STRATEGIC PLAN DESIGN.TRUSTED COMPLIANCE.SEAMLESS ADMINISTRATION.
Apex Pension Strategies, Inc. is the third-party administrator: the firm that designs your company’s retirement plan, supports it day to day, and keeps it compliant with the IRS, the DOL and ERISA.
We never manage or sell the investments. That is the point. The design we recommend is the one your census and cash flow call for, not the one that moves a product.
- Practice
- Third-party administration
- Based
- Atlanta, Georgia
- Independent since
- 2003
We assist you with choosing the right Plan. Together we help you determine when it’s time to add another.
These are contribution options that a retirement plan is built from. Not all companies need only one of them. You do not need to be the expert to figure this out. That’s where we come in. We ask the right questions to determine what’s best to meet your business goals for your company. Tailored for you.
Still deciding whether to offer a plan at all? Start with why a smaller company offers a 401(k) plan, and with the SECURE 2.0 tax credits that may lower what an eligible small employer pays to start and run one.
401(k) / Roth
Employees contribute out of pay, pre-tax, or after-tax into a Roth account, and the money grows tax-deferred.
Matching
An employer formula written to reward the people who participate, and to pull participation up behind them.
Profit Sharing
An employer-provided benefit that does not depend on an employee putting in a dollar of their own.
ESOP
A type of profit-sharing plan that invests in the company’s own stock.
- Defined benefit
Pension
A company-funded plan that provides an annuity benefit at retirement age.
Cash Balance
A pension plan that reads like profit sharing on a participant statement, but is targeted to a retirement age.
Combinations
All of the above can be mixed and matched to create a custom retirement plan solution. A 401(k) beside a cash balance plan. A profit-sharing formula layered over a match. An ESOP alongside the plan the rest of the workforce is in.
Decisions that you make.
- Loans & hardships
- Whether participants can borrow against the plan or take a hardship withdrawal at all, and on what terms.
- Entry timing
- How soon a new hire is actually in: immediately, after a waiting period, or on fixed entry dates.
- Distribution method
- Lump sum, installments or an annuity. Decided once, in the document, rather than argued about later.
- Who receives it
- A contribution spread company-wide, or directed selectively to the groups the plan exists to reward.
FOUR DISCIPLINES.
ONE FILE.
Design, administration, compliance, and consulting aren’t handled by four different vendors. They’re four interconnected parts of the same plan, managed by one integrated team. That means better coordination, clearer communication, and fewer opportunities for anything to fall through the cracks.
PLAN DESIGN.
Your retirement plan should work for your business, not the other way around. We design your plan around your people, and what you want to accomplish. As your business grows and changes, we stay alongside you, making sure your plan continues to fit your needs and support your goals.
What the design decides
- Who is eligible for the plan, and on what date they are actually in it.
- How much the company contributes, on what formula, and to which people.
- Whether money can leave early, loans, hardship withdrawals, in-service distributions.
- How a benefit is finally paid: lump sum, installments, or an annuity for life.
- Which plan types run together, and how each one covers what the other cannot.
Retirement plans offer more flexibility than many business owners realize. From customized profit-sharing formulas to adding a cash balance plan alongside a 401(k), there are many ways to design a strategy around your company’s goals. Our team models the options and tests the numbers before you commit, helping you understand what works, what doesn’t, and what makes the most sense for your business.
A PLAN IS ONLY EVER AS GOOD AS THE DOCUMENT BEHIND IT.
PLAN ADMINISTRATION.
Your retirement plan deserves more than basic administration. We manage the details, from contributions and recordkeeping to distributions and ongoing plan requirements, with a team that knows your plan and your business. Year after year, you work with people who understand your history, your goals, and how your plan is designed, so you can spend less time explaining and more time moving your business forward.
As your third-party administrator, we help keep your retirement plan running smoothly and in accordance with its terms. We oversee the legal and operational requirements, establish clear processes, and help ensure participants receive timely information and benefits.
The day-to-day, in practice
Contributions
Deferrals, match and employer money allocated to the right people under the right formula.
Loans & distributions
Eligibility checked against the document, paperwork produced, payments tracked through to completion.
Participant records
Service, vesting and account history maintained so the answer exists before somebody asks for it.
Notices & statements
Participants told what they need to know, when the rules say they need to know it.
And the part most TPAs skip
We explain the design back to you. We project what the plan will produce for the people in it, so that you can describe your own plan to your own employees in simple and understandable terms, which is, in the end, the only way a plan gets used.
COMPLIANCE & TESTING.
Qualified plans are a privilege granted on conditions, and the conditions are tested. We shift that burden off your desk: every test the plan is subject to, the Form 5500, the notices, and the regulatory reading that sits behind all three.
What we watch
- All discrimination testing
- Plan audits
- Form 5500 and notice requirements
- Nondiscrimination regulations
- Legislation and trends
- Tax law
- Fiduciary liability
Rules move. Legislation, IRS guidance and DOL priorities all shift under a plan that was written years ago. Reading that movement, and telling you which parts of it touch your plan, is part of the service rather than an extra.
| Code | TestWhat it asks |
|---|---|
| 401(a)(4) | General nondiscriminationContributions and benefits, and the rights and features attached to them, may not favor highly compensated employees. |
| 410(b) | Minimum coverageMeasures how many non-highly compensated employees actually benefit under the plan against how many highly compensated employees do. |
| 401(k) ADP | Actual deferral percentageHolds the highly compensated group’s average deferral rate to the non-highly compensated average: broadly, the lesser of NHCE plus two percentage points, or 200% of the NHCE rate. |
| 401(m) ACP | Actual contribution percentageThe same arithmetic applied to employer matching and after-tax employee contributions. |
| 415 | Annual additions limitEverything allocated to one participant in a year is capped at the IRS dollar limit or 100% of that participant’s compensation, whichever is lower. |
| 416 | Top-heavyIf key employees hold more than 60% of plan assets, the plan owes minimum contributions and a faster vesting schedule. |
| 404 | Deduction limitHow much of the employer contribution the company may actually deduct for the year. |
| 409 | ESOP limitationsThe allocation and distribution restrictions that apply specifically to employee stock ownership plans. |
| 1042 | Selling shareholderThe requirements a selling shareholder has to satisfy on a sale of stock to the ESOP. |
Which sections apply depends on the plan. We run the ones that do, every plan year, and tell you what the numbers mean while there is still time to change them.
