deferrals, match calculations, and testing corrections.
Then we dive into Knowa powered by PSCA, an AI-powered plan governance solution designed to bring plan documents, compliance dates, collaboration, meeting agendas, and institutional knowledge into one system. We talk about capturing conversations from Outlook, onboarding years of scattered files, and using AI in a way that relies on trusted sources, your plan records plus PSCA guidance, without replacing fiduciary judgment. We also highlight PSCA research and the CPSP credential as a free, practical education path for plan sponsors.
If you want fewer fire drills and more time to focus on participation, savings, and participant outcomes, hit subscribe, share this with a committee member, and leave a review with the governance challenge you want solved next.
Guest Bio: Will Hansen
Will Hansen joined the American Retirement Association (ARA) in January 2019 in the new role of Chief Government Affairs Officer. In this position, Will oversees all advocacy activities at the federal, state, and local levels on behalf of the five trade organizations within ARA. In addition, Will is the Executive Director of Plan Sponsor Council of America (PSCA) as of January 2020. Founded in 1947, PSCA has been at the forefront of protecting the American retirement system and is committed to improving workers’ retirement security by providing advocacy, insights, and education to plan sponsors.
Hansen, an attorney with an LLM in Employee Benefits from The John Marshall Law School, joined ARA from The ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC), where he was the Senior Vice President of Retirement and Compensation Policy. He joined ERIC from the Holland America Group where he served as Senior Manager of Global Employee Benefits overseeing employee benefit programs for five cruise brands under the Carnival Corporate umbrella. Hansen previously served as the Executive Director of the United States Congress Joint Economic Committee, as well as Legislative Counsel for Senator Robert Casey, Jr. (D-PA), advising the Senator on tax, pension, budget, and social security issues, and as Legislative Director for Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). He also has experience as an employee benefits attorney with McDermott Will & Emery LLP, where he focused on qualified and non-qualified retirement plans.
Contact Our Guest:
Will Hansen
Chief Government Affairs Officer
American Retirement Association
https://araadvocacy.org
LinkedIn
Contact Our Host:
Shannon Edwards
President
TrisStar Pension Consulting
TriStarPension.com
LinkedIn
Welcome And The Retirement Gap
Speaker 3Welcome back to the gap, the podcast where we tackle one of the biggest challenges in America today, closing the retirement savings and coverage gaps, while also shining a light on what's actually working in our system. I'm Shannon Edwards. I'm Shannon Edwards, your host and president of TriStar Pension Consulting. I would like to welcome all listeners to our podcast with a special welcome to those listening for the first time. Today's guest is someone who holds a very special place in the history of the gap because he was my very first guest when we launched the podcast. Will Hansen is the Chief Government Affairs Officer for the American Retirement Association and the Executive Director of the Plan Sponsor Council of America, better known as PSCA. In those roles, Will works with policymakers, retirement industry professionals, and most importantly for today's conversation, the employers and committee members who are responsible for overseeing workplace retirement plans. Will brings an interesting perspective to this work because he has seen employee benefit plans from almost every angle. He's worked as an employee benefits attorney, served on Capitol Hill, managed employee benefit plans for a large employer, and advocated for retirement policy on behalf of employers and retirement plan community. He understands what the rules say, but he also understands what it feels like to be the person responsible for putting those rules into practice. When Will joined me for our very first episode, we talked about the retirement savings and coverage gaps, the important role workplace retirement plans play in helping Americans save, and the work being done in Washington to expand access to those plans. Today we are continuing that conversation, but looking at it from a very practical plan sponsor perspective. Offering a retirement plan is an incredibly meaningful benefit. It also is a big responsibility. Plan sponsors and committee members are expected to understand complicated rules, fulfill their fiduciary duties, work with multiple service providers, document their decisions, prepare for meetings, follow up on action items, and somehow keep track of years and years of information. And for many of them, overseeing the retirement plan is only one small part of an already very full job. That is why I wanted to invite Will back to talk about the challenges PSA is hearing from plan sponsors, the resources available to help them, and a new technology called Knowa, powered by PSAA, that is designed to bring plan governance, documents, collaboration, and institutional knowledge together in one place. Will, I am so excited to welcome you back to the gap.
SpeakerThank you, Shannon, and happy to be back. I guess I did okay on the first episode, if I gotta do it.
Speaker 3You did great. Yes, you did great. So, Will, for listeners who are new to the podcast, how did Benefits Law and Capitol Hill lead you to ARA and PSCA?
Speaker 1So uh Benefits Law was my first job ever. Um, I went straight through college and law school and I fell in love with the benefits community, and that's what really started the career path. The Capitol Hill experience was amazing just to be able to actually learn more about the legislative process and figure out how policy actually takes shape. And then, you know, when I took that break from Capitol Hill from living in Washington, DC, and I moved to the West Coast and I was a plant sponsor, I could tell, you know, that was not my long-term career path, but it was probably one of the best decisions I met made because I think that's, you know, was a nice break, led me back to DC, where
Will’s Career Path And Perspective
Speaker 1I was then become became a lobbyist on behalf of plant sponsors and others. And being able to say, hey, I've been in those shoes of the plant sponsor, I think goes a long way when it comes to advocating for you know the right policies and advancing our retirement system in America.
Speaker 3Awesome. Which experience most shaped your view or how you view fiduciary responsibility?
