In this webinar recording, CAPTRUST’s Debra Gates, Barry Schmitt, and Mike Webb discuss best practices for communication with plan participants, including:

What You’ll Take Away from the Webinar

Managers Debra Gates, Barry Schmitt, and Mike Webb translate decades of hands-on experience into a practical playbook for keeping employees calm, informed, and on track—even when markets lurch. Highlights include:

Taming Market Jitters

Show the full cycle. Use simple visuals (like the “emotion curve” shared in the session) to remind savers that fear and euphoria are natural—and temporary—parts of long-term investing. Pair facts with optimism so participants see past today’s headlines to tomorrow’s goals.

Cadence that Clicks

Monthly is the baseline; spike when news breaks. Routine touch-points build familiarity, while extra updates during sell-offs reassure older workers nearing retirement. Sponsors using auto-features (auto-enroll, auto-escalate) still need a drumbeat of nudges to reinforce good habits.

Medium Matters

Meet employees where they already pay attention. Short 60-second videos, quarterly “save-invest-retire-plan” themes, live Q&A webinars, and targeted texts all outperform one-size-fits-all email blasts. Brand messages from the employer—not the recordkeeper—tend to earn higher open rates and click-throughs.

Content Without Jargon

Skip industry shorthand (“glide path,” “target date”) or explain it in a side-bar glossary. Every piece should close with a single, clear call to action—often an invitation to a CAPTRUST advice desk or onsite/virtual coaching session.

Survey, Act, Repeat

Feedback only works if staff see results. Summarize what you heard, outline upcoming changes, and circle back after implementation. Plans that do this report response rates exceeding 90 percent on follow-up polls.

Multi-Vendor Coordination

When several recordkeepers share a plan, centralize messaging so participants get one coherent voice. Use your advisor or an internal committee as the “quarterback” to align education calendars and avoid duplicate—or conflicting—mailings.

Stay Within Fiduciary Guardrails

Education explains options; advice recommends actions. Sponsors should provide broad guidance and outsource personalized investment advice to an independent fiduciary to avoid crossing that line.

Bottom Line

Consistent, empathetic communication—grounded in clear goals and measurable outcomes—can lift participation, raise deferral rates, and keep employees invested through rough markets.

To download a copy of the transcript, click here.

An appropriately structured 3(38) engagement frees the plan sponsor from the time involved in the selection and monitoring of plan investments and from the liability of those decisions. In addition to growing interest from mid-sized and small plan sponsors, interest in 3(38) engagements have moved up stream, with more large plan sponsors evaluating the benefits of hiring a 3(38) investment manager. This trend is occurring for several reasons, including the recent increase in litigation and committees being increasingly pressed for time.

In this webinar recording, a panel of CAPTRUST experts discuss the current investment management landscape and share best practices for how plan sponsors can implement 3(38).

To download a copy of the transcript, click here.

With participant assets and retirement security on the line, cybersecurity weighs heavily on many retirement plan sponsors’ minds. While the recently issued cybersecurity guidance from the DOL provides a roadmap to help prevent against cyber threats, the heightened emphasis indicates that cybersecurity will likely remain a DOL focus for years to come.

In this webinar recording, CAPTRUST Chief Technology Officer Jon Meyer and Financial Advisors Devyn Duex and Mike Webb are joined by Jennifer Doss, CAPTRUST’s senior director and defined contribution practice leader, to discuss:

Webinar Recap — Practical Cybersecurity Playbook for Plan Sponsors

CAPTRUST’s Jennifer Doss moderates a hands-on discussion with Chief Technology Officer Jon Meyer and advisers Devyn Duex and Mike Webb that breaks down the Department of Labor’s first-ever guidance on retirement-plan cybersecurity and what it means for fiduciaries.

Why the DOL Weighed In

The agency released three companion pieces in April 2024—one for plan sponsors (vendor selection and monitoring), one for service providers (cyber “best practices”), and a participant-level checklist.

Webb reminds committees the guidance does not create new fiduciary duties; it simply clarifies how the long-standing prudence standard applies to data protection and fraud prevention.

Cybersecurity vs. Cyber-Fraud Prevention

Cybersecurity is the realm of information-security teams: protecting confidentiality, integrity, and availability of systems.

Fraud prevention addresses transactional theft—often human-engineering attacks that occur outside pure IT controls.

Meyer notes that sponsors must assess both arenas; some recordkeepers excel at firewalls but have fuzzy participant-loss indemnification.

What Sponsors Are Asking—and How to Respond

“Do we have to rewrite our IPS?” No, but minutes should show the committee has mapped DOL guidance to current vendor contracts and internal procedures.

“Which questions matter most?” Focus on SOC 1 / SOC 2 results, multi-factor authentication coverage, incident-response testing, and participant-fraud reimbursement terms.

“How often should we review?” At least annually—more frequently after a platform upgrade, M&A event, or breach elsewhere in the industry.

Building a Vendor-Oversight Framework

Pre-hire: Issue a cyber due-diligence questionnaire drawing directly from the DOL’s 12 best-practice bullets; require proof of independent audit and cyber-insurance limits.

Contracting: Embed right-to-audit language, breach-notification timelines, and clear indemnification for both cyber intrusion and participant-level fraud.

Ongoing monitoring: Maintain a standing agenda item for cyber updates, request SOC reports each year, and invite the recordkeeper’s security lead to present findings to the committee.

Action Items You Can Execute This Quarter

Inventory your data flows—which vendors, payroll feeds, and internal systems touch PII or plan assets?

Compare current contracts to the DOL checklist; flag gaps in encryption standards, penetration testing, or participant-loss reimbursement.

Educate participants with the DOL’s consumer-facing tip sheet; emphasize registering online access and enabling MFA.

Run a tabletop exercise simulating a fraudulent distribution request to test HR, payroll, and recordkeeper response times.

Document every step—if it isn’t in the minutes, regulators will assume it never happened.

Key takeaway: the new DOL guidance doesn’t change fiduciary duties, but it does spell out how regulators will judge “prudence” in the digital age. Committees that embed these controls—and record them—can protect participants, satisfy auditors, and sleep better at night.

Have retirement plan automation and target date funds helped improve savings levels or financial wellness for your plan participants? Have they helped optimize plans, as promised?

CAPTRUST’s Defined Contribution Practice Leader Scott Matheson and colleagues Jennifer Doss and John Leissner discuss the following questions in this webinar recording:

This webinar examines interesting research nuggets gleaned from trusted sources and insights from CAPTRUST’s annual plan design benchmark study, the largest of its kind in the industry.

To download a copy of the transcript, click here.