ERISA CONSULTING.
Retirement plan expertise, independent of the assets. When a decision has to be made, a redesign, a correction, an acquisition that arrives with somebody else’s plan attached, we are the independent voice that confirms your idea, or analyzes your strategy before it becomes a filing.
All compliance testing, performed
Every test the plan is subject to, run in-house rather than outsourced back to you.
Protecting the fiduciaries
The people who signed on as plan fiduciaries carry real exposure. Part of our job is keeping their decisions documented and defensible.
Signature-ready Forms 5500
Prepared, reconciled and delivered ready for signature, not a draft that sends you looking for someone to check it.
Vesting, calculated
Service, breaks in service and the schedule in your document, worked out participant by participant.
Loan and hardship availability
What a given participant can actually take, under this plan’s terms, right now.
An independent voice
Retirement plan expertise independent of the assets, there to confirm your idea, or to analyze your strategy before you commit to it.
SMALL AND MID-SIZED.
ON PURPOSE.
Apex was established for exactly the companies the rest of the industry keeps repricing: businesses that cannot spend their week inside an ever-changing set of requirements, and businesses that got a letter saying their assets no longer meet somebody else’s minimum.
Turned away elsewhere
Apex exists for clients turned away from service providers who continually raise their minimum asset levels. Your plan does not have to be large to be run properly.
Rules that never sit still
For companies that may not be able to operate within the confines of an ever-changing set of requirements, so we operate within them on your behalf.
Big-firm standards, lower cost
The standards our people learned at large firms, applied at a price a smaller company can actually carry, year in and year out.
WHO YOU ACTUALLY GET.
No call center, no rotating account team. These are the names on your plan, and the ones who answer when you call about it.
Michael Miller, CEBS
CEO, President and Trustee
With over 35 years of retirement planning expertise, Michael specializes in navigating the complex world of ESOPs and corporate pension plans. He blends high-level legal strategy with practical, day-to-day compliance monitoring to protect both client companies and their employees. A graduate of Emory University with a Wharton CEBS designation, Michael is a trusted industry partner known for making complex regulatory topics simple, efficient, and actionable.
CEBS · Emory University · Wharton
Diana Clark, MS, PHR
VP of Marketing and Employee Ownership
An accomplished leader with more than 20 years of experience leading brand strategy and employee ownership. She combines expertise in marketing and human resources to advance clients' employee ownership initiatives, strengthening workplace culture and organizational impact.
Apex Pension Strategies, Inc.Apex Fiduciary Services, LLC
Kim Carmichael
COO
An accomplished benefits leader with more than 20 years of experience driving excellence in plan design, administration, and compliance. Proven track record managing trust accounting and regulatory frameworks across high-stakes industries, including healthcare, logistics, and finance. Committed to delivering robust, compliant, and cost-effective plan solutions.
Apex Pension Strategies, Inc.
Leander MacVane, APA
Director of Sales and Business Development
With more than 35 years in the retirement plan industry, Leander brings deep expertise from both the operational and consulting sides of the business. Having spent much of her career managing retirement plan processes within TPA practices, she understands what it takes to turn thoughtful plan design into a smooth, successful experience for employers. Leander partners with financial advisors, CPAs, wholesalers, and plan sponsors to evaluate plan options, identify the right solutions, and bring the right people together. Her relationship-driven approach focuses on making the process clear, collaborative, and as easy as possible for the plan sponsor.
Apex Pension Strategies, Inc.
Trey Stephens, MS, MBA, ERPA, QPA, QKA
Retirement Plan Administration
An accomplished retirement plan specialist with over 25 years of administration experience and comprehensive expertise in every plan type offered by APEX.
Apex Pension Strategies, Inc.
Jeffrey Koppes, MBA
Jeff brings firsthand company-side ESOP transaction experience backed by decades of financial leadership to our clients. He draws on his broad financial and operational expertise to help clients navigate valuation, transaction structure, risk, and long-term ESOP sustainability.
Apex Fiduciary Services, LLC
Michael Shields, MBA, CPA
An experienced CPA and business leader, Michael brings a strong background in audit, tax and employee ownership. With comprehensive ESOP experience, he works closely with clients to support the operational and financial aspects of their ESOP and help ensure plans operate effectively throughout the life cycle of the Plan.
Apex Fiduciary Services, LLC
RESPONSIBILITY,
IN WRITING.
Need someone to take legal responsibility for the plan as well as run it? That is the other half of this firm. Where the TPA prepares, the fiduciary signs, as independent ESOP trustee, or as the named 3(16) plan administrator. Same team, same building, a different legal role.
LET’S TALK.
Tell us what you want your plan to accomplish and who it should benefit. We’ll show you what’s working, what isn’t, and where opportunities exist. And when you call, you’ll talk directly with the people who manage your plan.
- PO Box 88208, Atlanta, GA 30356
- Telephone
- (770) 410-5022
- Fax
- (770) 410-5023