Speaker 1Yeah, so that's an interesting one. I would actually say my first ever committee meeting as a plan sponsor. So I definitely sat in a few committee meetings when I was an associate attorney at a law firm, but the partner typically handled most of them. So I don't have like a lot of you know memories, I guess, of those days, but definitely the first day when I sat there and kind of recognized the you know various members of the committee and their experience or lack of experience and the roles they play at the company, including the CEO, the president of the company who sat on the committee for the 401k plan that uh was working on. And I think it just kind of shined a light on how important the fiduciary process is, but also that there are a lot of people who maybe don't recognize or have the experience necessary to make the decisions. And that's why it's important to bring in, you know, the consultants, the TPAs, the advisors, the record keepers to, you know, be those, be those partners for the retirement plan.
Speaker 3When did you first see that plan sponsors had a governance technology problem?
Speaker 1Day one. So I mean, I was a plan sponsor from 2013 to 2016. So I'd say 2013 was kind of the era of share drives starting to become more prevalent in corporate America, but also prevalent were paper. I mean, paper copies of things. So it was, you know, kind of in that middle period of where I think a lot of companies were trying to digitize and trying to figure out their electronic storage capabilities moving forward. This is, I mean, well before AI was, you know, obviously any, you know, we knew anything about it. And we struggled because, you know, with respect to our plan, our plan had been around for a few decades, but then we also had some pension plans that were from the you know 1960s and 70s with you know active
The Hidden Governance Technology Problem
Speaker 1beneficiaries, beneficiaries still alive. And you know, for a larger company that I work for, immediately I could tell that you know we need to start to figure out something right away in order to make sure that we have an efficient process in place moving forward.
Speaker 3Um, what were PSCA members telling you that led to the Knowa partnership?
Speaker 1Yeah, so for background, the Knowa partnership started a couple of years ago and we launched Knowa powered by PSCA earlier this year. It is a an AI-powered plan governance solution. But you know, I think what we you know were learning from plan sponsors was twofold. One, they you know, needed to be able to tap into the AI revolution, into technology to find more efficiencies in how they do their job. But also, and one of the main reasons why you know PSCA entered into this partnership was education. You know, we needed to figure out a different way to distribute the education and make sure our plan sponsors were staying on top of their fiduciary duty duties through the education products that we provide. And so, you know, Knowa is not only just a plan governance solution, it's also just a way to continue to ensure that plan sponsors and others are staying on top of their fiduciary duties through us updating our education and distributing it through the Knowa platform.
Speaker 3Okay. What do you think the best run retirement committees consistently do well?
Speaker 1Process. Next question. No, yeah, it is it's all about process. And you need to have a you know, somebody who is really intent on ensuring that the entire committee is sticking to all of the various procedures that go with administering a 401k plan. And by having a, you know, a very stringent process that you follow is going to make just life easier on everyone involved with administering the retirement plan.
Speaker 3Where do you think the industry can simplify without lowering fiduciary standards?
Speaker 1Simplify is through better using technology. And there are a lot of solutions that are out there. And that is really, I think, step one is first and foremost is having your documents you know organized. And there are plenty of tools out there that will help you. And then from there, it really just depends on how much you want, how many more bells and whistles that you want to make your life you know just easier when it comes to administering the plan.
Speaker 3What do you think the biggest compliance headache for plan sponsors is today?
Speaker 1I mean, the the the easy uh answer to that is just because you know, we um so PSCA, we teach a uh certified plan sponsor professional uh prudential course. And the I guess at a very high level when I'm teaching that course is the compliance headache is anything technical, anything that you can't find in the SPD and you need to use the plan document. So I'll use the I'll use the um, and you will know this, Shannon. It's the definition of compensation and how the definition of compensation is used. And then that then goes to, I think for any non-safe harbor plans, you know, how they go about doing their testing, and then if they fail, you know, how they go about rectifying their failure. I mean, that's probably the biggest client's headache. And all that goes back to, though, is the plan document. And being able to understand and utilize the
Compliance Headaches And Compensation Definition
Speaker 1plan document. And that's then kind of where I mentioned bells and whistles. Yeah, you can have a great storage system, but then now with AI, do you have a great system or technology or platform that can help you analyze your plan documents much easier? And that's where I think you know, plan sponsors should start to look at Knowa and others that are out there.
Speaker 3Yeah, I think you know, you said compensation. I think that's the biggest mistake we see all the time. I'm constantly clients are saying, oh, well, we didn't withhold deferrals from bonuses because bonuses aren't included in their compensation. I'm like, but that's wrong. Yeah. It is the most widely misunderstood thing when it comes to the plan document. And that's where all the numbers come from, right? So if compensation's wrong, everything else is wrong.
Speaker 1So yeah, and that's where, you know, and we we got a lot more to talk about today, but um, being able to, you know, input into whatever platform you're using, you know, some of your process documents, your plan documents, some of your payroll processes, maybe some notes and conversations that you've had with your payroll team or with your TPA, and then use that, you know, to have AI analyze and be like, oh, you know, does gift card, is gift card included in, you know, XYZ definition of compensation or something? Or when we pay out PTO, you know, I think it will just make everyone's life a lot easier.
Speaker 3Yeah, definitely. Which fiduciary responsibility do you think is most often misunderstood?
