Executives & Professionals

As an executive, you have your traditional retirement account, but you may also receive an executive retirement plan. Companies typically offer these types of plans to executive employees as an incentive to stay with the company. Your executive retirement plan may also be tied to performance and length of service.

An executive compensation plan can help support the same lifestyle you enjoy now during retirement. With a traditional retirement account, you may find that your contribution limits prevent you from contributing as much as you’d like.

Our executive retirement planner can create a plan that works for your unique situation. We’ll help you understand your executive savings plan, how you can build wealth, and what you can do to better prepare for your retirement. We also recommend consulting with our retirement specialists before you quit your job to ensure your benefits are fully vested.

What Is an Executive Retirement Plan?
A supplemental executive retirement plan, short SERP, is a non-qualified benefit plan companies may offer to their key employees. Typically, the executive has to work for the company for a certain number of years to qualify for the benefits under the executive retirement plan. This plan doesn’t provide any tax benefits to the company or the employee, although the benefits can be deducted as a business expense when they are paid.

How Do Executive Savings Plans Work?
The company usually agrees to compensate you as the executive during your retirement. The compensation plan will specify a certain flat dollar amount or a percentage of your average final pay. We consider this a defined benefit plan, which is the most common type of executive compensation plan.

What Happens to My Executive Savings If I Quit?
Typically, executive compensation plans stipulate you work for the employer in a specific capacity for a certain number of years to discourage turnover. If the benefits in your executive savings plan haven’t fully vested, you might lose them when you quit working for the employer. You could also risk losing the funds in the executive savings if you get fired for cause, don’t meet certain metrics as agreed, or don’t fulfill other requirements of the plan.

Preparing for retirement is a complicated process. We want to make sure you have all the information you need to maximize your executive compensation and savings plans. Call us today to talk about your executive retirement planning needs.

Source: *The Average Equity Investor and inflation data comes from “Dalbar's 22nd Annual Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior (QAIB) study”. Average Equity Investor performance is calculated using results supplied by the Investment Company Institute. Investor returns are represented by the change in total mutual fund assets after excluding sales, redemptions, and exchanges. Results capture realized and unrealized capital gains dividends, interest, trading costs, sales charges, fees, expenses, and other costs. Dividends are not guaranteed, and a company's ability to pay dividends may be limited. Fund Sponsors, data for the participants in the peer groups come from four primary sources; Callan clients, BNY Mellon, Investorforce and Callan non-clients. The Total Fund Sponsor Database consists of return and asset allocation information for Corporate Pensions Funds, Endowment/Foundation Funds, Public Funds, and Taft-Hartley Funds. The Public Fund Sponsor Database consists of return and asset allocation information for public pension funds at the city, county, and state level. The Corporate Fund Sponsor Database consists of return and asset allocation information for a wide variety of corporate pension funds. The Endowment/Foundation Fund Sponsor Database consists of return and asset allocation information for endowments and foundations. The Taft-Hartley Fund Sponsor Database consists of return and asset allocation information for Taft-Hartley union pension funds.