PLAN INTEGRATION

Integration of a new plan into the Tidepool Consolidated Plan is designed to be simplicity itself:

Step One is an agreement for Tidepool to assume duties as the plan’s custodian and administrator.

Step Two is a transfer of plan data to our recordkeeper and TPA, Vestwell, and to prepare plan documents that account for the new plan.

Step Three is to arrange custody of transfer of plan assets to Tidepool’s custodian / trustee: Matrix Trust Company.

Step Four is score and qualify incoming plan assets, both internally at Tidepool and also through our 3(38) investment manager, LeafHouse Financial, and to communicate all relevant information to all plan participants.

If incoming assets qualify through the LeafHouse scoring evaluation, they are automatically added to the Tidepool lineup and offered to all other plan participants as an additional investment option. The investment manager to the incoming plan assets will then function as a sub-manager to Tidepool, subject to the final discretionary authority of LeafHouse.

If incoming assets fail the LeafHouse scoring evaluation, they are immediately put on a watch list and will be evolved out of the Tidepool Consolidated Plan as circumstances allow, without disrupting existing participant investments.

The goal is to maintain a participant’s investing option as fully as reasonably possible, and to keep in place existing investment advisors to each incoming plan, as full as reasonably possible. The benefits of this approach are obvious: all participants in the Plan receive the benefit of new investing options from new investment advisors from new incoming plans.  The goal is to take advantage of best thinking from numerous advisors and set up a process for participants to widen their investing options, while being assured that each option has passed the LeafHouse 3(38) scrutiny.

Over time, it is our goal to assure that all incoming assets are valued at fair market value under the fair value hierarchy, FASB Rule 157, so that asset values from the outgoing custodian match dollar-for-dollar with asset values recorded by Tidepool’s directed trustee, Matrix Trust Company. In the event that an incoming plan holds assets in a collective investment trust, our trustee has the structural capability of holding these assets through a sub-custodian, for as long as may be required to fully integrate the CIT assets into the Tidepool Consolidated Plan at fair value. Because of Tidepool’s emphasis on liquidity, we require incoming assets to be valued at fair market value as soon as reasonably possible as part of the integration process.