Speaker 1Oh gosh, that's a tough one. Most often misunderstood. You know, I think, and again, this is at a very you know high level. I think most fiduciaries think that they need to get everything 100% correct when it comes to the decisions that they make about the plan, whether it's you know, the investment fund lineup or the plan design. And that's just not true. Like, you know, we are humans, we are we never get anything, you know, 100% correct. But what this goes back to my earlier response where I said process, but if you do have a process in place when it comes to making decisions regarding the plan, and you follow that process, and you're able to prove that process if you're ever audited by a government agency or
Process Over Perfection In Fiduciary Work
Speaker 1sued by a you know a class of plan sponsor, a class of participants, you should hopefully be in a safe spot because you have that process in place.
Speaker 3And where do where do you think documentation gaps usually start?
Speaker 1The day they started the plan.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah. Um, I think where where there's documentation gaps that could easily be rectified with technology is right now, really is on any time there's a change in your committee. Because you know, change in committee, you know, involves a lot. You know, there's knowledge gaps, there's you know, you know, historical decisions that have been made about the plan that you know these new committee members get up to speed. But you know, that's potentially probably where you know nowadays you can start to see you know a lot of gaps that are out there. Otherwise, I think probably list off, and you could too, probably, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 different scenarios where you've seen you know documentation gaps.
Speaker 3Yeah. I mean, even just for us, it's you know how hard it is to get a copy of their PPA document. When I mean it's like, okay, great, you gave me the document you're currently on, but do you have a copy of the last document so I can look at that too? And a lot of plant sponsors are like, oh, am I supposed to keep that forever?
SpeakerYeah. I mean, let's go back to EGDR.
Speaker 3Right, right.
Speaker 1Yeah, I guess it would be extra gust PPA. And yeah, it's still important to probably have a copy, a digital copy at this point of uh, you know, all of those amendments. Because for the most part, a lot, you know, I don't I don't have the stat offhand, but I would say more than half or maybe three quarters of active 401k plans have been around for the late 90s when you know a lot of those amendments were implemented, starting with you know, Gus Dectr, I guess, and then early 2000s and PPA. So yeah, and now we're gonna have secure two.
Speaker 3Yes. Yes. Love those tack on amendments. Um when does a shared drive become a governance risk?
Speaker 1A shared drive becomes a governance risk, I think, when you have too many people that have access and control into that shared drive. Because then you just, you know, there's a lot of scenarios where you know documents could be altered or documents could be deleted if you don't have the right controls, I guess, in place with how you go about altering or deleting or archiving, you know, certain documents. So, you know, share drives are as of right now, you know, mostly you are used probably across the board by you know a lot of folks. So hopefully folks do have a decent process in place. But you know, with that said, I think now with the increased usage of AI and just more technology, you know, out
Shared Drives And Lost Institutional Memory
Speaker 1there, there are other ways to kind of go about ensuring that you have the right controls in place with respect to your documents.
Speaker 3And what happens when institutional memory walks out the door?
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, so you know, there's you know, I think people in HR tend to, especially those at the more senior levels who are at the director levels or senior manager levels, they tend to be there for a long time. Uh and uh, you know, when they leave because they retire, hopefully, or when they you know take a job you know elsewhere, there is a lot of knowledge that you know walks out the door. And by that, I'm not, you know, it's not just you know the knowledge that's in that person's brain, but it's also you know, the conversations that were on their emails, you know, or their team, Slack, you know, or the phone calls with the CHRO, or the information on where certain files are, you know, maybe still on paper, you know, in a uh cabinet drawer, you know, somewhere. And so it's you know important to when you're considering technology and looking at technological solutions, you really need a system that houses everything related to your retirement plan in one singular place, you know, where you are then not losing that knowledge when it walks out the door, because it's gonna walk out the door.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1In some form or fashion, like institutional knowledge is going to creep out. It's gonna it's gonna leak out just like we have leakage and plans.
Speaker 3Um how do multiple providers and disconnected systems complicate oversight?
Speaker 1Well, I mean, present day or let's say a few years ago, when we didn't have as much technology out there, you know, if it's uh in order to you know really satisfy your fiduciary duty, you do need to have consultants, you know, whether it's you know bundled or not, you got to have you know a bunch of folks helping you out. And with the more cooks in the kitchen, the more conversations that are happening, whether you know it or not, the more emails that are you know happening, whether you know it or not. And so everything is still kind of disconnected. And so kind of going back to what I said from the last question is you need to you need to break down the silos and you need to have you know one unified kind of system that really tracks all conversations that are happening, all decisions, all deliberations, all in one place.
Speaker 3Do you think that simpler governance would make more employers willing to offer retirement plans?
Speaker 1Oh, most definitely. I think without push putting technology aside, I think we can just look at the success of PEPS, you know, and that, you know, one of the biggest advantages to PEPS besides cost or lower cost, hopefully, is less compliance burden, you know, on the plan sponsor. But yes, I do think even if it is, you know, an individually designed plan, you know, the the simpler or I guess more efficient way to manage that plan, the more likely you know a company will offer a plan.
Speaker 3So now to the fun stuff.
Speaker 1Oh, that was unfun. I thought that was fun.
Speaker 3No, this is more fun, though. This is what I'm really excited about because I've seen it and it's really cool. So give us an explanation about what Knowa powered by PSCA is.
