Fees and benefits of having an outside advisor on a 401Kplan

[Guest Vickey]

What are the benefits of an advisor to a current 401K plan to the organization as well as to the individual participants?

[Mike Preston]

What kind of advisor? How are the funds invested? What are the participant's options? What is the marginal expense? How is the expense being paid?

[401king]

The simple answer is that the benefit would be a point of contact for participants to go to with investment-related questions (assuming it's an investment advisor). The detriment would be the additional fee that the advisor takes (0.10% on the low-end, to 1.5% on the very high end [too high-end]); probaby 0.75% on average). Depending on the level of involvement, this fee could be worth it, but if they end up just telling the participants which target-date fund of your choices to put their money in it probably is not worth the fee.

[Madison71]

I would agree with all the points above and if you bring on an RIA who signs on as a co-fiduciary then you focus on selection and monitoring of the RIA and leave the investment selections to him/her.

[david rigby]

I'm not sure the answers really addressed the underlying question(s). The focus of the title and the orginal question could have multiple interpretations.

Please go back to Mike's Q's and restate what your are asking.