Centurion as Manager of the Retirement Plan

As trustee and plan fiduciary, you may not have the time, inclination, or the proven investment skill to manage your organization's retirement plan. Yet the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) holds you to an expert standard of skill and makes you personally liable for investment losses. That is why the selection of an investment advisor who will accept this liability and deliver excellent returns is so important to your plan, your employees, and to you personally.
The selection of an investment manager rests on both analytical and personal factors. Among those you will surely consider are:

Willingness of the advisor to accept in writing investment fiduciary responsibility under ERISA. Strong performance history. A repeatable methodology. Management of both risk and return. Applicability to your needs. No conflicts of interest. Accessibility to key professionals. Experience. Service.

We believe that you will find our services very compelling from both an investment and flexibility standpoint. We are dedicated to designing investment management solutions that will benefit you and your employees. We have broad experience in the field of portfolio management and, as an SEC registered Investment Advisor, we are qualified to accept investment fiduciary responsibility under ERISA.

Our services can be distinguished in four ways:

A. Investment performance: We manage risk, return, and cost. We have a repeatable method. Accountable for achieving the best possible investment returns for our clients. B. We succeed only if you succeed, because we: Are paid only by our clients. Do not sell products, promote our own mutual funds, or collect commissions. C. We answer the three most important retirement questions asked by employees: How much money will I need at retirement? How much money should I save each month? What investment choices are best for me? The answers to these questions are based upon each participant’s unique circumstances. We supplement our employee investment questionnaire with group seminars and provide quarterly portfolio reviews with plan participants. We direct each employee to an appropriately designed portfolio and we inform participants of the changes being made in their portfolios each quarter. D. We accept investment fiduciary liability for your plan in writing. We have no conflicts of interest. We can design your company’s investment policy or work within your existing Investment Policy Statement. We determine participants’ needs and match investments accordingly. We use mostly individual securities with regular rebalancing. We re-optimize portfolios periodically. ERISA holds you personally liable for investment performance unless you have a written contract with a qualified investment advisory firm accepting that responsibility. We accept investment liability in writing, minimize your liability, and provide your employees with an excellent retirement plan.

Plan Administration

While Centurion will be responsible for the investment management of plan assets, your plan will need the services of a third-party administrator (TPA). A TPA is a firm which specializes in accounting for retirement plans. The TPA keeps track of how much money is owned by each participant, creates benefit statements, calculates vesting, performs required tests, and prepares the tax return. We think it is advantagous to plan trustees to have an independent third party administrator, rather than a party at interest administering your plan. We will help you find an expert administrator. We can refer you to many firms that we have worked with and we will work with your choice of administrators to make your plan function seamlessly.

Next Steps

The next step in reviewing our services is to provide you with a proposal that will include the following information:

Investment Management Proposal – evaluates your current investments as to past performance, risks, cost, forecasted future returns, and their interactive risk reduction capabilities. These factors are then compared to other options to see if improvements can be made. Investment Policy Statement (IPS) - created to illustrate the standard of management that we recommend and to put in place an oversight and measurement system. Employee Materials – includes the questionnaire and forms that employees will use to select either our investment recommendations or make their own choices independently. Estimation of costs – Centurion will charge a fee based on the amount of assets managed in the plan.

Thank you for your interest. For further information on our platform, please contact Steph Laflamme at 800-878-8536 x 215 or by e-mail.

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