Adventist Healthcare Retirement Plans

Adventist HealthCare Retirement Plans, a multiemployer plan headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland, services three distinct health-care systems, which have several retirement plans in each.

“We have Advent Health in Florida, Loma Linda University Health in California, and Adventist Health in Northern California. In 1992, they came together to create new retirement plans,” says Ray Jimenez, the organization’s president. “That was born out of the old, what we call now, the legacy DB [defined benefit] health-care plan.”

The 401(a) and 403(b) plans, added on through the years, are used by all three. Each health-care system also offers its own 457(b) nongovernmental plan, and several of the systems further provide Employee Retirement Income Security Act 403(b) and 401(k) plans to service their subregions.

AHRP uses several approaches to get people engaged and involved in the plan, says Executive Director of Plan Operations Tonya Hamm. “First, we have automatic enrollment, at the highest matching rate possible for each of the systems. Anyone who’s eligible to participate in the 401(a) plan—that’s the matching plan—will be automatically enrolled. I think that’s really helped us over the years in growing that participation rate.

“Then we also run our own educational program, called ‘Boots on the Ground,’” Hamm says.

Education is a particular point of pride for this plan sponsor. In Boots on the Ground, the plan provides nine in-house certified financial planners who offer support; educate; and supply tools and resources to help employees plan for retirement. Each employee has access to one of these educational representatives. Because these experts participate in the same retirement plans that the person they’re meeting with does, this allows for a deeper connection between employee and educator, and for a trusting relationship to form, Hamm says.

“The reps did a fantastic job at getting people enrolled in the plan and then working with the human resources centers to implement auto-enrollment,” Jimenez says. “So the Boots on the Ground team really did a lot of work to get us to the point where we are right now.”

Another accomplishment the sponsor points to was performing a total plan asset-allocation reset. Over the past year-and-a-half, AHRP went from having 83% of participants in an age-appropriate equity allocation mix in the 403(b) and 401(a) plans to having 95% of participants enrolled in an age-appropriate equity allocation mix. To educate participants about the change, the sponsor produced a video for that purpose with its recordkeeper Fidelity, winning them both a Hermes Creative Award.

Additionally, AHRP offers in-plan managed account services through Financial Engines, and it has systematic withdrawal plans in place. Hamm says that according to recordkeeper Fidelity, AHRP has one of the highest ratios of participants who keep their money in plan based on its client base.

—Judy Faust Hartnett