How do plan sponsors & business owners balance long term needs with short term challenges during Covid?
Josh holds a discussion with Matthew Eickman about how the CARES Act, the Electronic Disclosure rule and litigation have affected 401(k) plans, particularly during a Covid-19 global pandemic. Matthew is the National Retirement Practice Leader for Qualified Plan Advisors and has a background as an ERISA attorney. This is the second chapter in a four part series addressing top of mind issues facing plan sponsors & business owners during a time of unprecedented change. You can watch the conversation at https://youtu.be/EpVYhM7F9iA. Here is a transcription of their discussion:
Josh Null:
I'm Josh Null coming to you from downtown Fairhope, Alabama. I am the owner of Gulf Coast Financial Advisors. We're an independent practice that is located down here near the Gulf of Mexico for those of you maybe not familiar with Fairhope. I'm joined today by Matthew Eickman. He is the national retirement practice leader for Qualified Plan Advisors and we are joining forces on our 401(k) project, which is a series that is dedicated to things that need to be top of mind for plan sponsors, business owners, plan administrators, particularly as it relates to a COVID-19 world.
Josh Null:
So, first thing I want to do is Matthew I want to ask you how you're doing, and then would you mind to give folks a little background on yourself? Maybe they're not familiar with you.
Matthew Eickman:
Sure, absolutely. Josh, I'm doing well. Thanks for having me here. And I'm excited to be here because I think that during this very interesting time across our country, there's certainly a lot of very important issues that people need to be dealing with, but retirement plans are near and dear to my heart. And I'm happy that we'll be talking about some of those issues today.
Matthew Eickman:
You mentioned my role with Qualified Plan Advisors and as our retirement practice leader, I get the opportunity to work with business owners and plan sponsors and participants all across the country. And another thing that I get to do, of course, is work with the advisors who are connected to us. And so, I'm excited that you and I will be able to continue to explore the way in which we can partner together and try to have an impact on these business owners and the trustees and the participants in those various businesses.
Matthew Eickman:
And maybe one final thing I should share before we really jump into the information. I'm an ERISA attorney by trade. And what that really means is I'm used to looking at these types of issues from very much of a academic or a legal lens, but what's most important for the people listening today is that you and I can do that from a practical perspective. And so that will be the standard that we try to live up to today.
Josh Null:
That's perfect. Well, Matthew, this is our second part of our 401(k) project and for this episode, we're going to be talking about how business owners, plan sponsors are trying to balance the longterm needs of their plans with quite honestly probably unprecedented short term challenges. Now I know you and I have a handful of things that really need to be top of mind for these folks. Also, really are things that they can take action on. So what I'd like to do is I want to start with you. I know we've got a couple things particular to the CARES Act and to disclosure rules that let's go ahead and lay out these action items and get this thing going.
Matthew Eickman:
Well, sure. And I think if you're a retirement plan fiduciary right now, you're dealing with what you already mentioned, Josh, and that is how am I going to run the business day to day? How are we going to adapt to...? Maybe our people are working in different places or maybe we need to interact with our clients and customers in different ways. And so it'd be really easy for the retirement plan, the 401(k) plan to fall through the cracks.
Matthew Eickman:
And so I think that our mission here in this discussion is to say that we understand all those other things that the trustees and business executives and business owners need to be working through, but let's give you a roadmap. Let's really identify what the priorities will be for the remainder of this year. And so if I were a retirement plan trustee, listening to this, this would be the point where I'd say, okay, they're going to tell me what are the issues that I need to focus on. And really that fits into these four categories, Josh.
Matthew Eickman:
I think from a starting point, of course, it's the CARES Act and all this related COVID-19 guidance. And I know that we have some information that we can share in that regard again from a very practical perspective. Then the second category of issues is this new electronic disclosure rule from the Department of Labor. It's going to entirely transform the way in which fiduciaries can not only communicate with their people but do so in compliance with what federal law requires. And then it's interesting because so many things have stopped in our economy because of the way in which the environment is unprecedented as many like to say, but litigation has continued and there is this ongoing opportunity for land trustees to learn from that litigation. And we have a few things I think we can share in that regard.
