Managing your plan
You'll have the fiduciary support and plan management tools you need to help mitigate your risk and fulfill your duties.
Fiduciary support
We help you understand your role and fulfill your fiduciary responsibilities
We provide you with support and services to help you fulfill your fiduciary duties, including:
- Service provider selection and monitoring
- Investment options selection and monitoring
- Plan administration, monitoring, reporting and documentation, and participant communications
Fiduciary tool kit
You can use our tool kit as a guide to help you carry out some of your key fiduciary duties.
Audit
We’ll help you with your annual plan audit, working with your TPA to prepare the necessary reports on your behalf. We also make your audit report and our SOC 1 and SOC 2 reports available to your plan auditor.
Nondiscretionary trustee services
We offer nondiscretionary trustee services through John Hancock Trust Company to reduce the administrative burdens associated with legal ownership of retirement plan assets.
Notices
Providing certain notices to participants is one of your fiduciary duties—we have two options for you to help make it easy.
Notice Manager
If you want to manage your notices yourself, Notice Manager helps you upload the notices, create a personalized communication package, and mail and post them on the participant website.
- Centralize all your notices
- Upload and share notice documents
- Build personalized notice packages
- View mailing statuses
- Create Notice Manager alerts
SEND Service
If you'd like help with your notices, SEND Service creates and mails them to your employees at conversion and annually.
- Choose from a robust collection of ERISA-compliant notice options
- You have a 10-day preview period prior to the annual mailing to adjust your mailing
- Centralize your mailings for audit purposes
- The notice package is mailed to eligible employees annually
- Send on-demand notices as required (applicable only for plans that have elected other notice types)
- The most current version of each mailing is posted to the participant website
- Monitor your mailings and view your history
Plan management
Tools and resources make managing your plan easier
You can manage your plan and stay connected with our plan sponsor website, and you'll get an annual review of your plan with trends, insight, and suggestions for improvement with our dynamic plan review.
Plan sponsor website
You can go online at any time to access helpful tools and plan information from the plan sponsor website.
Plan administration made easy
- Submit data, including census and contribution files
- Manage participant information, including address changes, eligibility, and deferrals
- Administer transactions such as loans and withdrawals
Helpful reporting to view and download
- Participant account, vesting, and loans
- 24-month transaction history
- Plan-level balance, investment, and allocation data
- Employee and participant census information
Online, organized, and always connected
- Message Center helps you manage alerts, notifications, and emails
- Easily find what you need by category and urgency
Dynamic plan review
We work with your plan’s financial professional to perform an annual review of your plan’s performance to ensure we’re serving your plan’s changing needs.
To help you monitor your plan’s performance, this is what you get
- Key contract- and participant-level statistics
- Retirement readiness trends
- Usage statistics on plan investment options and services
- A summary of your retirement plan costs
Dynamic plan review suggests opportunities to help improve plan outcomes and simplify administration
- Innovative strategies to help maximize contributions
- Plan design options to help increase retirement readiness
- Assistance to your participants to roll in their outside retirement assets1
Learn more about our Signature platform
Engaging your participants in the power of their plan
We provide participants with personalized guidance to help them create a plan to meet their unique financial and retirement goals.
Building your plan
With five decades of retirement plan experience, we know how to get your plan up and running quickly so your employees can start saving.
Selecting and monitoring investments
Whether you want to do it yourself or get help, we've got tools and services to help you select and monitor your plan's investment lineup.
Keeping your plan secure
John Hancock uses a multilayered approach to protect plan and participant data, which includes following the DOL's best practices for cybersecurity.
Financial professionals—want to learn more about John Hancock Signature?
Find your local John Hancock representative1 Rollovers are available for plans using John Hancock’s consolidation services; rollovers are subject to the provisions of a company’s plan. Participants are encouraged to review whether consolidating accounts, staying in a retirement plan, rolling over into an IRA, or another option is best as there are advantages and disadvantages to each option.
Group annuity contracts and recordkeeping agreements are issued by John Hancock Life Insurance Company (U.S.A.), Boston, MA (not licensed in New York), and John Hancock Life Insurance Company of New York, Valhalla, NY. Product features and availability may differ by state. Each entity makes available a platform of investment alternatives to sponsors or administrators of retirement plans without regard to the individualized needs of any plan. Unless otherwise specifically stated in writing, neither entity is undertaking to provide impartial investment advice or give advice in a fiduciary capacity. Securities are offered through John Hancock Distributors LLC, member FINRA, SIPC.