Stop Ignoring This Powerful Type of Retirement Plan

Key Takeaways

• Defined benefit plans can be extremely beneficial to entrepreneurs in their quest to become seriously wealthy.
• Despite their advantages, DB plans are not commonly used by business owners. 
• Review your current retirement plan and compare it with what a DB could potentially offer you and your company.

In a world where 401(k)s are immensely popular, many other retirement plans are ignored and overlooked. Some are even viewed as old-school dinosaurs that have become irrelevant.

But the fact is, if you’re doing what everyone else is doing in terms of your business’s retirement plan solutions, you might not be nearly as effective and impactful as you could be. The “standard issue” solutions that are so common may actually do very little to maximize personal wealth—and as a result, you could be missing out on opportunities to grow your assets significantly. 

In contrast, a relatively select group of entrepreneurs are tapping into the power of other types of retirement plans that can benefit them greatly. 

It’s time to ask yourself: Should I go my own way when it comes to my company’s retirement plan?

The retirement plan landscape among businesses

The first step to answering that question is to consider the retirement plans most business owners are familiar with: qualified retirement plans. 

Qualified retirement plans are legal ways to shelter assets from taxes. You typically contribute pretax dollars and pay taxes only when you take funds out. The qualified plan provisions were put into the tax code to help motivate people to save for retirement. 

The majority of successful business owners we surveyed are taking advantage of qualified retirement plans—although it is not an overwhelming majority (see Exhibit 2). 

It may be that many of these owners have set up retirement plans mainly as a way to help attract and retain top-tier employees—not for their own benefit. Among those companies with qualified retirement plans, the amount of money that successful business owners can save in these plans tends not to be all that meaningful. As seen in Exhibit 3, only about one in ten business owners says these funds are “important” to them. About one-third say the monies are “not important.”

It’s clear to us that many business owners are not taking advantage of these retirement planning tools—and even among those who are, many aren’t getting what they should be getting from them.

The power of defined benefit plans for owners

The good news: There is a certain type of comparatively sophisticated qualified retirement plan that can be extremely beneficial to entrepreneurs in their quest to become seriously wealthy. 

It’s the defined benefit plan. 

Defined benefit plans promise a percentage of compensation to be received at retirement. That is, you (the business owner) will get a fixed percentage of your salary. As you become increasingly successful and generate larger amounts of discretionary (and taxable) cash flow, these plans can become quite attractive. 

When set up optimally, defined benefit plans offer some attractive advantages to successful business owners whose businesses are generating ample cash flow. Examples include:

• Ability to make larger contributions than are possible via other qualified retirement plan options
• Ability to maximize tax deductions  
• Tax-deferred growth
• Ability to receive a substantial share of the money contributed and the returns generated (while still rewarding employees)
• Predictability of benefits in retirement

Interestingly, there is a wide gap between awareness of these plans and actual usage. Most financial advisors we surveyed reported being personally knowledgeable about defined benefit plans (see Exhibit 4). But in stark contrast, only about 9 percent of the advisors have set up such plans with their business owner clients. 

At the same time, a mere 18.3 percent of successful business owners—less than one-fifth—have set up defined benefit plans in their companies. That’s not a big surprise when you consider the small percentage of financial advisors who are actually providing these solutions—but it’s certainly not ideal. 

Clearly, many business owners are not getting the advantages of defined benefit plans—and may not even be aware of those advantages at all. One reason seems to be that the professionals with whom successful business owners work to manage their assets are not well versed in some of the nuances of this key area of wealth creation, or they lack the ability to effectively implement the most advantageous solutions. 

Three examples of defined benefit plans at work

There are a number of different types of defined benefit plans. The following examples use a specialized version that aims to maximize the wealth of the business owners. 

Case #1: Construction firm

A construction company with high cash flow and 51 employees was looking to implement a retirement plan that would considerably benefit the two owners—brothers age 51 and 44.  

Of the 51 employees, 40 laborers were union (and therefore excluded from the plan). That left 11 office staff (including the owners) to be counted for pension planning purposes.

The company had an existing 401(k) with a profit-sharing component. In reviewing their options, one solution was to add a traditional defined benefit plan. Incorporating the traditional defined benefit plan, along with the 401(k) profit-sharing plan, would enable the company to make a total pretax contribution to the plan participants of $297,222. (Note: The minimum number of people who had to be covered were the two brothers and just four employees.)

Each brother would also receive a life insurance benefit of $1,791,667. Approximately 90 percent of contributions funding the benefits from the specialized retirement plan would go to the two brothers.  

Case #2: Consulting firm

A successful consulting firm with 17 employees had an existing defined benefit pension plan, along with a 401(k) profit-sharing plan. The owner, a woman age 72, had no intention of retiring. Additionally, her two children worked at the firm. The intention was that eventually the two children would take over the business.

The owner’s existing defined benefit plan was fully funded, so she was unable to make further contributions to the plan. The owner was looking to secure needed life insurance for her family financial planning, as well as to continue making tax-deductible contributions to her retirement plan. 

By transitioning from the existing plan to a specialized defined benefit plan, the owner made a tax-deductible contribution of $5.6 million. The plan would provide almost $1.8 million in needed life insurance and continued retirement benefits, as well as fund future retirement benefits for her children—all on a pretax basis.

Case #3: Private equity firm

A private equity firm with partners and offices around the U.S. was looking for opportunities to help its owner-executives fund future retirement benefits on a pretax basis. The firm had 27 employees and seven owners. 

In looking at retirement plan alternatives, the group reviewed the standard 401(k) profit-sharing plan as well as a cash balance plan. In structuring the plan and including the owner-executives as well as the necessary nonowner, non-highly compensated employees (nine people in total), the company would be able to put away approximately $1.5 million on a pretax basis through the 401(k) profit-sharing plan and the cash balance plan.

Using a specialized defined benefit plan that included those same seven owners and nine nonowner employees, it was determined the company could fund $5.1 million in year-one contributions toward the retirement plan. This plan would provide maximum retirement benefits for the executives (and their spouses) at retirement, while also providing a life insurance benefit of just under $1.8 million to their heirs.

Conclusion

The right type of retirement plan can have major benefits for you as a successful business owner. But chances are, you’re not aware of these plan options—or how to use them to achieve the goal of maximizing your wealth.

The upshot: It’s probably a good time to review your current plan and evaluate its benefits relative to those of other options out there that you may be overlooking. You know that following the crowd in business rarely leads to amazing results—maybe following the crowd when it comes to your retirement plan is holding you back!

VFO Inner Circle Special Report By John J. Bowen Jr.

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