Matthew Eickman:
And then finally, there's going to be a broader and a more intense focus on financial wellness for participants the rest of the year than we've ever seen before. And in fact, to the point that you and I should probably push that off and we'll have that conversation in a subsequent edition of our conversations here. So today I really want to focus on those first three categories. The CARES Act, the Department of Labor electronic disclosure rule and then some lessons for litigation that I think are critical for fiduciaries.
Josh Null:
Absolutely Matthew and I think it goes without saying that not only have business owners across the nation had to adapt from a day to day perspective with employment, retirement plans, employee benefits, as it relates to COVID-19, but they've also had to deal with a really active legislative body coming out with quite a bit of more rules, more laws. Laws that may or may not were necessarily directed, particularly at retirement plans, but still have provisions in there that are really important to the maintenance and the success of the 401(k) plan.
Josh Null:
So I think what I'd like to ask you first about Matthew is, the thing that's kind of dominated the discussion has been the CARES Act. And there are details in that CARES Act that impact certain aspects of a 401(k) plan. So if you don't mind, I'd like to start with the CARES Act.
Matthew Eickman:
Yeah, definitely, Josh and I think what's really interesting about the CARES Act. Isn't it hard for us to remember just how quickly that came about? And it's really pretty challenging right now, frankly, to remember what things looked like a week ago or a month ago, but how about we go all the way back to March and we think about the way in which we've got two parties controlling Congress, unable to get anything done in any sort of fast-pace, in any other area of what we've needed over the last several years. And all of a sudden we hit this crisis like we've never encountered before. And they came together and they brought us the CARES Act. And the CARES Act is so far from being perfect, but it was so timely and so necessary at the time that we took it for what it was and said, hey, let's just jump in and do the best that we can with it.
Matthew Eickman:
Well, for plan sponsors, when it came to those retirement plan provisions, of course, it really probably raised more questions than it provided answers. And so plan sponsors would say, hey, we understand from the outset kind of what this does. And as many of you probably remember it increased the ceiling on the amount of a loan that somebody could take. It gave individuals the ability to not make loan repayments for the rest of 2020. It provided people access to a special distribution of up to a hundred thousand dollars. It was called a coronavirus-related distribution. And then also it took those required minimum distributions, which are the ones that are customarily required to be made once a participant hits age 70 and a half and in the future it will be age 72 and said, you don't have to make those this year.
Matthew Eickman:
So the CARES Act did all those things for us and a lot of planned sponsors and record keepers said, hey, let's jump in. Let's put them into place. And then we'll figure out the rest later. Well, guess what. It's later now. And so this newsletter that we've flashed up in front for people to be able to see references the fact that the IRS came in, in a very helpful manner in the last couple of weeks and said, hey, we're going to give you a lot of guidance here. We're going to issue three big notices. IRS Notice 2020-50, -51 and -52 and that information from the government helps all of you understand how do we practically do this. So for example, the first of those notices really dives in and says, hey, when it looks to those coronavirus-related distributions or the special plan run rules.
Matthew Eickman:
How do we handle rollover options that may or may not be available? How do we handle self-certifications? Is it accurate that we actually can let a participant just come in and say, I am eligible for this because I meet one of the criteria and we as the plan sponsor can merely say, okay, guess what, the answer is yes, the IRS has confirmed that we have broad latitude to be able to do that? And that's within that IRS notice structure that I just described. Furthermore, the IRS said, boy, we're starting to understand that you have people out there who want access to these higher loans or they want access to the coronavirus-related distribution. And maybe they don't quite meet the criteria that were in the statute. But the IRS said, we really want to try to facilitate that. We want your people to have access. And so the IRS confirmed in this notice structure that actually the universe of eligible individuals is even a little bit broader than we once thought.
