Five disciplines, one practice.

A structured, end-to-end review of the documents, data, and operational practices that define an employer's welfare benefit plan. The work surfaces gaps before they reach the regulator.

We approach a diagnostic the way the Department of Labor approaches an inquiry — starting from the plan document and working outward to what is actually being administered. Plan documents are read against current law. Summary Plan Descriptions are checked against the plan document. Wrap arrangements, where they exist, are examined for completeness. Carrier reports are reconciled against what the employer is paying and providing.

The output is a written diagnostic memo. It identifies the gaps, ranks them by exposure, and prescribes the next step for each — whether that step is a filing remediation, a plan-document amendment, or a documentation effort that has been deferred too long.

Original-year preparation, peer review of in-flight filings, and DFVC-program remediation for late or omitted returns. Every filing is reviewed by a senior preparer before it leaves the practice.

We prepare welfare-plan Form 5500 filings from the ground up, working from the plan document and the year's operational record rather than from a prior-year template. Each schedule is built and verified against source; nothing is rolled forward without a current-year reason.

Peer review is available for filings prepared elsewhere — a senior practitioner reads the filing and supporting work before submission, identifying inconsistencies, omissions, or reporting positions that warrant attention. Remediation engagements address filings that were late, omitted, or require correction under the DFVC program.

A line-by-line examination of broker, consultant, and carrier compensation disclosures — reconciled against CAA §202 requirements and the plan's own service-provider agreements.

Schedule A reporting is among the most material — and most commonly mis-stated — portions of the Form 5500. Compensation flows from carrier to broker to consultant to TPA are layered, indirect, and rarely match the disclosures the plan sponsor has on file. The CAA §202 amendments to ERISA §408(b)(2) have not made the reporting easier.

Our review reconciles what the carriers report against what the plan's service-provider agreements specify, against what is being administered, and against what CAA §202 requires the sponsor to receive. The output identifies discrepancies, frames the questions to ask carriers and brokers, and provides the documentation backbone for a sponsor's fiduciary file.

Pre-audit document organization, response drafting, and on-the-record support during DOL or IRS examination. We prepare employers for inquiry, and we answer the inquiry itself.

An audit-readiness engagement assembles the documentation a sponsor will need before a regulator asks for it — plan documents, SPDs, fiduciary records, Schedule A backup, and the contemporaneous evidence that demonstrates plan administration aligned with plan terms. The work is organized to match the way the DOL and IRS request material, not the way the employer happens to file it.

When an inquiry arrives, we draft the response, prepare the supporting binders, and provide on-the-record support through the examination. Our preparation is calibrated to the regulatory window: investigations move on the DOL's clock, not the sponsor's.

Specialist support engaged through your broker, audit, or legal team — preserving the client relationship while extending technical depth on the questions that warrant a dedicated practitioner.

Many of our engagements arrive not directly from the plan sponsor but through a broker, audit firm, or ERISA attorney who needs a specialist on a particular question. We work behind the scenes — white-label or co-branded — preserving the originating relationship while bringing technical depth that the engaging firm does not staff in-house.

Typical engagements include Form 5500 reconstruction for litigation support, factual development for matters under examination, quantitative analysis of compensation flows, and welfare-plan diligence on acquisitions. The work is calibrated to the engaging firm's role; we do not displace it.