Pronvest Announces An Open Platform Of Portfolio Managers

PRLog (Press Release) - Jan 26, 2009 -
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (Jan. 26, 2009) – ProNvest, Inc., a Registered Investment Advisor providing managed account services for Retirement plan participants, rolled-out a new service designed to assist plan sponsors with limiting fiduciary liability. “Plan sponsors have long been concerned about the liability of offering investment advice and managed accounts to their plan participants,” says Jay Jumper, President, ProNvest, Inc. The Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA) has alleviated many of these concerns by allowing plan sponsors to offer managed accounts using a fiduciary adviser. This option increases the responsibility of selecting the appropriate Investment Advisor to provide managed accounts to employees’. A plan sponsor is responsible for selection, due diligence and on-going monitoring of the fiduciary adviser that it selects, with each decision being a fiduciary decision. Additionally, Plan Providers who offer plan sponsors a single managed account provider may not be meeting the specific needs of each plan sponsor, however, the cost of integrating, operating and maintaining multiple managed account providers has historically been prohibitive.

ProNvest approves and integrates multiple Investment Managers/RIAs into their managed account platform and conducts ongoing due diligence in accordance with PPA guidelines. By offering an open platform of investment managers, ProNvest helps plan sponsors fulfill their fiduciary responsibility, helps alleviate the liability of plan providers currently offering a single managed account solution and helps reduce the cost challenges for providers by offering sponsors multiple managed account programs as follows:

•   ProNvest’s due diligence and monitoring services enhance the plan sponsor’s efforts to fulfill its
fiduciary responsibility in the selection and monitoring of investment managers.

•   ProNvest helps enable the plan sponsor to select the investment manager that best meets the needs of its’ plan as opposed to using a single managed account offering that is integrated into the provider. ProNvest helps reduce provider fiduciary liability by engaging the plan sponsor in much of the due diligence effort required and the liability of that decision shifts from the provider to the plan sponsor, who are protected by the PPA.

•   ProNvest standardizes the integration and operation of each investment manager into the ProNvest platform so that there is a single integration with each provider, even if the plan decides to change investment managers at a later date. Single integration helps eliminate additional integration costs, minimizes ongoing support of data connections, use of IT resources, and helps eliminate potential service disruption to participants when changing investment managers.

ProNvest helps to relieve the pressure of plan sponsors so they can take advantage of the PPA, without having to increase their internal staff or responsibility. By taking advantage of the protection of the PPA, the fiduciary liabilities are managed appropriately so that plan sponsors can attend to their employees needs.

About ProNvest
ProNvest is an independent registered investment advisory firm that assists retirement plan participants with a goal-based advice and money management service. ProNvest also provides educational tools, professional account management, investment allocation advice and managed IRA rollovers. Visit www.ProNvest.com for more information.