Matthew Eickman:
So that's pretty helpful. And I urge any plan sponsor who put one or more of those provisions into place to take some time to say, okay, how is this actually going to work? And Josh, you and I've talked about this before. Another big question is okay if we allowed our people to not make loan repayments this year, when do the big repayments start? When does that kick in? And guess what. The answer might be January, or it might be April, or it might be April and May and June and July and August and all the way through the end of next year. It really depends on what a plan sponsor did and then also what a record keeper wants to do. So you really can figure out that if you start to peel back the onion, there's a significant amount of additional guidance just in that area.
Matthew Eickman:
And in fact, one other thing, Josh, that I probably should be careful to emphasize. Remember I referenced that there are some rules related to required minimum distributions. That was probably the one that got the least attention because almost every record keeper said, hey, we're just going to automatically put that into place. So any of you plan sponsors out there, you might be thinking, boy, I can't remember what we did on the loans. And I can't remember what we did on the coronavirus-related distribution, or you do know what you did when it comes to those required minimum distributions or RMDs. You probably put the waiver into place, whether you know it or not. Well, remember the pace at which that was happening and think about the fact that if we had an RMD that was required for 2019, and it was the first one, what was the deadline for that?
Matthew Eickman:
Well, guess what. It was April one of this year, while the CARES Act was passed on March 27th. So what happened in a lot of cases is those were already in process. They were made before Congress told us you don't have to make those. Well, the IRS in this recent notice structure came out and said, hey, we have some special rules. And this is where this is really critical. This is why I wanted to make sure that we talk about this. If you had one of those distributions that was made early in the year before we knew what Congress was telling us, there is a window now between now and all the way to August 31st, where the person who received that can still roll it over into another retirement plan or into an IRA. And that's really special because normally for a required minimum distribution, you can't do that.
Matthew Eickman:
So that's probably one of the most important things for fiduciaries and plan sponsors to keep in mind is that we have this August 31 deadline for that special role. I think that's probably a critical area of importance. So, Josh as you can imagine, we could probably do two, three, four hours just on the CARES Act provisions, but the other issue that I wanted to highlight, remember we put that outline up in front. And we were talking about the CARES Act, but the Department of Labor actually provided arguably an even more helpful piece. The Department of Labor said we're going to give you what we call COVID-19 guidance. And it included a couple of CARES Act little morsels.
Matthew Eickman:
But the real key to that is that the Department of Labor looked at how plans are run and they looked at administration and how contributions come in and how loan repayments are made. And the Department of Labor said, hey, we recognize you're in an incredibly unique environment. We know that things won't work the way they always do, or they always did in the past. And the Department of Labor said you know what, work with good faith this year. Do the best you can to be as timely as you can. And if you do that, and if you find a problem and you fix it as quickly as you can, then that gives you the opportunity to not be pursued by the Department of Labor.
Matthew Eickman:
So the reason I think that's so relevant, Josh, is that I've dealt with numerous calls from our clients over the last few months who have said, hey, we found a little hiccup. Does the hiccup fit within that relaxed guidance? That's really the key issue for plan sponsors out there to be aware of, is to say, hey, if something hasn't gone quite right, can we go out and find out that that relaxed guidance helps us? And then if so, then what we do is we want to work to document that and make sure you have a good record.
Matthew Eickman:
So again, like I said earlier, I'm an ERISA attorney, Josh. I could talk about the CARES Act and the DOL guidance for hours upon hours, but most critically, we just want to raise awareness that there is all this additional guidance out there. And to your point earlier, it's really come at a pretty fast pace and there's a lot to consume.
Josh Null:
Well, things like this require quite a bit of diligence, and I know with everything else going on in most people's lives right now, it's one of those things where you think, oh gosh, how am I going to carve out the time to understand all this?
Josh Null:
Well, quite honestly, Matthew, I think that's where professional guidance and professional advice comes into play because it's our job to help stay ahead of this for our clients and particularly probably the most fluid are... I hate to say the most fluid. I've been on earth 45 years, but I wasn't around in the '70s with all this, but probably one of the most fluid times in the history of qualified plans is happening right now. How do you navigate that?
