Personal Marketing Plan
Mission Statement:
I am proud to say that I work in the challenging and dynamic field of “Third Party Administration”. We are Third Party Administrators (TPA). A TPA act as a liaison between the Plan Sponsors of Qualified Retirement Plans (Plans) like the 401k plans or pension plans sponsored by corporations, small business owners and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The major role of the TPA is to make sure the Retirement Plans are in compliance by conducting various tests required per the IRS regulations and guidelines so that the plans maintain the tax qualification status. We also prepare the signature ready tax forms 5500 (which is the annual tax return for company sponsored retirement plans just like the Form 1040 for Individuals). I started doing this in 2001 and now the journey continues over 10 years now. Prior to 2001, I am an Industrial Engineer. So, I do have the technical thinking from an engineering perspective and legal, technical, being well organized skills from the TPA field.
In the world of TPA, the industry acts very fast. There is an always new regulation passed by the IRS and DOL which needs to be adopted on the Plans to be in compliance. There is a federal deadline on the 15th of every month and March 15th & October 15th are our biggest deadlines. I am a Senior Plan Administrator in the company I work for. My responsibilities are collecting the year end data from our clients for their Plans, reviewing for accuracy, determining the eligibility of plan participants, importing the data into the pension software, running the compliance tests per the parameters in the plan document, presenting it to the client and suggesting for improvements or corrective action based on the output of the tests. After the corrective action been taken, then prepare the signature ready 5500 tax returns and forward it to the client for filing with the government. All these tasks are time sensitive –
References: https://erpaexam.org/ http://www.asppa.org/Main-Menu/edpubs/CertandCred/Credential%20Programs/QPA.aspx http://asppa.org/Main-Menu/edpubs/CertandCred/Credential%20Programs/CPC.aspx http://www.soa.org/ http://www.irs.gov/retirement/index.html http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/retirement/index.htm