Rollovers from IRA to Profit Sharing Plans.

[stevena]

I have a problem with an employee who is trying to roll some of her IRA accounts into her Profit Sharing Plan which I administer.

The Profit Sharing Plan is at Nationwide. The trustee is the Employer. The IRA is at Merrill Lynch.

The employee wants to roll the Merrill Lynch money into Nationwide. Here is what Merrill Lynch wants:

A letter from the employee saying she wants it transferred, specifying how check is to be payable, etc.--but accompanied by an acceptance letter from NATIONWIDE (huh?). I dont get why if we are transferring money from Merrill to a trustee, why the acceptance letter would not come from the Trustee??? why does the IRA fund group 1) care where the money is going, or 2) need a letter from the custodian (not the Trustee...) of where the money is going??? If we are doing a custodian to trustee transfer, why wouldnt it be that a letter of acceptance from the trustee is required?? Since Nationwide is not trustee, what right would they have to write an acceptance letter? Since it is the trustee who decides to accept the rollover or not. I am confused.....

has anyone done any of these yet?

[pmacduff]

As someone who used to work for a Nationwide PPA, I do know that Nationwide used to have a form that was actually called a "letter of acceptance". If memory serves me, it was something along the lines that the accepting plan (at Nationwide) was or was intended to be, in fact, a Qualifed Plan. Every now and then when we processed a rollover from a conduit IRA or another Qualified Plan to one of our Nationwide plans, we were asked by the SENDING investment firm for one of these forms. I always thought it was unnecessary as you mentioned because why would the SENDING firm care if the receipient plan was Qualified. Oh well. Extra precautions I guess.