Access Pooled Employer Plans (PEPs) offer a new retirement plan solution

Saving for future goals like retirement is important to employees. For employers, offering a strong benefits package is a necessity when it comes to recruiting and retaining quality employees. Partnering with a retirement plan provider that understands an employer’s needs and budget and can also deliver a quality retirement plan benefit for your employees is a rarity.

Don’t have employees? We have an innovative new solution designed for the unique needs of independent contractors and other solo operators. Click here to learn more about the Access Solo PEP.

Some may look to traditional retirement plan offerings, but they often lead to high fees, hidden costs, legal risks, administrative headaches, conflicts of interests and an overall distraction from an employer’s core business that comes with retirement plan oversight and compliance hassles.
The introduction of PEPs in January 2021 by the SECURE Act changes the landscape, providing employers of all sizes the ability to get the scale, efficiencies and plan design flexibility that would typically only be available to large employers – without all the headaches.
For Access Retirement Solutions, delivering a low-cost, best-in-class PEP retirement plan solutions to employers and empowering employees to achieve financial security is the norm.

Access PEPs takes the challenges out of offering a retirement plan

Whether it’s the rigid plan design options, high fees, legal risks, conflicts of interest or administrative and compliance hassles, employers face a wide variety of challenges when it comes to offering a retirement plan. 

With Access Retirement Solutions’ proprietary PEP model, employers get a flexible plan design with a streamlined service that greatly reduces the challenges and headaches of offering a 401(k) retirement plan while keeping employees’ end goals at the forefront.

Employers reap the benefits of a larger plan while reducing the costs and risks of a single employer plan (or pooled arrangement). As a complete retirement plan solution provider, Access helps keep employers focused on their business.

Employers and employees are at the heart of the Access approach

The Access PEP 401(k) retirement plan model removes conflicts of interest that are inherent in most PEP provider’s models and places employers’ and their employees’ best interests at the epicenter:

Simple, flexible and affordable

  • Employers tap into a low-cost retirement plan solution with a simple, flexible design and a completely unconflicted model.

Best-in-class investments 

  • Employees get access to investment offerings that rival the quality and cost of the largest plans in the country.

Benefits without the bother

  • We cut down the workload and liability that typically comes along with offering a 401(k) retirement plan benefit by managing, administering and auditing the PEPs. 

Complete fiduciary outsourcing

  • We provide full monitoring of the PEP providers and the underlying investments, including cost and performance.

Getting Access makes 401(k) plans easy

Access PEPs are focused on reducing employers’ legal risks and administrative burdens

Routine Amendments are addressed by the PEP, rather than by each Employer Group

Merger and Acquisition activity no longer requires termination or transition headaches

Potential for fiduciary litigation is all but eliminated

No more Form 5500s

No more Quarterly Committee Meetings

Quality investment offerings

Investment offerings available through the Access PEPs are selected and rigorously monitored and Access assumes complete discretionary responsibility for the investment lineup. This unconflicted approach ensures ongoing monitoring of the available investment offerings and that the fees remain reasonable.

Access strives to select best-in-class investment alternatives to provide a wide array of options. By removing the conflicts of interest, Access is not limited to a predetermined universe of offerings. As a result, participants are not limited to “Brand X” or proprietary offerings.  Instead, each investment is selected based upon objective criteria. Plus, with this transparent pricing, there is no need to use less efficient share classes. This approach results in an investment menu comprised of a variety of options that are carefully selected based upon both their performance and cost. Participants are able to select from various low-cost index funds, actively managed funds or simply set it and forget it by selecting or defaulting into one of the PEPs’ target date funds, which  serve as the qualified default investment alternative. 

Lower fees may have a big meaning

Plan costs like recordkeeping administrative and investment fees can add up over time. If left unchecked, they can take a toll on each employee’s retirement savings. 

What could you do with an additional $400,000 in your retirement? This difference saved in plan costs could potentially pay for a retirement home, pay down debt, cover healthcare costs or help boost savings for dream vacations.

We keep employees’ goals at the forefront. That’s just one of the reasons Access does not charge the PEPs or the participants additional investment fees.

Plan costs have the potential to erode retirement savings over time

Employee Retirement Benefits - Fees Make a Difference

Have questions? We’ve got answers.

Check out our FAQs to up your PEP knowledge.