401(k) Specialist Issue 3 - 2023 - 21

PROFILES IN
PARTICIPANT
OUTCOMES
Revitalizing a Patriarchal Plan
Stonebridge Financial Group does an overhaul on SAGE Truck Driving Schools retirement plan
Kline and his team also integrated an automatic
enrollment rate of 6%. Stonebridge
coordinated safe harbor matching contributions-of
100% up to 2% and 50% up to
6%-with the goal of reaching employees
anywhere from a 10% to 15% savings rate.
With the automatic enrollment benefit,
along with an auto-escalate feature that increased
once a year until 10%, Stonebridge
drove results of over 90% participation in
the plan.
By Amanda Umpierrez
W
hen SAGE Truck Driving
Schools came to Stonebridge
Financial Group in 2014, they
were looking to refresh a two-decades-old
retirement plan.
The national organization, who provides
driver training for trucks, tractors, and
trailers, had offered a profit-sharing plan to
its 165-and-growing employee-base for the
past 20 years and were anxious to modernize
benefits so participants could defer
towards and manage their own retirement
portfolios.
Their president had previously handled
the company's retirement plan and even
chose its investment lineup himself without
an investment committee or financial advisor
involved, but was now heading towards
retirement and therefore bringing in a new
group of fresh-faced leaders.
" The younger generation wanted more
Roth features available, they knew employees
would want to save on top of what they
do and knew that what they were able to
contribute would probably not be enough
for the retirement plan, " explained Jeffrey
Kline, director of Corporate Retirement Plan
Services with central Pennsylvania-based
Stonebridge Financial Group, and who
served as a financial advisor to the plan.
The new leadership had primarily wanted
their employees to defer contributions into
a plan, therefore Stonebridge's first course of
action was incorporating a 401(k) available
to workers, along with setting up the plan's
qualified default investment alternative
(QDIA), switching a previous 60/40 portfolio
for an age-appropriate allocation strategy
that included target-date funds (TDFs), and
adding a Roth feature.
Building a Dedicated Committee
Prior to Stonebridge's involvement, the
plan had organized an investment committee
of one: the president of the company.
" There wasn't an advisor involved in the
plan who said they should look at this in a
different way, " Kline said. " They had been
heading in that direction for two decades.
So, they didn't know any different. "
When new leadership came in, they
looked to Stonebridge to build a formal
committee and assign plan leaders to committee
roles.
To start, Stonebridge appointed these
roles to the chief financial officer (CFO),
the head of human resources (HR) and payroll,
controller, and the owner of the company.
They then created a charter of bylaws
along with an investment policy statement
(IPS) and served as the company's 3(38)
fiduciary to absolve committee members
from any potential or future liability.
The advisory group then met with committee
members every quarter, or 90 days,
to report on not only investments and the
marketplace, but the plan's health.
" We wanted to track if we were making
progress. Every quarter, we reviewed what
the participation was like, enrollment, what
ISSUE 3 2023 | 401kSpecialist.com
21
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401(k) Specialist Issue 3 - 2023

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