Josh Null:
Well, on that note then Matthew I think that's a good segue into disclosures. So we have an electronic disclosure rule that we want to talk about that I know you've put out some information on that as well. So I'd like to start with that. What can you tell us about the electronic disclosure rule?
Matthew Eickman:
Yeah, sure. And this is pretty important for plan sponsors to keep in mind that the electronic disclosure rule really isn't at all related to the pandemic. There might be elements of it now that we'll look at slightly differently, but really this is something that the Department of Labor has been working on for many years. And here's why.
Matthew Eickman:
Isn't it kind of funny to think that the most recent comprehensive DOL guidance on how to communicate with employees electronically is from 2002? Not only have we obviously seen a lot of change in our lives over the last few months, but it's just really interesting to think about the difference in how we receive information, how we interact with other people electronically now versus 18 years ago. And so the Department of Labor had been working on this project and when it first came out, what we tried to do is you can see up on the screen in front of you is we tried to dive right in and say, what do you need to know now?
Matthew Eickman:
What are the critical aspects and the critical elements of how this rule will work? And it really starts with, wait a minute, what does it do? So there are some exceptions to what I'm about to say for specific disclosures that must be provided, but from a broad-based perspective, the old Department of Labor electronic disclosure rule said that you can only use email or other forms of electronic disclosure if you have participants who either opt-in or using a computer is such a basic part of their day to day routine, that it makes sense that they'll probably get the information. Well, that makes things really challenging because not a lot of workforces have everybody that fits into those two categories.
Matthew Eickman:
Think about if you run a manufacturing plant. You've got an office group where you've got people who are on the computer every day, but the bulk of your workforce is out on the floor and working and they clearly don't have access to that type of computer system on a routine basis. So what are you going to do? Do you really want to divide your people up into two groups? Do you really want to just provide email to the people in the office and paper to everybody else? And so a lot of companies have just been using paper, paper, paper, paper. So what we know from the outset is this is designed to work oppositely. This is designed so that your employees can be deemed to have said, yes, I will receive information electronically. And just in a second, I'll get through the steps you have to work through to be able to rely upon the rule, but provided that's the case. They don't have to opt-in. In fact, they are opted in unless they opt-out.
Matthew Eickman:
And secondly, they don't have to use a computer as part of their daily routine. The Department of Labor really got with the times and they said, wait a minute. Not everybody in the country obviously is on a smartphone and not everybody's addicted to how quickly they can get their messages, but for the most part, that's how we communicate a lot. And so Josh, that's probably the biggest part of this is understanding from a broad basis, what does it do?
Matthew Eickman:
So for people who are listening today, maybe the more relevant question is, okay, Matthew's kind of explained the background of this. And it seems like we might be able to use electronic disclosure a lot more freely as we move forward. What now? What do we really need to know? And I'll tell you there's really four critical steps for plan sponsors to take in order to start relying upon email.
Matthew Eickman:
Here's number one. It sounds really basic. Gather email addresses. You have to gather email addresses. So if you are running a company and you assign a company provided email address to all your people, guess what. You can use those. Now, what if you don't do that? Or what if you do that for some but not all? Well, what you really need to do is you need to have a list of all your people and where you have an employer-provided address you put in the corresponding address and where you don't we need to go out and get a personal address, and you might already have that on file. Maybe you got it at the time of open enrollment for your other benefits, for example, but we need to compile email addresses. So that's step number one before you can do any of this. Now, why is that so important? It's because you can't do step two until you do step one.
Matthew Eickman:
And step two says you have to give everybody a paper notice. And the paper notice says, essentially, we are going to give you information electronically. Here is the email address or smartphone address that we're going to use. So you can see why you have to do step one before step two. We have to actually say to them, this is what we're doing. Now, most employees will, if they even open the envelope, they'll read that and they'll toss it. So we expect we're going to find a really high non opt-out rate or a high utilization rate.
