Blue Ridge ESOP Associates Industry News

The annual ASPPA Eastern Regional Conference is being held this week in Philadelphia, PA. Tom Roback will be moderating the following session on Thursday, April 26 from 1:05-2:20 p.m.

The Heart of America's annual spring St. Louis ESOP seminar is tomorrow! At this conference, you will have the opportunity to hear Anthony Brunsvold co-present at "The Great Debate: ESOP Sustainability" from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Hot topics that bring challenges to the management of ESOP companies will be discussed with suggested strategies that might help such challenges as distribution policy, repurchase methods, funding strategies and releveraging.

2018 Employee Ownership Conference in Atlanta

Are you attending the conference this week? Stop by our booth and enter your business card for a chance to win an Amazon Echo Dot (2nd Generation). Our Blue Ridge professionals will be speaking in the following sessions. 

We are pleased to announce that effective May 1, 2018, Blue Ridge ESOP Associates' Managing Director, Dolores Lawrence, will be the Chair of the Advisory Committee on Administration for The ESOP Association. Ms. Lawrence has over 29 years of experience in employee benefits, with a focus on plan design, implementation, administration and consulting services for ESOPs and 401(k) plans.  She also has a tax and accounting background, is a CPA and holds the QKA designation from ASPPA.She is a frequent speaker at regional and national ESOP conferences.

This week, Blue Ridge ESOP Associates professionals will be speaking at multiple conferences. If you're attending one of these, please make sure you say "hello" to one of our professionals attending the conference.

The following article has been provided to Blue Ridge ESOP Associates, courtesy of Workplace Development.  It’s time to sharpen your pencil and fill out your March Madness bracket. While we can offer no assistance on the NCAA Tournament – our brackets will be ruined at the end of day one too – we can help you with another important event:  your annual ESOP statement distribution process. Here are six suggestions to make the most of this great opportunity to communicate your plan’s benefits, engage employees as owners and build your ESOP culture.

Thank you, Congressman Dave Brat, for speaking at The ESOP Association Mid-Atlantic Chapter in October and for sponsoring the pro-ESOP bill HR 2092 yesterday! Has your company hosted a Congressional Site visit to promote employee ownership? Is your Congress representative also a cosponsor? Find out here.

A special thanks to Brad Keisling of Capital Trustees, LLC, for having Tom Roback on  The ESOP podcast.  Tom was able to share more about ESOP plan administration and ESOP and 401(k) recordkeeping services. Take some time and listen here to learn more.

Photo Credit: Capital Trustees, LLC

Blue Ridge invites you to join us at the next Central Virginia Employee Benefits Council (CVEBC) lunch seminar in Richmond, VA, on October 18th – 12:00-1:30 at Williams Mullen downtown. Duane Gran, our Director of Information Systems, will be covering the topic “Cybersecurity in the Retirement Plan World”. Employers put tremendous trust in their third party administrator to safeguard sensitive employee records.  In this interactive discussion learn about the questions you should ask of your TPA to hold them to a high standard for IT Security.