It is our goal to make the Dauphin County, PA Deferred Compensation Plan a great option for you to save for retirement. In addition to the pension plan that you are required to participate in, as a voluntary benefit we offer the Dauphin County, PA Deferred Compensation Plan. For those of you not participating in the plan, we want to remind you that Dauphin County makes a $4 per pay additional contribution to the plan when you contribute $10 or more. To learn more about the plan, please visit the Dauphin County intranet site / voluntary benefits / deferred compensation plan or you can access the plan’s participant portal (an informational website for the plan) at www.dauphincountydcplan.com.
Attached are three memo’s detailing changes to the plan. As part of our due diligence process, the Dauphin County Voluntary Employee Benefits Committee (VEBC) works with the investment advisory firm Retirement Collaborative LLC to review the investment options available in the plan. When a fund is underperforming its peers, it is put on a watch list and if it does not improve, it is replaced with a fund that is meeting the due diligence criteria and outperforming our peers. “The Notice of Change in Investment Options” outlines these fund changes.
When reviewing this memo, you will notice the addition of the American Funds Target Date Retirement Funds. These funds provide a simple way of selecting a diversified investment portfolio designed around a target retirement date. As an investor draws closer to their retirement date, the investment strategy changes automatically. The plan is also making these target date funds a Qualified Default Investment Alternative (QDIA). During the enrollment process, if a participant does not select an investment option, then the participant’s contributions will be invested in the target date fund corresponding to their age range listed in the memo. We feel that the ideal process is for a participant to select an investment strategy that meets their specific goals and objectives. If you would like assistance with this, please contact Stephen Hetrick (the Retirement Collaborative LLC investment advisory representative) at hetrick@retirementc.com; but as Dauphin County moves to online processing, we wanted to make sure there was a QDIA so that an employee’s enrollment would not be delayed should they not select an investment option during the enrollment process. The “Qualified Default Investment Notice” memo reviews these details.
Late last year the plan document was updated for the SECURES and CARES acts. We also elected to add two optional amendments. The first amendment lowers the age for In-Service Distributions to 59 ½. This means that after reaching age 59 ½, a participant can take an in-service distribution without cause. Also, the plan added the Qualified Birth or Adoption Distribution (QBAD) that allows distributions up to $5,000 per child when certain conditions are met. Please read the “Summary of Material Modifications” memo for details.
Lastly, we added the ability to take distributions on the Alerus participant website. If you are a participant and are not accessing the Alerus participant website, you should. There are links to the website on the Dauphin County intranet site and there are more details on how to access the Alerus site on the plan participant portal - https://dauphincountydcplan.com/access-account. The Alerus participant website now allows for online enrollment, loan processing, distributions, and changes to beneficiaries. You can also make changes to your contributions and investments online. We recommend that you access the Alerus participant website; review your beneficiaries, contributions, and investment options; and if you have questions on any of them, we recommend you contact Stephen Hetrick at hetrick@retirementc.com or 717-545-1447 or Dauphin County HR.