Matthew Eickman:
So you've gone through step one and step two. Step three says, hey, once you do that, start distributing information electronically. And guess what. You have options there too. You can send an email with an attachment. Hey, here's your quarterly disclosure. You can send an email that has the information in the body of the email, or you can send an email that says there's a new document available and here's the website where it's hosted. Click here to find it. Step three.
Matthew Eickman:
Then step four, you have to have an ongoing process moving forward. So when your people, let's say they have an employer-provided address and they leave your company, you think we can continue to use that employer address when we know it's no good. No. So we've got to make sure that we have a process in place to update that information for people when they leave. And what about people who already left? People who already don't work for you. We want a process to go out and get their email addresses.
Matthew Eickman:
And so that's really it in a nutshell, Josh. It's one of those issues where the best way to attack that is to have a really nice long planning call, get the consultant involved and maybe pull in the record keeper and talk through the logistics. You have to invest a little bit of time upfront, but for anybody who's been involved in a big technology project, we all know that. You invest the time upfront but think about how this can change how you communicate with your people moving forward, or what if you're already doing some of this. Maybe it won't revolutionize just your retirement plan communications, but wouldn't it be great if you start to think about how you can use that master email address for non-required communications? What if you're working with an investment consultant that wants to do education? Wouldn't it be great to know you have a really good email list to be able to use for that purpose?
Matthew Eickman:
So that's why Josh, I think it's exciting that it's going to change things. It's going to change things dramatically. And hopefully, we get 12, 18 months down the road and our ability to reach people is just that much easier.
Josh Null:
Yeah, very well said, Matthew and I agree that some of the things that are being brought upon us at an accelerated rate because of what's going on in the world, some of it actually longterm there's some real benefit to it. It's just a question of how do you assimilate it and how do you systemize it? And then once you get to that point, how do you make it as efficient as possible so it's not just a complete drain on your limited time?
Josh Null:
Well, Matthew, I think a lot of this that we're referring to with the CARES Act, with disclosure rules particularly as it relates to qualified plan, there's a big word that is always out there lurking as it relates to running a qualified plan properly and having a systems process in place that are explainable, justifiable, written out. And I think that big word is litigation.
Josh Null:
So from my standpoint, I think a person wants to stay on top of these things. Not that you want to run around all day long being worried about being sued, but you don't necessarily want to open that door for things that can get done rather easily really if you have a system in place. And your background as an ERISA attorney, what do you think are the biggest things litigation-wise facing qualified plans currently in our current environment?
Matthew Eickman:
First, a comment just on the overall perspective and you hit on this. If you think about any type of risk management with your businesses if you manage from a defensive position where all you're really worried about is that CYA mentality, you typically find yourself not as well protected as if you instead say, wait a minute, let's try and do this for the right reasons. Let's try to make sure we're protecting the people who need the protection.
Matthew Eickman:
And so to your point, Josh, when you think about these litigation issues, I think about them as lessons that we get to learn. We get to take advantage of the fact that somebody else finds themselves in court over this. And rather than say, hey, we're going to be sued because of that. Instead, we say, wait, what do we learn from that? What can we study from those other cases and say, wow, yeah that doesn't seem right? Or we shouldn't do that for our people. And we can do better for our people than that. That's probably the critical perspective, Josh, to start with. And you take that and you apply that and as I mentioned earlier, there's really three distinct areas where litigation has continued to go on.
Matthew Eickman:
Number one is data security. And for any of you who have workforces who are now working remotely more than ever before, I would imagine that the time you've already spent on data security is ramped up. Well in the retirement plan context, remember, litigation's a little bit of a trailing indicator. Litigation today relates to things that were going wrong a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, but there were real big cracks in data security. And so there's been some litigation against plan sponsors and record keepers where there's liability because they didn't protect the data very well.
