Services Investment Manager/American Trust Company - www.AmericanTrust.com
Today many plan sponsors are aware they need help with the sections of ERISA dealing with fiduciary responsibility. However, many vendors continue to avoid providing any meaningful fiduciary services but instead use the word “fiduciary” or “co-fiduciary” only as a marketing term- not with GBA Retirement Services!
Today, most plan corporate trustees do not make decisions but instead are directed by the plan sponsor’s retirement committee. The directed trustee is synonymous with passive trustee or custodial trustee.
The plan sponsor and its directors must still prudently hire a discretionary trustee fiduciary to have exclusive authority and discretion to manage and control the assets of the plan. But when the plan sponsor limits its role to naming the oversight fiduciary, the sponsor and its directors are no longer responsible for selecting, directing and coordinating of the persons who will actually manage and operate the plan.
American Trust Company acts as GBA Retirement Services Investment manager and is the discretionary trustee fiduciary over all of our plans. This is a huge benefit for GBARS members. This allows our members to completely off load all fiduciary responsibility as it relates to investment management.