ERISA
It’s boring!
It’s complicated!
It’s a big law!
But it is the standard you are held to!
UNPARRELLED OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCIES
&
COMPLIANCE PROTECTION
About Rollover Comparison & CRS Delivery Pro
Rollover Comparison ProTM
Built on a Foundation of Unshakable Documentation, Oversight, and Transparency
Rollover Comparison ProTM is meticulously designed to make rollover advice compliance simpler and more manageable. It helps firms stay ahead of potential issues by giving them real-time visibility into the rollover recommendation process—reducing the need to self-correct or the risk of violations and the costs that come with them.
Whether conducting an annual retrospective review or responding to a request from the DOL or SEC, Rollover Comparison ProTM streamlines these processes, regardless of their complexity or the firm’s size. This efficiency leads to significant time and cost savings.
Ultimately, Rollover Comparison ProTM offers a comprehensive solution that reduces human error, simplifies regulatory compliance, and enables firms to manage their obligations with confidence and precision.
CRS Delivery ProTM
Whenever making a recommendation of any securities transaction or investment strategy involving securities, including recommendations of types of accounts, the SEC’s standard of conduct under Regulation Best Interest (Reg BI) requires broker-dealers and investment advisers to deliver to investors a brief relationship summary, Form CRS.
Investment Advisers must deliver a relationship summary to each retail investor before or at the time you enter into an investment advisory contract with the retail investor. You must deliver the relationship summary even if your agreement with the retail investor is oral.
Broker-Dealers must deliver a relationship summary to each retail investor, before or at the earliest of: (i) a recommendation of an account type, a securities transaction, or an investment strategy involving securities; (ii) placing an order for the retail investor; or (iii) the opening of a brokerage account for the retail investor. (iii) Dual Registrants: A dual registrant must deliver the relationship summary at the earlier of the timing requirements in (i) or (ii).
Simplify and streamline your Form CRS distribution with CRS Delivery ProTM — a secure, easy-to-use platform built for financial firms of all sizes. Whether you’re a solo advisor or a large firm, CRS Delivery ProTM enables you to deliver Form CRS documents to clients quickly and confidently.
CRS Delivery ProTM integrates with your firm’s email platform, allowing Form CRS to be sent directly from your domain. This ensures secure, professional delivery while maintaining full auditability. The platform generates detailed records of when and how each Form CRS was delivered—whether by email, in person, or via USPS—supporting your compliance efforts with verifiable documentation.
Any team member needing to send Form CRS can be added under your plan. Choose from flexible monthly or discounted annual pricing, with no hidden fees.
Solutions
CRPA – Compliance & Regulatory Program Architects
Rollover Comparison ProTM
Discover the Power of Rollover Comparison Pro — The Ultimate Compliance Ally
Rollover Comparison Pro isn’t just another compliance tool — it’s a game-changer. Whether your an RIA or B/D you can be assured with confidence you’ll be audit-ready. It’s a transformative solution for firms seeking to streamline operations, reduce risk, and guarantee the timely delivery of all required disclosures at the point of making an investment recommendation to the investor.
🔄 Real-Time Workflow Automation
Rollover Comparison Pro automates rollover recommendation workflows and related compliance tasks, ensuring every step is tracked, documented, and audit-ready — in real time. Cashiering can be seamlessly looped in to confirm disclosure delivery before booking deposits. No delays. No guesswork. Just clear, compliant oversight.
Rollover Recommendation Reasoning Manager
This purpose-built tool helps advisors generate personalized, well-documented rollover disclosures that meet regulatory expectations—leveraging reasoning statements developed by a leading ERISA attorney.
Easily customize the statement library to reflect your firm’s value proposition. Advisors or with the help of a support team member, can create clear investor-focused justifications that highlight the specific services supporting the rollover. Selections flow directly into a ready-to-use summary, creating compliant, individualized recommendations in minutes.
🛡 Proactive Compliance Monitoring
Stay ahead of risk. Rollover Comparison Pro empowers compliance teams to detect and address potential issues before they escalate, turning compliance into a proactive strength rather than a reactive obligation.
📄 Effortless Documentation & Audit Readiness
Forget scrambling during audits. With automated documentation and secure storage, every required record is generated and maintained with precision — making audits, reviews, and inspections fast and stress-free.
⚠️ Built-In Risk Mitigation
Reduce the risk of costly violations. By automating critical compliance functions and flagging issues early, Rollover Comparison Pro protects your firm from regulatory pitfalls and financial penalties.
📊 Frictionless Reporting & Retrospective Reviews
When it’s time to compile the annual retrospective review or respond to a DOL inquiry, Rollover Comparison Pro does the heavy lifting. No matter what your firm’s size or complexity, it delivers fast, accurate reporting — exactly when you need it and for whatever date range you need it.
CRS Delivery ProTM
Key Features:
- Uses your firm’s email platform for secure, direct delivery
- Audit friendly. Search and download CRS delivery records (email, hand-delivered, or USPS), based on a custom date range, specific advisors or for the whole firm
- Simple, intuitive interface
- Supports firms of 1 to 1000’s of users
- Flexible pricing with annual discounts
Get started in minutes and simplify your Form CRS compliance.
These are the fundamental questions you need to understand.
Q 10 What is required to comply with PTE 2020 – 02?