Matthew Eickman:
So that's the first area where it's important for plan sponsors to make sure that they have real good data security measures in place and more than anything, how are your employees communicating with each other about employee benefit matters? Previously it'd be easy for them to walk down the hall or peek over the top of a cubicle and show them a piece of paper and say, hey, how's this work? But now when they need to exchange that, how are they doing it? Are they sending it via email? And if so, does it have a social security number on? And if so, how secure are they being? So that's the first one.
Matthew Eickman:
Number two is really the area of traditional fees, frankly. We're continuing to see where record keepers are being overpaid or continuing to see where they haven't been benchmarked, where there's no due diligence. And when a plan sponsor is asked, why are the fees what they are? There's no reasonable defense. And Josh, I know that's another thing you and I will talk about later in the series. And frankly, that's my favorite discussion point of everything we're talking about in this series is the way to benchmark plans properly.
Josh Null:
Same here. I love it. We sound like nerds, Matthew. I couldn't agree more.
Matthew Eickman:
[inaudible 00:25:32] And so we're continuing to see how important that is. And then finally, the other emerging trend really in litigation, it relates to target-date funds. And part of that's more and more important just because utilization is so much higher. We have more plans with automatic enrollment. I would imagine now that we've got more of a remote workforce, we're going to have less people making proactive investment elections when they come to work for you.
Matthew Eickman:
So understanding what's in your plan's default investment, which is very commonly, a target-date fund is going to become more and more of a critical fiduciary matter. And really, yet again, it's one of these issues we could do a three or four-hour webinar only focusing on target-date fund litigation. The nuances are so challenging and they're seemingly over pennies and you stack all those pennies up in a big plan. And all of a sudden you've got hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars of potential liability and more importantly, lost retirement savings for employees. And that's a big focal point of litigation.
Josh Null:
Right. And for those of you all that are watching us on this video, you're seeing a banner stream at the bottom that directs you to our landing page, my website gulfcoastfa.com and then /401k-project. And the reason I'm referencing that is Matthew just brought up target-date funds. We have a complimentary podcast episode where we talk about how all target-date funds are not created equal. And it's pretty interesting. Something the average investor probably does not know but needs to.
Josh Null:
All right, Matthew, I know that we had four topics with our longterm balancing act with the short-term challenges. The fourth topic is financial wellness. Just to set the stage, you and I are going to tackle that in a separate episode because it has become as... You've been in this career for a long time. So have I. It's something that emerged over the years and now is really the forefront when it comes to retirement plans. Are you doing the things necessary to take care of your plan participants and their financial wellness? So if you want to give just a couple sentences on what we're going to get into that. And then I'm going to go ahead and I've got a couple questions for you to wrap up this episode.
Matthew Eickman:
The only thing I would say is financial wellness can no longer be a check the box idea, and it can't be some sort of concept that's not put into place. So I would like to start to think about financial wellness like the other areas of people's businesses, where they didn't say, hey, let's just come up with a cool concept and see if we can slap that onto some sort of recruiting brochure, but instead say, what do we hope to achieve? Do we have something in place to achieve that? And then are we measuring our ROI on that particular venture?
Matthew Eickman:
And so Josh, that's going to completely change the way people think about financial wellness. It's not just a concept. It's not just a check the box idea. It's a real genuine issue. And we'll talk about at length the way plan sponsors are thinking about that differently. And that's a fresh, exciting topic too and it's fun. With all the challenges we face and how so many things can feel downward spiraling or at least negative at times, financial wellness focus is something... It's going to lift people up and make people's futures better. So that's exciting.
Josh Null:
Well, Matthew, I want to give, for folks watching the video, I want to give a quick summary. If you're seeing this video here, again, I want to reference our landing page. On there you will find our previous recording, where we talked about 401(k) plans in a COVID world. Highly recommend you listen to that. That set the table for our overall series that we're doing. We're going to be following this up with the future of financial wellness and then our fourth chapter, as you heard Matthew and I mention earlier, it's something that we nerd out on and that's benchmarking. Which is really cool because it's a really efficient way to hunt for things in your plan that you could be doing better that actually benefits everyone if it's done properly. So I'm excited about that.