Speaker 1The and I've kind of talked about it a little bit, hopefully here. It's it's a single system. So it is one place, it's one solution that houses all documents, decisions, deliberations regarding your defined contribution retirement plan. We do go beyond defined contribution plans, so your 401k or 403B. We also have capabilities for pension, HSA, non-qualified health and welfare. But that's it in a nutshell. The core features of it are a document storage system, but I always say it's a document storage system on steroids. It has the built-in compliance dates associated with any document that does have a compliance
KNOWA Explained With Core Features
Speaker 1date associated with it, whether that's through regulations or law. So it kind of reminds you like, hey, your you know, revised SPD is coming up due on you know July 31st, 2027. And so it kind of keeps you on track, you know, with respect to that. And then it also has a collaboration space. So this is where you break down those silos. So when you purchase Knowa, become a Knowa client, it isn't meant to, but it can be. It isn't meant to just be for your HR team. It is meant for you to really invite your TPA, your advisor, your record keeper, um, any other consultants to have access to certain parts of the system, the solution, so that they are involved. They are involved in the conversations. They're already involved in the conversations in person or via email. So it's basically taking all those conversations that are happening in person or via email and making sure that they are on the Knowa platform. So the collaboration space is where you have your conversations about Secure 2.0, you have conversations with your auditor about the Form 5500 for the year, whatever conversation you want. And then the last core feature is the meeting agenda uh creation. So you create a meeting agenda, you have your template that you then use for all future meetings. This is where you house all of your meeting agenda packs. So those 50 to 400 page documents that you use on a hopefully quarterly basis. If you're meeting quarterly, which is the best practice, sometimes twice a year, it's great too. So yeah, it's those are kind of the three core features. And then wrapped around all of that is a query function. So that's where the AI kicks in, and now you can query anything or whatever. You know, you can ask simple questions about if you just can't remember the eligibility provisions, to harder questions where you can say, Hey, what have been the major changes to this plan and over the last five years? And it will give you a nice little summary of it all. That's a great uh solution or trick for like if you're onboarding a new committee member. Uh, you're now able to like give the committee member access and they can now have a historical, all the historical. Documents in front of them, which we're not going to go through, but they can use the functionality to at least ask questions. So those are the core features. And then the other features we're developing are a benchmarking solution. So that you uh, you know, just by loading in your Form 5500 into the system and your SPD, uh, you have a uh enough information in there where it can then benchmark the planned design information that can be extracted from those documents against PSCA's annual survey. So PSCA has our annual survey of defined contribution plans. We also have an annual survey of 403B plans, so it's able to do a benchmarking right away. And then the other one I think is really very much important is uh fiduciary training. We can admit fiduciary training is boring. So we've gamified it. We basically have taken our education materials, gamified it, made it fun, given a scoreboard associated with it. And then because your committee members hopefully have access to all that, it now tracks that fiduciary training's been done by your committee members, your HR team. I mean, it's all just housed right there in a singular, singular system there. So there you go. In a nutshell.
Speaker 3In a nutshell. Okay. Well, actually, that took care of the next question, too, was how does smart vault collaboration space and meeting flow work together? But I think you've kind of told us that, you know, where they can query it. And I'm assuming when they query it, it goes through all of those things to answer their questions.
Speaker 1It's up to you. So you have the capability of kind of setting, hey, I want you to look just at the vault, or I want you to look at everything across the entire workspace. Or if you're in a specific collaboration space, you can just say, hey, just want to know within this collaboration space, you know, summarize this conversation. And I for I failed to mention on the collaboration space, there's also capabilities to hold votes. So you can set like within the conversation, like, hey, let's take a vote on this. So you're like tracking again the decisions. And we can do signatures as well. So you can like upload a PDF and say, hey, I want a signature here by you know, Jane Doe. So that again is tracking signatures on documents as well. So kind of further building out that deliberative process uh that's there. So but yeah, that's kind of it's all on the same system, it all works together seamlessly, which is really great. I think one of the biggest barriers right now is a lot of folks in HR think, oh, this is like another system and it's gonna take forever to you know upload and I just or to implement and I just don't have that time. Um and it's for this, it's actually like once you like sign the contract to become a client, you are have your onboarding, and then within five minutes, you know, you could upload five documents and start using it. It's like a drag and drop kind of type feature where you know it's uh one of the simplest, probably new tools to be able to use in your HR toolkit.
Speaker 3Tell me, tell me something. I mean, we've we've talked about email and stuff too. So, like what happens if one of those conversations takes place in email versus the collaboration space? How does that information get into Knowa so that the conversation is documented when it was outside of Knowa?
Speaker 1Yeah, and we we know that you know, with any new system, it's really hard. You know, we love email, and you know, and so it's very hard to break that habit of you know just sending an email or sending a team's message or something like that. So with email in particular, two things. One is let's say you're having a conversation with your advisor, and there are circumstances where your advisor may say, Hey, I have to do this conversation by email and only email because of compliance, you know, purpose for compliance reasons. Once that conversation is done, or maybe it's just at a point
Capturing Email And Building Meeting Packs
Speaker 1where you want to make sure it's documented, you can forward it to an email that is provided to you by the Knowa team. So it's dropped right into one of the collaboration spaces. Or if you're using Outlook, we have an add-in where right on your Outlook, you can just with a few clicks have it dropped right into a collaboration space as well. So it's pretty easy. You can forward documents, you know, documents straight to the vault, documents straight to a collaboration space. So it's very simple to ensure that, you know, everything that's ongoing with respect to the plan, conversations, documents, whatnot, if it's happening outside of the Knowa platform, can easily be inserted into the Knowa platform.
