Concerns among investors have grown over the past year regarding the quality of investments in company-sponsored retirement plans. Equally disconcerting are questions about who is selecting the plan’s investments and who, ultimately, is acting as the plan fiduciary. Is it the recordkeeper, the financial advisor or your client?

Commonly, when employers are asked who selects the funds in their 401(k) plans, they name their financial advisor. What they don’t seem to realize is that this fiduciary responsibility belongs to them.

This misunderstanding of responsibilities is exacerbated when individual participants are considered. Your client employers may count on financial advisors to provide a certain level of service to their plan participants, including investment advice. Instead, financial advisors are more likely to be focused on educating participants about the basics of investing instead of selecting specific investments.

Employers who expect their financial advisors to select the fund lineup and also provide investment advice to their 401(k) participants may end up believing that their plans and participants are under-served when they hear from employees that these expectations are not being met. So, if the employer is not best-suited or advised to make fund recommendations to employees and the financial advisor’s position is similar, how do the beneficiaries of such a plan, the employees, get the guidance they need?

Through a new retirement plan solution from Paychex® and GuidedChoice®, you can offer your clients and their employees a quality investment plan. Just as important, your clients can use this solution to provide a retirement benefit for their employees while receiving co-fiduciary assistance from a reputable independent financial advisor.

Paychex has partnered with GuidedChoice to give financial professionals a tested solution for their clients. Nobel Prize winner Dr. Harry Markowitz, developer of modern portfolio theory, is co-founder of GuidedChoice. Applying his analytical methods, GuidedChoice selects funds, monitors fund performance, removes underperforming funds and replaces any underperformers with funds that meet the requirements of the investment policy statement. GuidedChoice acts as a plan fiduciary and accepts responsibility for the investment advice they provide.

Accounting professionals who turn to Paychex for GuidedChoice retirement plans will receive copies of investment policy statements as well as quarterly reviews.

As most trusted advisors, CPAs have an opportunity to ensure that each of their clients is aware of fiduciary obligations and has the assistance they need. For more information about how you can offer your clients a retirement plan solution that emphasizes quality investments while minimizing fiduciary responsibilities, visit www.paychex.com.