Josh Null:
You all can find that information. You can find these recordings. you can find the articles that have been produced by Matthew Eickman and qualified plan advisors. And you can find some of our supporting podcasts at our landing page. Take a deep dive on that stuff. I think you'll be surprised at the depth of knowledge and the way that we cover everything in digestible chunks.
Josh Null:
So Matthew, as we're wrapping this one up, let's go ahead and do a summary of the things that we covered. I know we covered quite a bit, but this really pertained to the CARES Act and disclosures, litigation and things like that. So would you mind to sum up this episode for us?
Matthew Eickman:
Well yeah, in a nutshell, if you're a retirement plan fiduciary, you want to have a roadmap or a game plan for the rest of the year. And we want to say, hey, we recognize how many business challenges we're facing, but there's really these four key areas. We've got to make sure that over the course of the next five to six months, that we give them due attention.
Matthew Eickman:
And one is making sure that we handle all the CARES Act provisions correctly. And that we understand the guidance the Department of Labor has given us related to COVID-19. Number two is to start to take those initial steps for the electronic disclosure rule. Like I said, very profoundly I think, you can't do step two until you do step one. And so make sure that we jump in and we get started there. Number three is let's pay attention to litigation and not do things because of fear of lawsuit but instead to ensure that we are protecting our people, we're looking out for participants, we're trying to build their retirement account balances as great as we can. And so that's where litigation actually helps us to learn that lesson.
Matthew Eickman:
And finally, start to look forward to a genuine incorporation of a financial wellness program into a business. And that's really, I think where fiduciaries ought to be over the next few months. Josh, I think the only other thing left maybe to handle here, I'm pretty sure you've got something that our compliance department wants you to say before we wrap up today, so I can pass it back to you but this is probably the most interesting part of our entire conversation. The compliance required disclosure at the end of the talk, right?
Josh Null:
Well, before I do that, Matthew, I do want to lay out this detail if you will. So as owner of Gulf Coast Financial Advisors, I mentioned earlier that I'm located in Fairhope, Alabama, which again is down near the Gulf of Mexico. I'm about 25 miles north of the beautiful beaches of Alabama, not too far from Pensacola. A reference point there. We serve clients, business owners, individual clients, all along the Gulf Coast here.
Josh Null:
And then as part of my larger network, I am connected, I'm part of the independent network with Prime Capital Investment Advisors and Qualified Plan Advisors, which is the division that you run, which is the Qualified Plan Division of Prime Capital Investment Advisors. And really what it does, it provides me the ability to work in an exceptional team with experts like yourself, where we can come in, even though technically per our disclosure I'm about to read, we're not quote-unquote "affiliate". However, we do operate in a team environment, and you really bring, I think, a lot of care and expertise and diligence to any particular situation you may have as it relates to retirement plans. So with that said, Matthew, I am going to read the disclosure. Thank you for that tee up.
Josh Null:
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Josh Null:
The bottom line of that, Matthew, as we close this up is if you have questions, reach out. We're here. That's part of this. The point of this series is to give information that should be top of mind, but also to let people know that we are here with our finger on the pulse, working on this stuff. You and I both put in tremendous hours not to brag, but you and I both are workhorses. And we're here trying to stay on top of this situation and we're here to help people.
Josh Null:
So with that, Matthew, I think that's all I've got. You can take us home if you'd like.
Matthew Eickman:
No, again, as I mentioned upfront, Josh, this is important. It's really important to what you and I have chosen to do with our daily lives. But it's really important to thousands, tens of thousands of Americans. And so anybody who's been with us today, we appreciate that. Demonstrating that level of engagement is great. It's a great investment in your people. And if there's anything else we can do to help, like Josh said, just reach out. We're here.
Josh Null:
Perfect. Well, thank you all that have joined us today. Tune in next week where we're going to talk about the future of financial wellness. Until then, you can find our contact info on any platform where this video is hosted. Plus you can visit gulfcoastfa.com/401k-project. Thank you all. Have a wonderful day.