Employer Plan Services for Healthcare Practices
A retirement benefit built around your practice, and the people who make it possible.
Support your recruitment and retention goals with thoughtful plan design, investment fiduciary guidance and a more personalized retirement experience for physicians, clinical staff and administrative teams.
A plan for every role in your practice
Your physicians, nurses and administrative staff bring different financial priorities to work. Your retirement plan should recognize those differences while remaining practical to administer.
Cognis Group helps healthcare practices align their employer retirement plans with business goals, workforce needs and the responsibilities of plan sponsorship. We bring together plan design coordination, investment oversight and participant-focused technology so your team has a clearer path forward.
Three ways we support your practice
Plan design aligned with your goals
Evaluate your current plan or explore a new one with your workforce, budget and owner objectives in mind. We coordinate with your plan administration team to assess features such as safe harbor contributions, profit sharing, automatic enrollment and automatic escalation, where appropriate.
Investment fiduciary support
Choose an advisory or discretionary investment management relationship that reflects the level of investment decision-making your practice wishes to retain.
A personalized employee experience
Help employees connect today’s savings decisions with tomorrow’s retirement goals through digital enrollment, education and managed account options, where available.
Choose the right investment fiduciary relationship
ERISA 3(21): Advice with sponsor control
Cognis provides investment recommendations and monitoring within the agreed scope. Your designated plan fiduciaries retain authority over investment selections and changes.
ERISA 3(38): Delegated investment management
When formally appointed under a written agreement, Cognis exercises discretion to select, monitor and replace the plan investments covered by the appointment.
Under either arrangement, your practice retains responsibilities, including prudent selection and monitoring of service providers. A 3(38) appointment does not transfer every plan fiduciary or administrative duty.
Personalized retirement planning for a diverse healthcare team
Automated Personalized Portfolios™ (APP)
Where available under the plan, a managed account approach can use more than a participant's age to inform portfolio recommendations or management. Relevant information may include salary, contribution rate, accumulated savings, projected Social Security benefits, retirement goals and outside or spousal assets when supplied and supported.
Employees can update supported profile information as circumstances change. The aim is a retirement strategy informed by a more complete picture of the individual. Personalization depends on the information available, program methodology and plan configuration; it does not guarantee investment results.
The Cognis Connected Retirement Platform
A coordinated experience for your practice and your employees.
Participant experience — iJoin
Digital enrollment and goal-based retirement planning tools, with access to managed advice options where enabled.
Recordkeeping — Northwest Plan Services (NWPS)
The recordkeeping foundation for participant accounts and plan transactions, with administrative and reporting services defined by the provider agreement.
Payroll connectivity — Payroll Integrations
Helps make our platform payroll-provider agnostic. Supported data connections between payroll and recordkeeping systems — these may include employee census data, contributions and eligible deferral updates back to payroll.
We review compatibility and service responsibilities before implementation. Automation can reduce repetitive entry, while your practice and its providers remain responsible for data review, exceptions and timely processing.
A clear path from review to launch
Discover
Review your practice’s goals, employee demographics, existing plan and current service providers.
Design
Coordinate plan features, service scope, investment governance and a written fee proposal with the appropriate providers.
Connect
Confirm payroll compatibility, establish supported connections and test the workflow before launch.
Launch
Support employee communications, enrollment and the introduction of available planning tools.
Review
Monitor investments within the agreed scope, review the service relationship and coordinate operational follow-up with your plan team.
Frequently asked questions
Give your team a retirement benefit that reflects the care they give others.
Let's review how your retirement plan serves your practice, supports your people and fits your day-to-day operations.