Cash Balance Plan Admininstration software

[Dan]

We have gotten serious interest in a Cash balance plan to be added to the DC plan for an existing client. My question is about software. We use Relius for our daily plans. I am interested in adding the DB function to administer Cash Balance plans. How well does Relius work on Cash Balance Plans? Are there any issues or limitations to look out for?

Thanks for any feedback.

[AndyH]

Dan, FWIW, I asked the same question a while back and I don't think I got much of a response either.

Either people aren't thrilled with what they use, they use spreadsheets, or they don't want to divulge their deep dark industrial secrets I take it.

[rcline46]

The Cash Balance software on Relius works fine. However, since this is the first year we have been doing CB plans, and they are EOY vals, and we have not actually done the real vals yet....

And the true test is in the 2nd or 3rd year, I can only say it seems to work as advertised.

[Effen]

We use ASC and it works fine as well. I know people who use Datair and it seems to work also.

Maybe one reason people don't respond to this type of question is that no software works any better than the person using it. If you know what you are doing, they probably all can be minuplated to do what they need to do. If you don't really know what you are doing and you are hoping the software will do it for you, then you are in for a whole lot of misery (or maybe blistful ignorance).

We have found that DB/DC combined plan valuations and testing isn't generally the type of thing that can be "passed down". Lots of chances for big errors and the software will not only let you hang yourself, it will also give you the rope and the stool.

[JAY21]

Effen, would you expound on areas of ASC to be extra careful with on DB/DC combos ? Is it primarily coding issues ? Have you disagreed with the actual EBARs that ASC calcs under both NAR and MVAR ? We're considering ASC for combo purposes (permissively aggregated plans) but have been primarily been just using own Excel spreadsheets for this purpose so far.

[Effen]

We have generally found the EBARS to be correct, if you code everything correctly. They had some problems doing "MVAR", but they have corrected it. There are just so many variables and so many things that need to be coded correctly, that if you don't know what the answer should be, you probably won't get it. When we first got it we spent a lot of time going through the coding. It still doesn't do everything exactly as we would like, but I think we are generally happy that the results are correct. It can be a little quirky, but no worse than any other system.

Like I said, it will let you produce results that are clearly wrong, so you need to know what is right. If you do know what is right, we think it works fine.

We use to do everything on spread sheets, but found the calculations were just getting too complex to do everything correctly. Plus, we wanted something a little more user friendly, but ultimately decided that the DB/DC stuff couldn't be passed down very far anyway - just too many variables.

[AndyH]

The MVAR comment reminds me of an ASPPA session from a few years ago on general testing. The speaker was knowledgeable and well respected (and not Larry D or a regular on this Board). He started getting into a discussion on MVAR calcs, and winded up concluding "ah, just use what your software spits out".

That's one of those comments that you don't forget.

[Dan]

Thanks for the replies. I understand the complicated nature of the computations and the lack of safe guards in Relius. I think that answers my question. Relius is capable but by no means fool-proof... But then nothing is fool-proof for a sufficiently talented fool, as I have proven on more than one occassion.

Thanks again.