New Plan-Design Summary Tool For Retirement Plan Sponsors, Service Providers

Information services company Wolters Kluwer Legal and Regulatory U.S has launched the Plan Design Summary software for retirement plan sponsors and service providers, available at the web site ftwilliam.com.

Plan Design Summary is available through purchase of a software subscription for both defined benefit and defined contribution plans.

“Customers were looking for a tool that would help increase efficiency, mitigate errors and reduce costs during the new plan installation process,” explained Janeen Kopale, senior product manager at Wolters Kluwer, in an email. “Plan Design Summary was introduced, based on customer feedback, to ease the plan-onboarding process for service providers and plan sponsors and to reduce errors,” she said.

“Retirement service providers are [currently] entering the same data into forms and plan documents,” Kopale said via email. “PDS eliminates multiple-data entry and provides for a single spot of data entry, which will automatically flow to where it is needed, keeping the plan sponsor up-to-date throughout the process.”

She adds, “Plan Design Summary is designed to simplify the complex process of new-plan installation, which involves many parties and several stages. PDS eliminates duplicative data entry via integration with ftwilliam.com’s plan document software.”

The Plan Design Summary software includes a “detailed” tracking log to allow management to remain informed during the plan-installation process, stated a press release announcing the product launch.

Additional features include a notification manager and document change tracking, which can help users increase efficiency, mitigate errors and reduce costs because it was designed to ease managing “the complex installation process, which involves many parties and several stages,” by eliminating duplicative data entry, for example, said Holly Roussel-Godfrey, a Wolters Kluwer senior technology project and program manager, in the press release.

The new tool is integrated with the company’s plan document software checklist. This feature can allow users to save time in the retirement plan-installation process because the Plan Design Summary will populate the plan parameters and can lessen data-entry errors during document preparation via the fimr’s ftwPortal Pro, according to the press release.

“The audit trail feature in the software tracks the entire history of plan installation from beginning to end,” explained Kopale in the statement.

The portal provides users with secure, two-way access to plan documents, forms and other data, the press release added, and Plan Design Summary features both global and plan-level dashboards to enable users to see all their plans and relevant data points.

The Wolters Kluwer parent company has its global headquarters in the Netherlands and a U.S. corporate home in Philadelphia. Wolters Kluwer’s ftwilliam.com website provides software to accommodate defined contribution, defined benefit and non-qualified plans, according to a spokesperson.