Speaker 3Excellent. So we've talked a lot about committee meetings. And walk, walk us through a committee meeting from preparation to minutes to follow up. What does a good committee meeting look like?
Speaker 1Yeah. So the let's assume that you know they've already done one or two committee meetings, the Knowa platform, and let's assume that their record keeper and their advisor and their TPA, and let's say their auditor, all have access to Knowa as well. In the meeting agenda feature of Knowa, let's say the director of benefits is in there, he or she is taking the lead on creating the agenda. They're gonna start the draft agenda. They're probably working off of a template that's already been used from a prior agenda. They're then gonna send out the draft link to the advisor, TPA, record keeper, auditor, let's say, to give them access to say, hey, can you please you know make some edits and build out this agenda, you know, with me? So let's say it's the advisor's quarterly investment review. The advisor would be able to log in. They would be able to add in like a summary, maybe, of like their 30 minutes that they have scheduled to do the quarterly investment review. They can attach a PDF maybe of the quarterly investment review as well. And same thing goes for whoever else is on that agenda. Then if it's the TPA, has um a section, or if you know the auditor has a section, the record keeper you know doing their quarterly update. And once that agenda is then uh set, everyone's on board, it's then published. So you send it out to everyone that's attending that committee. Everyone hopefully is that has access to Knowa. So they then have a link, they click on that link, and they now have the meeting agenda nicely organized for them, either online on the platform, or they could export it as a PDF to be able to uh just look through it that way. And then the query functionality um happens is still there as well, too. So with that meeting pack for that specific quarterly meeting, let's say the you know, the VP of sales who sits on the uh committee who you know knows nothing about 401k plans, only cares about you know the investment review and wants to know, hey, are any funds on the watch list? That's all they care about. They can just easily query, like, hey, any funds on the watch list and get their answer within seconds instead of having to like flip through you know all that. But once that meeting pack is published, then uh you know the meeting's not run through Knowa from a uh virtual standpoint. So like you still have your meeting on Zoom or Teams or in person, and then uh you can just share screen the Knowa platform and walk through the agenda you know that way. Everyone else can have their who probably has their laptops up, you know, would be looking through the Knowa meeting pack agenda as well. If questions come up, I mean, let's say, you know, as they're going through the quarterly investment fund review and you know the advisor you know thrushes over the target date funds because you know everything is fine. But let's say the CFO is like, hey, you know, when is the last time we talked about the target date funds in depth? You know, put that into the query functionality in Knowa. I mean within seconds, you now know, you know, when is the last time you have that? Otherwise, something that would take you know a really long time to happen. So yeah, that's there you go. That's a good overview of it.
Speaker 3Excellent, excellent. How does KnowaQ separate sourced plan records from PSCA guidance without replacing fiduciary judgment?
Speaker 1Yeah, so really the the Knowa platform has all the documents in there. And so when the AI hopefully has all your plan documents in there, when the AI, when you're asking a question, I'm sorry, of Noah Q, it then says, and Shannon, we have to pause. My guest star is being annoying right now. This is no worries. I told Shannon, like I have a the dog is gonna be really super annoying uh today. It's like screwed up.
Speaker 3Well, the dog can join us.
Speaker 1No, no, it was just his his uh his toy that keeps him busy decided to fall into a crevice that he could not get to. There we go. Spice things up on the gap here.
Speaker 2Okay, it's okay.
Speaker 1When you ask it a question, any question, it's gonna say, give
Trusted AI Answers Without Replacing Judgment
Speaker 1you an answer based off the plan documents, and then it's gonna give you more from PSCA knowledge. And the more from PSCA knowledge is the AI is now tapping into the some of the educational materials that the Plan Sponsor Council of America has. And so let's say you're asking a question about vesting provisions in the plan, it will give you the plan document response of what your actual vesting provisions are, and then it will give you more information just about vesting provisions broadly. And it's pulling it back from there. I think it's a key point too, because you know, if you think that let's say, and I'll I'll use you, I'll use you, Shannon, as an example. I'll ask a question back. Do you think your clients are using AI right now when it comes to their 401k plan?
Speaker 3I think that some of them are, yes. I do think that some of them are. They're probably feeding their planned document into Chat GPT and asking questions about it. It wouldn't, it wouldn't surprise me.
Speaker 1Yeah. And ChatGPT or Claude or Insert any of them, you know, those are, you know, I guess they're trustworthy to a certain extent, but they're gonna make mistakes. Right. And so it when it comes to, I think, retirement plan administration, it is important, I think, for us on the provider side at least to recognize that, hey, we probably need to ensure that, you know, if they're using AI, they're using a trusted, you know, and the AI that has trusted sources. And so we ensure that like when you are asking a question, it's not going out to Google, it's not going out to Chat GBT. It is answering that question only based off of your plan documents with no additional information or analysis. And then it's only providing you more knowledge from PSCA material. Again, not going out to the Google to pull in additional information. So it's it is something I think that you know providers need to think about a little bit more to ensure that you know they are their clients are getting the best, you know, the best resources and are using the most trusted resources.
Speaker 3Yeah, I agree. How does the risk register action tracker compliance calendar and training log improve follow-through?
