Your company’s 401(k) has a fiduciary. It’s you.
You offered a 401(k) as a benefit. It came with a fund menu you are legally responsible for, fees nobody shows you in one place, and an advisor your employees have never met. Cannon Capital takes the investment decisions, and their liability, off your desk.
Your plan filed its fees with the government. Here’s what Utah peers filed.
Every one of them, on one line
Admin fees paid from plan assets, as a share of the year’s average assets; plans with a usable fee figure (1,746 of the 2,092). The tallest bar, under 0.10%, includes 88 plans that reported $0. A $0 figure means the cost was not paid from plan assets, so it sits somewhere else. Leaves out fund expense ratios and fees the employer pays directly. Source: U.S. Department of Labor, 2024 Form 5500 and 5500-SF filings.
You run a company. The 401(k) keeps asking you to run it too.
- 01
“Wait, I’m a fiduciary?”
Sponsoring the plan made you one, whether or not anyone said so. Every fund on the menu is your legal responsibility unless a 3(38) investment manager formally takes it on.
- 02
“I can name our provider. I can’t tell you what the plan costs.”
Recordkeeping, advisory and fund expenses are three separate bills, and they are never shown together. That isn’t carelessness. It’s how the fees are built.
- 03
“Is our advisor paid more when the plan costs more?”
Sometimes, yes. Commissions, revenue sharing and pricier share classes of the same fund can pay the people servicing a plan more, out of your employees’ accounts. The sponsor rarely sees it happening, or where it lands.
- 04
“Three vendors, and I’m the one in the middle.”
Record keeper over here, payroll over there, a TPA somewhere. Nobody coordinates them, so you do, on top of your actual job.
- 05
“Our people don’t value the plan we pay for.”
A plan nobody understands is a benefit nobody values. Low participation hurts your testing, your match dollars and your ability to keep good people.
Nobody should need a law degree to offer a retirement plan, or a forensic accountant to price one.
The problem isn’t the provider’s name on your statements. It’s advice that can pay the adviser more when your plan costs more. We sell no products, take no commissions and keep no revenue sharing. The fee you can see is the only way we are paid.
A fiduciary for the plan with nothing to sell you.
If you inherited the plan, you are in good company. Most sponsors can tell you their provider’s name and not what the plan costs.
Cannon Capital is a fee-only registered investment adviser in Cottonwood Heights. We are not dually registered as a broker-dealer, so there is no commission side of the business to steer anything toward. For employer plans we serve as the 3(38) investment fiduciary: we make the fund decisions and carry the responsibility for them.
3(21) or 3(38): who carries the risk.
The numbers are sections of ERISA, the federal law that governs your plan. A 3(21) adviser recommends. A 3(38) investment manager decides.
A 3(21) adviser
- They recommend. You decide.
- Who picks the funds
- You do.
- Who answers for those picks
- They report it. You replace it.
- When a fund falls short
- Their report, your decision.
- The paper trail
- Every fund on the menu, every quarter.
- What’s left on you
A 3(38) manager
- We decide, under a written investment policy.
- Who picks the funds
- We do. We carry the investment liability.
- Who answers for those picks
- We replace it, and document why.
- When a fund falls short
- Policy statement, monitoring, minutes: kept for you.
- The paper trail
- Prudently choosing us, and checking we do the job.
- What’s left on you
You can delegate the decisions. You can’t delegate them to nobody.
No arrangement removes all fiduciary responsibility, and anyone who claims otherwise should worry you. A 3(38) narrows your duty to something an owner can actually do.
Not sure which you have? Send one email.
“Are you serving our plan as a 3(38) investment manager or a 3(21) advisor, and where does our agreement say so?”
If the answer is fuzzy, the responsibility is sitting with you.
Cannon Capital Management acts as an ERISA 3(38) investment manager for the plan’s investment lineup. Trustee meeting support, plan design consulting and participant education are non-fiduciary services provided alongside that role.
What comes off your desk.
