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TPA/Administrator question--


Karoline Curran

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Happy October 15th!!  For those of you who work for, or own, a TPA and administer plans, what is the size of your caseload? The TPA for which I work keeps our cases around 45 for each admin, which is great, and manageable most of the time. My husband, who at 67, is quite a bit older than I, and also an admin is considering leaving his job because he has a case load of 120 plans, which he and I both find ridiculous.  He's not ready to retire since you don't get max SS until 70.  Curious to what others have as their caseloads.  Thanks in advance!

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This is sort of unanswerable, as there are SOOOOO many different factors that numbers of plans are sometimes nearly (but not totally) meaningless. Size of plans, complexity, combined plan testing, support staff assistance (if any) "user friendly" systems and procedures, investment platforms, quality of client HR personnel, TPA services performed, etc., etc. - some plans are giant time-sucks, and some are relatively smooth. You could go on and on.

Having said all that, I would say that 120 plans would typically be considered on the high side, but on the other hand, if he's been able to handle it without working an excessive number of hours per year, then it probably isn't "too many."

Good luck with whatever you decide.

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I've generally got 50-60 which is typical at our shop and which keeps me at a reasonably healthy stress level most of the time. I also do some compliance research and help out with conversions, quotes for new business, etc. so that's factored in when caseload is assigned. I'd have to agree that 120 sounds pretty ridiculous!

At the risk of stating the obvious, I think a huge factor is how well organized and responsive your clients are. I've got clients who run their own preliminary ADP tests during the year, fill in all their own distribution forms (and do a great job), never deposit employee deferrals late, return accurate and complete census data within a week of when I request it, make employer contributions when they say they will, etc... give me a dozen more like that any time!

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I agree with Belgarath, the number of plans you do is close to meaningless without context.  

I usually do somewhere around 50 plans, but admin is probably about 50% of my responsibilities.  I also have outside obligations like committees, government affairs, etc. that takes up some of my office time. Obviously, some plans take a lot more time than others. Some plans I could do 4 in one day, others will take weeks due to the complexity and corrections.  I have TPA friends who are pretty streamlined, where there are not that many differences from plan to plan, and the case load for their folks are north of 100 plans.

The only number that matters is how many plans you can do at a reasonable pace with a minimal tolerance for error.  If someone can handle 120 plans with limited errors without working them to a point of burning out, then 120 might be reasonable if justified by compensation.

 

 

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I think some of it depends on what responsibilities your admin people have.  For example, most firms have their own loan and distribution department and try to keep admin working on numbers and vals only.  I handle most of the client calls with our clients to keep them focused on admin work only too.  We are a small office but, I think, with the right structure 100 should be no problem.  I also agree that it all depends on the size of the clients too.

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I'll say this:  120 plan case load is a data processing shop.  You're not asking any questions, you're not scrubbing data.  The assumption is the client sent you good quality data.  You're not doing participant level deposit reconciliations; you're assuming the client sent in everything correctly.  These are bad assumptions but we charge our clients accordingly.

So this gets to the heart of what others have said before me.  I wanted to clarify that 60 vs 120 is the difference between a consulting service and a data processing service (assuming of course similar books of business).

OK fine if it's 120 safe harbor plans with no more than 15 or 20 people, maybe you can do a bang up job.

Austin Powers, CPA, QPA, ERPA

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1 hour ago, austin3515 said:

I'll say this:  120 plan case load is a data processing shop.  You're not asking any questions, you're not scrubbing data.  The assumption is the client sent you good quality data.  You're not doing participant level deposit reconciliations; you're assuming the client sent in everything correctly.  These are bad assumptions but we charge our clients accordingly.

So this gets to the heart of what others have said before me.  I wanted to clarify that 60 vs 120 is the difference between a consulting service and a data processing service (assuming of course similar books of business).

OK fine if it's 120 safe harbor plans with no more than 15 or 20 people, maybe you can do a bang up job.

Depends on what the consultant is doing. If they're doing everything related to the plan, the 120 might be too much. If there's a distribution department and a plan document department and sales support/onboarding department and notice department an actuarial department, etc., then that carves out a lot of time that the consultant might have been spending on things irrelevant to their job.

Then 120 isn't nearly as big a deal.

And I would argue that having a consultant all the extraneous things I included isn't the best use of their time.

William C. Presson, ERPA, QPA, QKA
bill.presson@gmail.com
C 205.994.4070

 

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3 hours ago, Bill Presson said:

Depends on what the consultant is doing. If they're doing everything related to the plan, the 120 might be too much. If there's a distribution department and a plan document department and sales support/onboarding department and notice department an actuarial department, etc., then that carves out a lot of time that the consultant might have been spending on things irrelevant to their job.

Then 120 isn't nearly as big a deal.

Yep, I know a very successful TPA firm where the consultants "workload" would seem ridiculous by plan numbers, but all the small steps are handled by support staff so that the consultants are more in a review and finalize position

 

 

 

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To me the better question is does your husband have a good work/life balance?

If so, than 120 isn't too many.  If not than it might be time to look for a change as life is too short to be a slave  to your job.

Don't get me wrong I like what I do.  I get to work from home and all that now.  But at one time I was in a bad place and I look back on that job and think their cost cutting that lead me to be laid off was doing me a favor.  I was working long days, coming in on the weekend and bringing my frustration and anger home to my wife and kids.  I needed to find a new job and at the time I had 30 large, balance forward clients. 

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14 hours ago, Bill Presson said:

Depends on what the consultant is doing. If they're doing everything related to the plan, the 120 might be too much. If there's a distribution department and a plan document department and sales support/onboarding department and notice department an actuarial department, etc., then that carves out a lot of time that the consultant might have been spending on things irrelevant to their job.

Then 120 isn't nearly as big a deal.

And I would argue that having a consultant all the extraneous things I included isn't the best use of their time.

We don't have our consultants doing any of those things. They do of course end up "servicing" the client, which takes time.  I just don't think you can do anything more than process data at those levels.  We spend a lot of time fixing stuff like "Johnny's money is in Susans account."  My point is with 120 plans you're not even checking to see if Johnny's money went into Susan's account.  We ask "Total wages on the payroll report are $1MM but on the census file it's $950,000 (which we see a lot)".  With 120 plans you're not even getting a copy of the payroll report.  We're asking "you said Johnny worked 1,000 hours, but he only made $3,500".  At 120 the expectation/assumption is the client gave accurate data.  I get that this is a different business model than ABC Bundle Co.

I'd be curious to know if anyone agrees with me :) (the dissenters are on record!).  We're more 60 to 80 at the top and no one is slacking off.  

Austin Powers, CPA, QPA, ERPA

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I do agree that it depends on the work involved more than the number of clients, but even with other teams taking on a lot of the day to day admin "stuff" 120 seems very high.   

I have worked with a few different companies that had cased loads in the 40's and others that they thought close to 100 clients would be reasonable.  To be able to give a reasonable level of service consistently to clients (and we all know things get busier during testing and 5500) was close to impossible when the client count got to high even with a set up where other teams were supposed take care of other admin activities. 

 

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3 hours ago, austin3515 said:

If you want to know the truth I wish all of our plans were balance forward.  The number of things that clients can screw up is decreased dramatically versus recordkeepers!

And often times the errors are easier to fix when they do happen. 

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