Speaker 1Yeah, so that's more on the provider side. So these are new tools that we're testing out. And AI is, I mean, AI is freaking amazing out there. It's just kind of crazy, like all of it recently. But, you know, the you know, the action tracker as an example, I'll hone in on that one. You know, we're developing it in a way that, you know, once you load in meeting minutes, which by the way, we also do have meeting minute capabilities as well. So if you record your meeting, you can have meeting minutes created on Knowa. Okay. Either way, you know, once your meeting minutes are finalized and hopefully you load them into Knowa, it will then the action tracker will analyze the meeting minutes and then automated, automatically create the actions
Action Tracking And Advisor Oversight At Scale
Speaker 1that are were just were agreed upon, you know, through that most recent meeting. So it's not manual, it's automated. It will assign, you know, who it goes to and just go through, confirm, check, and just kind of keeps the you know, it's the goal here with Knowa is really to eliminate anything that's sticky, you know, any process that is manual, but because of technology, it just doesn't need to be, you know, manual. It still gives you the ability to like make alterations or changes, you know, but it is gonna automate as much as possible. So that is an example of kind of what the action tracker is meant to do.
Speaker 3Very nice. Very nice. And so I want to switch gears for one second, because I know too that Knowa can be used by financial advisors. So, how can financial advisors oversee a lot of clients' plans without creating another technology silo?
Speaker 1Yeah, so for advisors or anyone that has multiple clients, we have have it one, first off, just you know, when you log in, let's say you have 10 plans associated with your email, your login, in the menu bar, you're gonna see all 10 plans. You know, each plan has its separate own space. You are able to just drop into each space. When you're asking or querying any questions about that plan, it's only gonna be looking at that plan. So it's like it has its own separate space, easy for you to pop in and out. But then in addition to that, we've created something that we call Knowa Pulse, uh, which is a consolidated view of all of your plans. So if you are a provider and you purchase a bulk license or an enterprise license of Knowa powered by PSCA, let's say you purchase 100 licenses, we'll then give you the ability to kind of create 20 different fields that summarize what you want to see on that consolidated view. So let's say it's you know 10 financial fields that cover uh fund, fee, lineup or fund fees, or maybe your own annual uh fee that you have for that client. And then let's say the other 10 are design based. So does the plan have you know auto-enrollment? You know, as long as there is a document that you know provides that field in Knowa, it's all automated. So that you're now seeing everything kind of across on one view of all of your plans. And then when you're in that space, you can then use Knowa Q to query across all of your plans as well. So you can ask, you know, which of my plans have auto enrollment and more than $50 million in assets if you want. You know, you come up with a question as long as the information is there, you're gonna get the answer.
Speaker 3Very cool. What does onboarding look like? Um, especially when there's like years of files scattered across people and providers and no telling where.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I kind of, you know, going back earlier, I said kind of onboarding's easy. It really does depend, though, on like what's your current document storage, document organizational system in place right now. So if you have if you have everything kind of in files, you know, on a share drive or whatnot, it is as simple as just dragging and dropping all those documents into the document um vault. So we first start off with the vault. The vault's meant to just be your compliance document. So it is meant to be about, you know, anywhere between probably 10 and 20 of your core compliance documents associated with your plant. If you have those all, as well as historical versions of them that you want archived, you can you know drag and drop. And if it's let's say 100, 200, 300, 400, 500
Onboarding Old Files And Proving ROI
Speaker 1documents, you you drag and drop and you leave for the night, you know, or you leave for go for lunch. Uh the AI is gonna start to scrape the right data from those, bucket those into the right categories, give you the right, extract the right date information to ensure that we're then providing you the next compliance deadline for those. And then in the collaboration space, collaboration space is meant to not just be discussions, but also house documents as well. So let's say you want, you know, all of your participant communications um that have gone out, you know, whether it's about investment funds, whether it's just maybe financial wellness broadly, you know, all of those can be housed in, you know, Knowa Q as or sorry, in the collaboration space as well. We say, you know, in our marketing materials that you can have upwards of 5,000 documents, you know, in your in your space. So, you know, the more the merrier, because I'll use financial wellness as an example. Let's say you have a collaboration space for financial wellness, you house all of your participant communication documents on you know what you've sent out to encourage greater usage of the plan. You can then use the query functionality to be like, hey, when's the last time we talked about auto-escalation? I don't know, or something like that. You know, and now you're getting that answer within a matter of seconds there. So onboarding, simple and easy, like we schedule the call, white club service, you know, start to say, walk everyone through the main components of it. And then from just getting your documents on there, it's um just again very simple as well. If it's a provider, service provider purchasing bulk licenses, and then they have everything kind of in their own system, we'll build out an API to then easily transfer all those documents or copy of those documents into the respective vaults for the clients of that provider too.
Speaker 3Oh, okay. So they don't have to go like client by client by client.
Speaker 1Correct. Nice.
SpeakerWe'll make it easy. Well, yeah.
Speaker 3Nice. Yeah. So what is what measurable improvements should a plan sponsor expect and how how will those results be demonstrated?
