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Benefit Plan Consulting
The
key planning objectives for any benefit plan is scalability, competitiveness
and cohesiveness within the company's culture. Our thorough knowledge
of all the various plans available, and how they tie together, enables us to
develop benefit plan strategies that help companies achieve their overall
objectives.
The myriad tax and other
regulatory aspects of those programs contemplated under the umbrella term
“Employee Benefit Plans” are too extensive to address in one or two
paragraphs. Accordingly, rather than attempt to dwell on each of the
specific insurance, savings and investment and other elements of the
traditional employee benefits universe, we offer an overview of the approach
to our planning in this area.
FT Solutions, Inc. divides
employee benefits into three major categories: *
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Protection Plans.
These are plans made available on a more or less across the board
basis to the staff as a whole and which can be can be characterized as
security oriented. These are the basic life and health insurance
related plans and other basic benefit programs that offer protection
from economic loss due to the occurrence of specific events.
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Opportunity Plans.
This category is comprised of optional plans that offer a degree of
choice on the part of the individual employee. This category contains
savings plans such as 401(k), Profit-Sharing Plans and ESOPs. It
also includes increased life and health insurance coverage and
dependent care for which a tax credit is otherwise available under a
cafeteria plan type approach. Vacation days can be included in
this category for which an employee may receive credits in the form of
cash or nontaxable benefits such as added insurance benefits.
Highly skilled workaholic high tech employees may find this latter
benefit especially appealing since the demands of the job may make the
opportunity to take the full vacation allowance a remote possibility.
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Quality of Life Plans.
This category includes such programs as flex-time, on site amenities
(or if appropriate, off site expense reimbursement) such as exercise
facility utilization, day care and educational and advanced skills
training. The breadth of the overall program depends upon the
stage of development of the company.
* For a company to achieve
maximum effectiveness when designing an overall benefit package, each of
these categories must be addressed. [back]
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