The investment decisions
We build, monitor and document the lineup as your 3(38), and assume the investment liability that would otherwise sit with you.
The paper trail
We run the trustee meetings, keep the minutes and maintain the fiduciary file, so when someone asks for it, it exists.
The vendors
Record keeper, payroll, TPA, auditors. You keep the ones you like; we make them run as one system.
The employee questions
Group education on a schedule, and a one-on-one with an advisor for anyone who wants it, in person or over Zoom.
The plan design
Match, eligibility, auto-enrollment and vesting, built around participation, retention, and owners who can actually use the plan.
The fee question
Fee-only, no commissions, no revenue sharing in our pocket. You and your participants can see what the plan costs.
Three steps, and the first one costs nothing.
Tell us the company
A name and city is enough to start. Your plan’s Form 5500 is public, so that is enough for a first look. If you have your 408(b)(2) fee disclosure, send it too; if you don’t, we can request it. It lets us separate the three cost layers.
See your plan next to Utah plans its size
Recordkeeping, advisory and fund expenses separated, then compared with plans of your participant count and assets. We tell you plainly whether it is competitive. If it is, we will say so.
Decide what to do next
Benchmarking rarely means changing providers. The usual outcomes are a cheaper share class of the same funds, a renegotiation, or a documented decision to keep what you have. If you want us as your 3(38), you will know what it costs before you hire us.
Your plan’s own filed numbers, next to its Utah peers.
Four questions, answered with numbers.
- 01
What the plan actually costs
Recordkeeping, advisory and fund expenses separated, then benchmarked against Utah plans of your size.
- 02
Whether the share classes are right
The same fund is often sold in several share classes at different prices. Being in the wrong one is the most common and most quietly expensive finding.
- 03
Who carries the liability today
Whether your current advisor is a 3(21) or a 3(38) decides who is responsible for every fund on the menu.
- 04
What your participants are getting
Enrolment, default investments, and whether anyone is actually helping the people in the plan make decisions.
$12,846 came out of plan assets for administration. Peers: 295 Utah plans with $1M–$5M and 50–99 people. Half paid under 0.59%; the top quarter paid 0.88% or more. At the peer median rate, the same assets would have carried about $8,000.
A family firm, not a call center.
Two generations run Cannon Capital, a CPA sits inside it, and the people you meet in the first conversation are the ones who answer the phone in year twelve.
Chace Cannon, CFP®
Co-manages the corporate retirement practice. Turns a plan’s complexity into an answer in plain English.
Clint Cannon, CFA
Co-manages the corporate retirement practice. Former Director of Research at First Security Investment Management.
Justin Vargas
Leads investment research and helps employers build stronger, more cost-effective 401(k) plans.
Triton Lee, CPA
The CPA inside the firm. Tax services are provided through Cannon Capital Tax, LLC, an affiliated practice.
Same plan, same people, a different year for you.
Participants can bring claims against the people who ran the plan, and the litigation of the last decade shows they do. It doesn’t take bad intent, only a menu nobody was formally responsible for watching.
- The investment decisions stay in your name.
- Fees keep coming out of your employees’ accounts at a rate nobody has checked against peers.
- Participation stays where it is, and so does the match nobody values.
- When someone asks for the paper trail, there isn’t one.
- A 3(38) investment manager makes the fund decisions and answers for them.
- You know what the plan costs, layer by layer, and you checked it against Utah plans its size.
- Employees know what the match is worth, and can sit down with an advisor.
- The fiduciary file exists, and you can hand it to anyone who asks.
Is the benchmark really free?
What do you need from us?
Where do the Utah numbers come from?
Do we have to change record keepers or payroll?
Does a 3(38) take away all of my responsibility?
Do you actually meet with our employees?
How are you paid?
What size plans do you work with?
Find out where your plan lands among Utah plans its size.
- No cost, and nothing to buy.
- An advisor, not an assistant, reaches out within one business day.
- A straight answer on whether your plan is competitive for its size.
Request received.
An advisor will be in touch within one business day. If it is urgent, call 801.566.3190.