Speaker 1You know, I think the two things that I see that are will be one of be immediate is one, I think you'll have a better process in place because you're now using technology to kind of create that process. And, you know, as I mentioned a few questions ago, we're trying to solve for the stickiness. So it will solve for the stickiness, just make things smoother, and then give you, which leads me to my second one, gives you time, you know, time to either improve your process or time to focus on other matters that are compliance related that you just haven't been able to devote to because you're too busy, you know, analyzing meeting minutes and other documents or uh doing other tasks that you know take forever because you don't have a technological platform that gives you more efficiency in that area. And then also you're able to do more time on what matters the most, which is encouraging your employees to save. Whether it's encouraging them to actually start to save, save more, or giving them the tools that set them up for success down the road to be able to save some more financial wellness tools. So in the end, you know, what we're trying to do is just create more time for you to do what is matters most on the provider side. We kind of averaged out that you probably spend, let's say, in the advisor spends 600 hours a year just on tasks that could be automated, you know. And so we're basically freeing up time for you to spend more time on your current clients, things that plan design related, you know, things that are important to ensure that, you know, this plan is being successful for the participants, or prospecting and finding new clients as well.
Speaker 3Which plants are the best fit and how should sponsors weigh the price, the risk, and the time saved?
Speaker 1The price you're gonna be shocked by. You know, it is not some huge price tag associated with it. I won't go into the details on there, but we can uh and for plant types, it's all the above. So our actually all of our kind of early users are small or large. We have and there's a few uh medium-sized plans scattered in there as well, too. But the small ones in particular, they're like, you know what, I've got a gazillion other things going on, you know, because a small plan, most likely the person is maybe not even HR. They may not even have an HR department. This is like an admin or you know, a CFO or somebody who has both finance duties and you know, some HR functions and whatnot. So this is a way for like it's that small group of people, whether it's four or five, that probably includes the president of the company, to just have a way to just keep everything organized. And then on the very large side, I think it's a lot of folks that have been sued or just don't want to get sued because they know that this is a great way to just ensure that there is one single place for all conversations, decisions, deliberations. And so if they get a suit again, or then having everything documented and be able to prove that process.
Speaker 3So, what do you think about like the doctor's wife who's running the doctor's practice?
Speaker 1Is this a good fit for her to Yeah, because one, it's not for a plan of that size, it's you know, the cost is you know not huge. And you know, while there's not a huge risk of a lawsuit, you know, you know, a small type of plan, it is hopefully just a you know, keeping things a little bit more organized, you know, for them. So that maybe, you know, maybe the plan is pretty simple, but there are some features and designs that you know, alterations to that plan or maybe a greater dive into the investment funds. And so this would hopefully open up those doors and allow them to do that.
Speaker 3So I want to switch gears for just a second. I want to talk more about PSCA. So which PSCA membership benefit do you think is most underused? Research, education, toolkit, round tables, networking, or advocacy?
Speaker 1Research, I think, is the the most underutilized from a member from a member standpoint, and I'll say it on both sides. So, and both sides meaning the plan sponsor member and the service provider member. On the plan sponsor member, you know, I think they a lot of funk folks don't recognize the amount of research that we have available to them. And then I still think there's a good chunk of our members who don't actually fill out the surveys. And if you fill out a survey, you get a free copy of the survey, which is huge financial value. There are there is a time commitment associated with it, but I mean Man, that data is is amazing to have. So,
PSCA Research Value And CPSP Credential
Speaker 1you know, being able to sit in a committee meeting and say, hey, well, you know, we don't offer auto enrollments, you know, what's the what's the standard, you know, out there? And being able for for our plan size in particular, because we do break it out by plan size, plan participant numbers, um, and being able to you know find that within a matter of seconds, I think is very helpful. So that's you know, on the plan sponsor side. On the service provider side too, though, I think it's um, you know, if you're a member, you get a discount for purchasing that survey. And I think you know, a lot more uh providers would benefit from you know laying down a few dollars it takes to purchase it, but also pushing it out to their clients too. So if you're a provider that pushes it out to your clients, we'll give you a free copy of the survey. The 69th survey is actually still out in the field. And when I say that 69 years, I mean that is you know, that is a lot of data, but I think it also just goes to show that this is one of the, you know, the number one, it's the best, you know, survey out there for uh defined contribution plans. But we do have 403B survey, it's been around for about 15 years. We have a non-qualified survey that's launching soon. It's been around for over 10 years. Really excited about the non-qual survey this year that we're launching for response because we are offering kind of a segment in there for nonprofits. So there'll be a separate little area for uh nonprofits in the non-qual space. And then we have an HSA survey too. I think in the HSA one, I think it's still the only HSA survey that exists. If I hope hopefully I'm correct in that statement there.
Speaker 3Yeah, I know we I make my practice manager fill out the survey every year so that we get a copy, but then we also push it out to all of our clients, just encouraging them. Because I think that the more data we have, the better we can advocate for our clients anyway. You know, the ARI does so much good work advocating, and the more data we have, the the better that advocacy can be. So we do push it out, and I think it is really important. Um, I think one of the other things too, and I'm just gonna toss this in here, which is underutilized, is the CPSP designation. And uh, I'm gonna let you tell everybody about that for a second, and then I'm gonna say something else about it.