PTE 2020-02 conditions prohibited transaction relief on financial institutions (SEC- and state-registered investment advisers, broker-dealers, banks, and insurance companies) and their investment professionals (employees, agents, and representatives) providing advice in accordance with the Impartial Conduct Standards. Financial institutions must also acknowledge in writing their investment professionals’ fiduciary status under Title I of ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code, as applicable, when providing investment advice to the retirement investor, and they must describe in writing the services to be provided and the financial institutions’ and investment professionals’ material conflicts of interest. Financial institutions must document the reasons that a rollover recommendation is in the best interest of the retirement investor and provide that documentation to the retirement investor. Financial institutions must adopt policies and procedures prudently designed to ensure compliance with the Impartial Conduct Standards and that mitigate conflicts of interest, and must conduct an annual retrospective review of compliance.
To ensure that financial institutions provide reasonable oversight of investment professionals and adopt a culture of compliance, financial institutions and investment professionals will be ineligible to rely on the exemption if, within the previous 10 years, they were convicted of certain crimes arising out of their provision of investment advice to retirement investors. They will also be ineligible if they engaged in systematic or intentional violation of the exemption’s conditions or provided materially misleading information to the Department in relation to their conduct under the exemption.
Q 15 What factors should financial institutions and investment professionals consider and document in their disclosure of the reasons that a rollover recommendation is in a retirement investors best interest?
Financial institutions and investment professionals must consider and document their prudent analysis of why a rollover recommendation is in a retirement investor’s best interest. To satisfy the documentation requirement for rollovers from an employee benefit plan to an IRA, investment professionals and financial institutions should make diligent and prudent efforts to obtain information about the existing employee benefit plan and the participant’s interests in it. For recommendations to roll over assets from an employee benefit plan to an IRA, the relevant factors include but are not limited to:
- the alternatives to a rollover, including leaving the money in the investor’s employer’s plan, if permitted;
- the fees and expenses associated with both the plan and the IRA;
- whether the employer pays for some or all of the plan’s administrative expenses; and
- the different levels of services and investments available under the plan and the IRA.
To satisfy the documentation requirement for rollovers from an employee benefit plan to an IRA, investment professionals and financial institutions should make diligent and prudent efforts to obtain information about the existing employee benefit plan and the participant’s interests in it. In general, such information should be readily available as a result of Department regulations mandating disclosure of plan-related information to the plan’s participants (see 29 CFR 2550.404a-5). If the retirement investor won’t provide the information, even after a full explanation of its significance, and the information is not otherwise readily available, the financial institution and investment professional should make a reasonable estimation of expenses, asset values, risk, and returns based on publicly available information. The financial institution and investment professional should document and explain the assumptions used and their limitations.
Q 19 What is the exemption’s annual retrospective review requirement and what is its purpose?
Financial institutions must conduct an annual retrospective review that is reasonably designed to assist them in detecting and preventing violations of, and achieving compliance with, the Impartial Conduct Standards and their policies and procedures. The methodology and results of the retrospective review must be reduced to a written report that is provided to one of the financial institution’s senior executive officers, who must then make certain certifications related to their review of the report. The financial institution must retain the report, certification, and supporting data for six years and provide these documents to the Department within 10 business days of a request.
The Department expects financial institutions to use the results of the review to find more effective ways to help ensure that investment professionals are providing investment advice in accordance with the Impartial Conduct Standards and to correct any deficiencies in existing policies and procedures. Senior executive officers should carefully review the report before making the required certifications, so that they can make the certifications with confidence. Making the certifications without carefully reviewing the report would constitute a violation of the exemption. This ensures that the financial institution, through an appropriate senior executive officer, is fully accountable for the retrospective review. The requirement that financial institutions make their report of their retrospective review available to the Department within 10 business days upon request ensures that the Department retains an appropriate level of oversight over exemption compliance.
Q20. Is there any way for financial institutions to correct violations of the exemption?
Yes, PTE 2020-02 contains a correction procedure for financial institutions to correct certain violations. Financial institutions can correct violations of the exemption within 90 days after the financial institution learns, or reasonably should have learned, of the violation. If the violation did not result in investment losses to the retirement investor or the financial institution made the retirement investor whole for any resulting losses, the financial institution can correct the violation and notify the Department within 30 days of correction. The financial institution must notify the persons responsible for conducting the retrospective review described in Q19 of the violation and correction, and the violation and correction must be specifically set forth in the written report of the retrospective review.
Q 21 How will the Department enforce compliance with the exemption?
The Department has investigative and interpretive authority with respect to exemption compliance. For plans covered by ERISA Title I, the Department will investigate for compliance with the exemption and enforce the Title I protections. In addition, participants, beneficiaries, and fiduciaries of these plans have a statutory cause of action under Section 502 of ERISA for fiduciary breaches and prohibited transactions. For IRAs and other non-Title I plans, the Department has interpretive authority to determine whether the exemption conditions have been satisfied and transmits information to the IRS for enforcement of the excise tax. In marked contrast to the 2016 rulemaking, the new exemption does not impose contract or warranty requirements on the financial institutions or investment professionals responsible for compliance. The exemption also does not expand retirement investors’ ability to enforce their rights in court or create any new legal claims beyond those in Title I of ERISA and the Code.
The exemption also includes several provisions intended to support and incentivize compliance. In addition to the annual retrospective review and self-correction discussed in previous FAQs, the exemption also encourages compliance by setting forth circumstances under which financial institutions and investment professionals can become ineligible to rely on the exemption for a period of 10 years.
Parties can become ineligible following conviction for specified crimes, or if they have engaged in systematic or intentional violation of the exemption’s conditions or provided materially misleading information to the Department in relation to their conduct under the exemption.
ARE YOU READY FOR
PTE 2020-02?