Speaker 1Yeah, no, certified plant sponsored professional credential, it's our premier credential that we offer. It's free. You do not have to pay anything to go through the educational classrooms, whether it's self-study or it's a virtual classroom that we offer throughout the year. It's a five-week program. So it's zero dollars to sign up, zero dollars for going through it. The only time that there is any sort of monetary dollar sign associated with it is if you do want to maintain the credential year over year. Currently it's set at $180 a year to maintain it. But with that, you get membership into PSCA and you get all of our webinars, our conferences, everything is free, including a membership. So there is no additional dollars associated with being a member of PSCA. I think if you are, if you have Sherm or HRCI, you should do PSCA because if you do the CPSP, you get upwards of like 20 hours of SHERM or HRCI CE for free, because our program is free. And then most of our webinars, your national conference and everything are also SHERM or HRCI certified. So while you're doing CE to maintain our credential, you also are getting CE to maintain your Sherm or HRCI credential. And again, it's you know included in that $180, you know, that you're paying for to maintain the CPSP credential. Putting that aside though, there's no other credential out there with respect to administering a defined contribution plan, 401k or 403B. And it just, I think, is a really great easy credential to, well, it's not easy, but credential to to complete to kind of further your education in administering a retirement plan for your employees.
Speaker 3Yeah, I I totally agree. So we had the opportunity to sponsor a class this year and along with the rest of the members of the Serato group. And I sent it out to all of my clients. It's just a benefit, you know, being a tristar client. And then I also sent it out to all of my financial advisor partners and told them, you know, obviously you can have your clients, even if they're not a tristar client. And we got such a huge positive response from all of our clients that took the time to sign up and take it. They loved it. They got a lot out of it, they learned a lot. And a lot of our clients are small employers who don't have an HR department. You know, they are just, you know, maybe they have somebody that's the, you know, internal accountant. They are also running the plan. Everybody who did it loved it, said that they got so much out of it. They were so glad they did it and so thankful that we offered it. So I it's a really great educational class and um great designation.
Speaker 1So no, no, yeah. I appreciate you all doing in. We have some classes coming up as well that people can sign up for on the website.
Speaker 3So, how do you think better governance free um how can better governance free sponsors and advisors to focus on participation, savings, and participant outcomes?
Speaker 1Well, I think, and we kind of covered it. It's it's Knowa powered by PSCA. But no, it's or you know, there are plenty of solutions out there that can just keep you better organized and then also use AI to extract data, provide some analytics based off your plain documents, you know, those are the type of you know resources that you are you know looking for. So, you know, anything out there that just is with as technology evolves to make your life easier, you should research it, look into it, make sure it's a trusted source, though. So, and not only from security parameters, but also from you know what sources are it's are is the AI using to provide responses, you know, those are the things that you need to be looking at.
Speaker 3Okay, so as we close, what should every plan sponsor do on Monday morning? On Monday morning or this morning, the first day of the week. Now that they've listened to you, what should they all first think?
Speaker 1Well, I think first off, when we talk a lot about Knowa today. So the the website is noah.co, not.com. It's .co, noah.co. You'll see um at the very top there where you can click to make sure that the website is specific to planned sponsors versus service providers. So they should take a look. And then also on that website, they can book a demo. I should probably spell it out too. It's K-N-O-W-A Knowa. Book a demo. Demo's 20 or 30 minutes. You know, you just get a taste for it, and then at least you've done some due diligence there, and maybe you like it, maybe you don't, and go from there. Second step is go to psca.org. So psca.org and check
Monday Morning Checklist And Closing
Speaker 1out the education tab and look at the CPSP credential, the certified plan sponsor professional credential. For any providers that are listening in, the CPSP credential is just for plan sponsors. Sorry, you have your own credentials that you can attain. But, you know, even though the Serato group that Shannon mentioned sponsored a classroom, there is a financial commitment associated with that. And if you're not up for doing that, you can at least just you know make your clients aware of this, you know, free education that they can, you know, use and attain this credential if they want to. So that's what I would recommend.
Speaker 3What final message do you have for sponsors and advisors who are working to strengthen America's retirement system?
Speaker 1Get a dog. They 80% of the time help to relax you, but 20% of the time are really brownie, like this one who's been kind of guest appearing in my blitz. What was the question again? I'm sorry.
Speaker 3But the what's your final message for sponsors and advisors?
Speaker 1You know, I think now is the time to really dig in on looking at technological tools that are out there. You need to find the right tools to automate processes. You don't want to make anything harder on yourself. And, you know, I I think there's a lot of people out there in our space who just don't want to use AI. You know, it's like, nope, I don't want to, I don't want to use it. I don't, you know, I don't see the need. And then once they, I feel like a lot of those people, once they do use it, they're just like, wow, that's uh, you know, okay. But it's like there's value there and they need to recognize that and dig in a little bit and you know, hopefully uh start to, you know, use those tools because what we should be focused on is ensuring everyone is saving for a secure environment. And in order to do that, you know, there's just not enough hours in the day. So we need to find those technological tools to open up that time to focus on what is most important.
Speaker 3Totally agree. Yeah, I actually had co-pilot create a slideshow for me in like under three minutes the other day. And I'm terrible at PowerPoint. So it was it was amazing what you can do and how much time you can free up. So well, thank you so much for sharing your time and your insights and your perspective with us today. To our listeners, thank you for tuning in to another episode of The Gap. If you believe that you have an innovative approach to closing the gaps in retirement savings for Americans and you would like to share your ideas, let me know. My contact information is in the show notes. And Will's contact information will be in the show notes as well, as well as information on how to get a demo of Noah. So thank you very much, and we will see you next time.
